Canning leftovers

Last week I prepared one of our family's favorite dishes, orange-roasted chicken, from a Cornish Cross we raised last year.

After the meal, I deboned the rest of the chicken...

...and gathered up all the scraps. A chicken carcass is far too useful to waste.

So into a stockpot it went. I brought it to a boil, then lowered it to a simmer.

I added about 1/4 cup of vinegar, which helps draw the nutrients from the bones.

Then I set the burner on the lowest possible gas, covered the pot, and let it simmer all night long.

In the morning it was a revolting-looking mess.

I strained out all the bones, etc.

This yielded about a gallon and a half of stock. Good rich stuff, full of nutrients!

I like to can stock in pints (rather than quarts). Because my stock is just rough-filtered, it has tiny bits of meat in it, so I used the pressure canner.

Meanwhile I also took out of the freezer some homemade teriyaki sauce.

This was left over from a neighborhood potluck meal a few months ago. Like the chicken stock, it also has bits of meat in it; so I froze it until such time as I was using the pressure canner for another meat product. This means 75 minutes at 10 lbs. pressure (adjusted for our elevation, about 12.5 lbs.).

When defrosted, it filled three jars.

When ready, everything went into the trusty canner.

By the end, I had 11 pints of stock and three pints of teriyaki sauce.

Waste not want not!

Busy busy busy

Man oh man it's been a busy day.

As usual, my morning started around 5:30 am. By 7:30 I was out feeding Samson and two cows (the cows belong to a neighbor, they're getting bred by our bull) who are in the bull pen.

Washed and hung four loads of laundry on the indoor clothes racks.

I also canned thirteen pints of pinto beans (for making refried beans).

I canned these 18 pints of chicken stock yesterday.

Don was in the shop most of the late morning and afternoon, cutting tankard sides for a production run of 150 pieces or so. He brought them in in batches of 50, and the girls taped them up, ready for gluing.

Trust me, these are intimidating piles.

It was also my turn to bring snacks for church tomorrow, so I made a quadruple batch of shortbread cookies.

We're also hosting our neighborhood potluck tomorrow, and I decided to make chicken strips. Here Younger Daughter is crushing saltine crackers into crumbs.

Three cookie sheets of chicken strips, ready to go into the freezer until tomorrow's dinner.

Meanwhile Older Daughter made pizza dough since we were planning pizza for dinner.

She also made a hearty batch of steeped iced tea.

Don glued up one of the piles of tankards.

Later I glued up another pile. We got a bit less than half the tankards glued.

The girls split watering the garden (a two-hour process) since I was so busy in the house).

Here's the risen pizza dough.

From this, we made three pizzas -- two tomato...

...and one pesto. This will provide us with breakfasts and lunches for a couple of days.

Can't forget evening chores: feeding livestock, feeding and watering chickens, topping off all water tanks.

I don't know about you, but I'm pooped. Once this glass is empty, I'm off to bed.

G'night.

Canning chicken stock

Since we've been so screamingly busy of late, cooking proper meals has been a rare thing. When I cook, it has to be something easy. Orange roast chicken is an easy meal to make, so earlier this week (at least this one time) my family got fed something good and hearty. For once.

I was about halfway through deboning the carcass when I decided that, pressed for time or not, I wanted to can some chicken stock.

So I put the carcass and all other scraps into a stock pot...

...and filled it with water.

Thanks to some reader suggestions, I also added about a quarter-cup of vinegar in order to draw out the marrow and additional nutrients from the carcass.

I brought the whole thing to a rolling boil...

...then turned it down to the lowest-possible barely-on level and let it quietly simmer all night long.

My intention was to can the broth the next day but, well, we got busy. Really busy. All day long and all the following night, the broth stayed at a low simmer. It got to the point where I was either going to have to discard the entire thing, or somehow find the time to can it. I really wanted the stock, so I found the time.

The following morning I got up at 4 am and prepared to can the stock... which, at this point, was very hearty.

I set a colander over another pot...

...and drained the larger stock pot.

This is all the bones and meat scraps...

...and this is the chicken stock.

I washed some canning jars and started filling.

I wasn't sure how much broth I'd get, but I ended up with fifteen pints, which pleased me.

Counting out Tattler lids, most of which still had labels from other canning projects.

What kinds of other projects? Well, I was reusing lids from canning garlic, pinto beans, raspberry jam, pizza sauce, turkey stock, turkey gravy, and a few labels that only had dates (presumably because the contents were easily identified, such as corn or green beans).

I keep a basket in the kitchen into which I put all canning-related lids, rings, gaskets, etc. Once in awhile I'll put everything into their proper storage spaces, but more often I just fish what I need out of this basket.

I scalded the lids and gaskets and prepared to cap the jars, just as a shaft of early-dawn sunlight inched into the kitchen.

Lids and gaskets on.

Rings on.

Into the canner.

Because the stock is meat-based, I played it safe and pressure-canned it as I would all meats, 90 minutes at 13 pounds (for our elevation). Last November we had a lively discussion about whether poultry stock needs to be canned that long, but I decided to stick with the full 90 minutes because I only coarsely-strain the stock and it still has bits of meat floating around. Better safe than sorry.

Actually, since these are pints I could have canned them for 75 rather than 90 minutes. But I'd been up since 4 am and clearly wasn't thinking straight. An extra fifteen minutes in the canner won't hurt.

Before the rest of the family was awake, the jars were out of the canner and cooling.

Hey, sometimes getting up at 4 am has its advantages.