Can you can meatloaf?

[arbilad]

I was thinking about canning meatloaf, because I need some more comfort foods in my storage. I looked up some recipes online. Some use crackers and breadcrumbs, but some say that anything with crackers, breadcrumbs, or anything flour based is an absolute no no when canning and is very dangerous. But I found an old Kerr canning recipe for meatloaf that includes crumbs. Has anyone here canned something like meatloaf or meatballs using flour in the recipe? Did you eat the results later and live?

[4evermama]

I've been pressure canning meatballs for a several years now. I use breadcrumbs, but not much. I cook them first, loosely pack the jars, then fill with beef broth to the 1 inch mark. Pressure can at 11 pounds for 90 minutes. We've never been sick and the kids love the soft texture of the meat. (Their favorite is to make near instant meatballs subs.)

Not sure about meatloaf. Aside from the crackers, the density factor would concern me. I'll scout around to see if I can find anyone who has done it. If you slice and brown the pieces individually, maybe you could can it as patties... much like sausage.

Worthington Foods (A Seventh Day Adventist company) sells a soy based, canned vegi meatballs- "TenderRounds". That is where I got the idea. They use wheat flour, soy flour, egg whites and cornstarch as binders. They are cooked and packed in gravy. So......pressure canning would seem to eliminate the threat there.

I do know that flour and cornstarch should NEVER be used in a water bath recipe.
I make my pie fillings without a thickening agent. When it's time for pie, I heat and thicken, then pour into the crust.

I've known people who pressure can cream soups. Now I'm curious to find out if those are flour based. Hmmmm.......

[phylm]

I was thinking about canning meatloaf, because I need some more comfort foods in my storage. I looked up some recipes online. Some use crackers and breadcrumbs, but some say that anything with crackers, breadcrumbs, or anything flour based is an absolute no no when canning and is very dangerous. But I found an old Kerr canning recipe for meatloaf that includes crumbs. Has anyone here canned something like meatloaf or meatballs using flour in the recipe? Did you eat the results later and live?

I can hamburg often--when the price is right, that is. Instructions for that are to half-cook the hamburg, put in jars, add salt and cover with boiling water to within one-half inche of the top. Think I'd can the prepared meatloaf, half cooked and crumbled, like the hamburg, and add hot broth (with tomato sauce, maybe?) to the half inch level, then heat it, when I used it, as meatloaf patties.

[Noahs ARK]

Don't know how accurate this is, but I'll keep looking for more...


<CENTER></CENTER><CENTER></CENTER><CENTER></CENTER><CENTER></CENTER><CENTER>Canned Meatloaf</CENTER><CENTER> </CENTER><CENTER></CENTER><CENTER></CENTER>You can home can meatloaf according to these instructions. They came from an instructions booklet for a pressure canner.

Mix up your meatloaf recipes and shape into loaves small enough to fit inside wide mouth quart jars.

Prebake meatloaves in a baking dish at 350 degrees for 10 mins.

Transfer loaves to hot jars. One loaf per jar. Cover with boiling water, broth or tomato juice.

Process quarts at 10 lbs pressure for 90 minutes. For pints, process at 10 pounds pressure for 75 minutes.


It has been pointed out to me by a dear reader that recipes using oatmeal or oats as the filler may not be a good choice for this particular method. The oats tend to swell and cause the jars to unseal.


Back to The 20th Century Homekeeper (http://www.christianhomekeeper.com/home.html)

[prairiemom]

Clear Gel is a safe thickener that you can use when canning pie filling.

It is not safe to add flour, breadcrumbs or crackers to anything you are canning. I know there are people who do it, just like there is a woman in our ward who waterbaths her carrots. "I've always done it and nothing has ever happened." Disregarding safe canning procedures is like playing Russian Roulette. Most of the time you'll be OK, but do you really want to risk the one time the bullet will be in the chamber? Every USDA and Extension site will tell you do NOT add flour, noodles, breadcrumbs, etc when canning. Wheat expands much more with pressure canning and even the smallest grain of flour can get under the seal and expand and will give you an improper seal.

