MSU Extension MI Ag Ideas to Grow With

Again. Welcome. Welcome to Michigan State University Extension. Welcome to the MI Ag Ideas to Grow with Session Preserving my Harvest, Preserving beans and meats. I'm Laurie Messing, a food safety extension educator based in the thumb of Michigan. Joining me in the session this morning is my colleague, Karen Fifield. And she will kick off about halfway through the session this morning and join us to share some information as well. We thank you for spending a little bit of time with us this morning. We are hoping that you can get some great information you'll be able to use throughout the year when you are preserving this session. Today we'll focus on preserving low acid foods, which include beans and meats. Low acid foods must be pressure canned for safety. We will be sharing information to enable you to safely process your beans and meats as low acid foods using one of your pressure canners. Why pressure canning? We get this question a lot. It's because of the risk of botulism. Botulism is a rare but potentially deadly illness caused by a bacteria produced by a germ called Clusterdium botulinum. The germ is found in the environment and can survive, grow, and produce a toxin. In certain conditions, such as if food is improperly canned, the toxin can affect your nerves, It can paralyze, and it can cause and has caused death. You cannot see smell or taste botulism, but even a small taste of food containing this toxin can be deadly. Many cases of foodborne botulism have happened after people ate home canned, home preserved, or fermented foods that were contaminated. The foods become contaminated because they were not processed correctly. As we've shared the home, canned products are the most common cause of food borne botulism Outbreaks in the United States, 1996-2014 there were 210 outbreaks of foodborne botulism reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The majority of those were caused by canned foods, improperly canned, I'm 30% of those home canned vegetables. These outbreaks often occurred because home canners did not follow canning methods and instructions. They did not use pressure canners, They ignored signs of food spoilage. They didn't know they could get botulism from improperly preserving foods. I said that beans and meat are low acid foods, but so are vegetables. While we aren't talking about vegetables today, most vegetables also have to be pressure canned for safety because they are low acid. The main message is, again, we have to use the pressure canner if you're unsure about how to use it. We're going to show you that today. I'm going to give you some great information on how to safely use that pressure canner. Because again, it is the only option for canning beans, meat and even vegetables if you're interested in that as well. If you choose not to use a pressure canner, then you need to freeze these items because water bath canning is not an option, does not get to a high enough temperature to kill that bacteria that can cause botulism. We'll talk today about the two types of pressure canners that are available to you to use for your home use. We have the weighted gauge and we have the dial gauge, pressure canner. Keep in mind that both pressure canners and all pressure canners have a rack on the bottom that's to keep the food off the bottom of the canner and prevent breakage. They have a pressure regulator or pressure indicator. Some are dial gauge, some are weighted gauge, so some have a dial, some have a weight. They all have a vent pipe and a petcock for pressurizing. They all have safety valves and over pressure plugs. They also have safety locks for pressurizing flexible gaskets inside the lid unless you have a metal to metal type seal, which is what the All American canner is like if you do have that type of canner. Since beans and meats are low acid foods, they have to be pressure canned. Choose the style of pressure canner that you like to use and maybe feel comfortable using. We are going to take a look at each of these in Deb, but before we do, maybe if we could use the chat for a second. Would you share in the chat If you have pressure can before and if so, what type of pressure canner you used. Was it a dial gauge or was it a weighted gauge? I'm just curious to see if any of you who have joined us today have jumped into pressure canning previously or maybe you're new to it. All right. Let's look first at the dial gauge. Pressure can the dial gauge? Pressure can, just like it says, has a dial gauge with numbers 51015 pounds of pressure increments are listed on the dial with your pressure canner. The lid will always lock in place if you do any water bath canning, That is the difference with water bath. We just put the lid on the top. We set it there with pressure canning, we have to lock that lid into place. The pressure canner has a vent pipe that you'll see in a illustration video and a bit that we use to exhaust that canner, which will help to create a vacuum and even pressure inside of the canner. Once the canner has been exhausted for 10 minutes to create even pressure inside, we use a weight on the vent pipe to close the canner and allow the pressure to begin building. Once we start building that pressure inside, you'll start to see that little needle on the dial raise. And it'll go up to five to ten to 11, let's say. Because often we pressure can at 11 pounds of pressure if we are zero to 1,000 feet above sea level. But you'll always follow that research based recipe to tell you what pound of pressure you're going to use for your processing time. The canner has a safety valve that will melt if the internal pressure becomes too high. When the plug melts, the internal pressure is released. This release plug prevents the canner from blowing up. Something people have been afraid of and has happened over the years. If people were not using the canner properly, if it was a really old canner, with not some of the newer updates for safety included pressure canners are very safe to use. As long as you follow the process, you pay