Q and A: Vinegar and Canning chicken

Vinegar

I canned some pickled beets last fall (haven’t eaten any yet). After doing so I was wondering if the vinegar I used was safe. I’ve had it around for 5 or 6 years and wasn’t sure the acidity in it was still okay for canning.

I’ve been holding off on eating the beets until I could get some info on the subject. As of yet, I’ve not been able to find anything out. I have a couple gallons of old vinegar and hope to use it in salsa canning this summer, but I’d really like to know if I should just purchase new. Also if I should eat the beets or give them a toss.

Sharon Spangenberg
Prospect, Virginia

The acidity of vinegar can change over the years, but all I’ve read indicates that the vinegar gets stronger with age instead of losing its strength. I’ve never really given it much thought, and I know I’ve pickled with vinegar that was more than 2 years old and everything came out well. To be absolutely sure, you could test your vinegar with litmus paper (check your drug store). –Jackie

Canning chicken

I am a suburban girl with a heart for independence and I try new skills for self-reliance as often as I can find them. I have been reading your advice about home canning for a couple of years now. Your enthusiasm is so contagious and I was more than delighted to finally purchase a pressure canner of my own off the Internet. I read about canning chicken and decided to try it. Chicken quarters were VERY cheap at our supermarket this week. I baked the chicken and put it into pint jars in its own broth, leaving an inch of headspace. My book said to process chicken in pint jars for 75 minutes at 11 lbs of pressure. I did so according to all directions, and was excited to hear the pop of the seal. Oh, it was fun. But I am looking at the jars and something is bothering me. In all the pictures I see of canning, the food has completely filled the jars. But my food still has space between the food and the jar. What did I do wrong? I am very sorry to lose all this chicken and don’t want to make the mistake again.

Rachel Bostwick
New Cumberland, Pennsylvania

You really didn’t do anything wrong. But I’ll bet you canned bone-in chicken. When you bake bone in chicken, the broth you add before processing the jars often absorbs into the spaces left between the bone and meat, leaving “space” in the jar. This meat is perfectly okay to eat and the taste will not be affected. Instead of baking my chicken before I put it up, I boil it in seasoned water (like you’d make chicken soup), just until the pink is gone out of the meat (not until completely done or the meat will fall off the bone). Then I pack the hot chicken quarters or breasts in hot jars and fill up to one inch from the top with its own hot broth.

You can also de-bone the chicken and discard the skin, bones and miscellaneous yucky parts, add the meat to the jars, then fill to within an inch of the top with its own broth. The processing time is 75 minutes for pints, boned and 65 minutes for bone-in chicken. — Jackie