Now I've developed a meatloaf recipe that uses vegetable powder instead of flour. The family likes it and the veggies absorb the fat, making it a very moist meatloaf.

Veggie powder has become an important part of our food storage. It lets you use all the veggies you don't like canned or frozen or parts of veggies that you would otherwise throw away: broccoli and cauliflower stalks/stems, asparagus, eggplant, Swiss chard stems, etc. I also dehydrate the green beans that are a little too tough or old for canning and broccoli that is a little too ripe (open heads) for eating. Whatever you don't like that still has good food value (i.e. it's not spoiled.)

For veggie powder I put all those unliked veggies into a blender along with any other dried veggies I have: summer squash, peas, carrots, mushrooms, cabbage, onions, tomatoes, chives, herbs, etc. and blend them in the blender until they are a powder (or almost a powder. There will still be some small chunks, about the size of coarse corn meal, that's OK). 2 C of dried veggies give about 1 C of powder. Reconstituted those 2 C would be 4 C veggies which is 8 1/2 C servings. I don't like reconstituted celery so all of it gets made into powder. 2 whole stalks of celery will dehydrate and grind up into about 1/2 C of powder.

The powder can be used as a soup base or in casseroles. But my favorite use is in meatloaf. One serving of meatloaf also has one serving of vegetables in it.

For meatloaf: 2 lbs ground meat, 1/2-1 tsp salt, 1/8-1/4 pepper, garlic powder, 3 eggs, and 1 C veggie powder. Mix thoroughly and shape into a loaf and bake. I make sure the powder in my meat loaf has onions, chives, herbs, celery and tomatoes. The rest really doesn't matter--it's all good.

[threepercent]

go to jackie of BWH:

I used to just pack the meatloaf mixture into wide mouth quart jars, raw and process it that way. But now canning experts don’t recommend raw packing a dense product like meatloaf. So, instead, I make mini-loaves, just a little larger than my jars to allow for shrinkage during baking, then put them in a roasting pan, side by side and bake them just long enough to thoroughly heat them inside and shrink them down. I pack them hot, into hot jars and make a broth from the pan drippings and tomato sauce and pour over the meatloaf, leaving 1″ of headspace. These are processed (qts) at 10 pounds pressure for 90 minutes. If you live at an altitude over 1,000 feet, consult a canning book for directions on increasing your pressure to suit your altitude, if necessary. — Jackie

[arbilad]

Thanks 3%.
Prairemom, I'm going to need your help with a couple of links to official sites. I started looking because I was curious that your recipe mentioned using eggs, which I've also seen lambasted on forums and such along with flour. So I wanted the official story on exactly what is and isn't allowed and why. I searched the entire USDA guide. There were three mentions of flour. The first one said to not use it in Salsa. That makes sense, since flour is not very acidic at all and you're only using a water bath when making salsa, not pressure canning it. The second reference was to not use it to thicken soup. There was no reason given why not. The third reference was that you could use flour paste to thicken pickled corn relish, if you want. So flour cannot be universally bad in canning, because one of the USDA recipes actually recommends it. I searched the extension site of the local university, and nothing about flour being bad. So I would be interested in reading your links to official sites to see why it is a big no no.
I know that flour and other types of noodles aren't recommended for home canned soups. The reason for that is that noodles tend to break down during home canning.
I wasn't able to find any information at all in official sources about not using eggs.
Mind you, if you go to canning discussion forums, blogs, etc. you can find plenty of references to flour and eggs being absolutely forbidden in canning. But it's always someone's opinion. The one link I saw to a relatively official site mentioned that you shouldn't use flour based noodles in soup. This was their entire justification for claiming that flour is bad in any kind of canning.

[phylm]

My mother didn't can meatloaf, but she did can beef, pork, venison, chicken, our vegetables, and fruit and fruit juices, all in a water bath canner...as did my grandmothers, relatives, and neighbors. I don't mean to sound cranky, and I DO use a pressure canner, but I get very impatient with our zero-risk culture nowadays. I'm not posting this as to encourage anyone else to water-bath all their canning, but I do get a distinct lift from eating "outdated" food! (o:]