attention to it. You don't walk away from it and forget about it, and so they are completely safe. And we encourage you to read up on the instructions of your pressure canner. After this session today, look at the follow up materials that we will send. And it is a very safe process to use and can be really pretty easy to use, really if you are following the recommended procedure. Now, a weighted gauge, pressure canner is a bit different. The canner itself is the same as far as having a rack and having a lid that locks in place and building pressure, venting the steam through the vent pipe. But you'll notice that the dial gauge is not here. Now we have a weight that we put on when we want to start measuring the pressure inside. The picture on the right displays a couple different kinds of weights that you might see on a weighted gauge. It might be a circular weight with a hole for 510.15 or it could be the one in the front. On the right picture, it's like a little puzzle piece you put together for how much weight you're going to use for processing the weight. Once it's pressurizing will either make a gentle rocking sound or a burst of jiggling to indicate the pressure is being reached and maintained. You'll want to, again, pay attention to your manufacturer's directions so you can learn how to gauge and hear that rocking or jiggling. You know what to listen for and what to look for. People often that have a dial gauge caner want to look at the numbers. They like to see the numbers. People that use the weighted gauge, Karen, here on our call today, has a weighted gauge that she's always used and she really loves that. It's really a personal preference if you want to look at the gauge for a number or if you want to listen for that rocking and jiggling sound, you'll have to get to know your canner a little bit and know how it works and what to look for or what to listen for. The pressure canning process starts out with about two or 3 " of water in your canner. The steam inside the canner is what we use for pressurizing. It's not the water, we don't need a lot of water. If you're using hot packed jars from your research based recipe, the water in the canner should be simmering. If it's a raw pack, the water should be warm to hot. We don't need boiling water. Gently place your jars on the canner. The place the lid on the canner, and like we said, lock it into place. It's got like a twist lock motion. And you'll see in the video in a minute. At this point, you leave that weight off of the vent pipe and turn the heat to high on your stove. This next step is really important. This is something that's changed through the years as far as the amount of time we vent our canner. We want to make sure you're using current, up to date research based information. You need to exhaust all of the steam out of that canner. For 10 minutes, we mean 10 minutes, not 9 minutes, 8 minutes, 10 minutes. You'll want to set a timer. Once the water boils and the steam starts to come out of that vent pipe, you wait until there's a steady stream of steam flowing out. And then get out a timer and set it, whether it's your phone or whether it's a kitchen timer. Whatever you use, set it for 10 minutes. You need to let it vent for that ten full minutes because that evens out the pressure inside of the canner. Okay, After 10 minutes when the timer goes off, now you place the weight on that vent pipe in, your canner will start to pressurize and you'll see the needle move up on the dial gauge or you'll start to see your weight rocking and jiggling. You're going to start your timing process for the processing time once it reaches the ten or 11 pounds of pressure that your research based recipe recommends. Okay. And then at the end of processing, your timer goes off. After your processing time, turn the heat off at the stove, on your dial gauge, let the pressure drop to zero, Then wait another one to 2 minutes to make sure all the pressure is gone. Remove the weight off the top of the canner lid, open the petcock, then wait 10 minutes. Now if you have a weighted gauge, you're going to need to wait 30 to 45 minutes after processing because we don't have a dial with numbers to see what number the pressure is at inside that canner. That's a little bit different with the weighted gauge. Okay. And then you'll want to open the lid away from you so that steam doesn't cause any burns, it will be hot. And then remove the jars using your jar lifter. And place them on a padded surface or rack where they're going to wait for 12 to 24 hours and make sure they've sealed. And then we will store them for the winter, for the year. Let's take a look at a short video. We did some videos last year and this one is actually, it's the weight pressure can video. We do have a dial gauge pressure can video that I will share with you tomorrow. I'll send you a follow up e mail and we'll share the link to the dial gauge as well. But this one will show you how the weighted gauge pressure can works. Pressure canning is the only method recommended by the US Department of Agriculture for safely canning low acid foods such as vegetables, meats, and fish. Low acid foods must be canned at a temperature of 240 degrees Fahrenheit or higher. And held there for the time specified in the recipe to destroy the bacterial spores naturally present in these foods. Pressure canning utilizes pressurized steam to reach this superheated temperature. This pressurized heat destroys the potentially harmful bacterial spores. Weighted gauge canners are one of the approved canners for use in home canning. Weighted gauge canners have various types of weights to achieve 510.15 pound pressure increments. These weights jiggle a rock as pressure is building and during processing, a rock goes on the bottom of all canners to prevent jars from sitting directly on the canner, which gets very hot and can cause jar breakage. Place your back in the bottom of the canner to use your pressure canner. First read the manufacturer's directions, then add two to 3 " or two quarts of hot water to the canner, heat water to simmer. Next, place filled jars carefully on the rack using a jar lifter. Then place the lid onto the canner and lock into place. Now it's time to vent the canner, leaving the weight off the vent port. Turn the stove burner to its highest setting, and heat the canner until steam flows from the vent. Let the canner steam until a steady stream of steam starts to flow from the Ve. Once you have a steady stream, set a timer for 10 minutes. You will need to vent the canner for a full 10 minutes before pressurizing. Next, pressurize the canner by placing the weight on the bent port. As the canner pressurizes, you will see the weights jiggle or rock back and forth. But please refer to manufacturer's directions for your specific canner. Monitor the pressurizing. So once it reaches the recommended pressure, you are ready to process. Set your timer according to the research based recipe. Regulate heat under the canner to maintain a steady pressure. If the weight stops rocking or jiggling, it has gone below pressure. Bring the pressure back up and restart the timing process again. Once the timer goes off, turn off the heat to the canner. Pressure. Canners take time to depressurize after processing before the lid can be opened. Wait at least 30 to 45 minutes to depressurize. Then remove the weight from the vent port. Unfasten the lid and remove it Carefully. Open the lid away from you so that steam does not burn. You leave the jars in the canner for 10 minutes to keep liquid from leaking out. Then carefully remove the jars using a jar lifter. By lifting them straight out of the canner, the water on the lids will evaporate. Place jars on a towel, cutting board, or rack to cool for 12 to 24 hours. After 12 to 24 hours, once jars have sealed, label each jar with the date and the name of the product. If a jar did not seal, you have the option to reprocess using the same processing time, freeze or place in the refrigerator and consume to store your jars of canned food. Remove the rings, place in a dry, dark area and use within one year. Okay. After processing, it's important to, like we said, remove the jars straight out of the water. We don't want to tip them or jiggle them around. That could jeopardize the seal. Let them rest for 12 to 24 hours. Make sure they've sealed and then you can remove the rings, them, label them, and store them in your pantry, your cupboards. Wherever you store your canned goods, unsealed jars can be reprocessed within 24 hours. You would remove the ring, remove the lid, put the contents into a new jar, and then you'd have to reprocess for the same amount of time. If you're done canning for the day and you find one hasn't sealed, you have options to either freeze that product instead, or you can just put it in the refrigerator and enjoy it within the next couple of days. Again, pressure canning is the only safe method for canning meats, beans, vegetables. All the other canning methods are considered unsafe for these low acid foods. All right. We want to give you some general information on pressure canning. And now we're going to look at beans first and then we'll talk about meats. We know beans are a great source of plant based protein that can provide iron, and fiber, and minerals, and vitamins. They are very versatile and can be used in everything from soups and stews to salads and dips. Even though beans preserve well as a dry bean stored in the cool, dry place, canning beans can also make them a little bit easier to use. It is important to know that rehydrating beans is necessary before you can them in jars. There's many varieties of beans in different uses. Some parts of the world use beans for dishes that are common in their culture. The garbanzo or chick pea is the most popular be used in the world. Great Northern beans are a favorite for many. They're a bit larger than a navy bean, but make great dishes, including a sweet baked beans recipe of carns that we'll see later. To make this dish, you can purchase the beans from the store instead of buying them, you can rehydrate them and can those dry beans. You don't have to purchase those beans at the store. After all, Michigan produces more than 400 million pounds of edible beans, Ranking second in production of dry beans. Were the second largest bean producer in the nation, but first in the nation in production of black beans, cranberry beans, and small red beans. Second for Navy beans. We know Michigan's very versatile when it comes to our bean harvest. On average, five pounds of beans are needed for a canner load for seven quartz, an average of 3.4 pounds is needed for a canner load of nine pints. One pound of dry beans makes about six cups of cooked beans. And you'll always want to start by selecting mature dry beans, sort and discard those that are discolored, and then know what you're going to use your beans for. That will help you identify what bean you will want to can preparing beans, the first option you'll want to run through and sort your beans. Beans are picked and sorted by machinery, so there is a chance a small pebble can end up in a bag of beans. Sorting is important. After sorting, you'll want to rinse the beans with cool running water. Next. Place them in a large pot and cover with water. Soak them for 12 to 18 hours in a cool place and then drain the water. This method is considered a long method to prepare beans. If using this method, you need to plan ahead and soak them overnight in the refrigerator. That way the next day you could utilize those beans for preparing a dish. The second option is a less time consuming option to rehydrate. You would still start by sorting and rinsing and placing them in a large pan or stockpot to quickly hydrate the beans. Though you can cover them with boiling water in a saucepan. Make sure you cover the beans with a generous amount of water. They will be absorbing a lot of that water, boil for 2 minutes, remove from heat, and then soak for 1 hour, and then drain. The beans are not completely hydrated, but they are well on their way. In this section, we'll talk about actually canning the beans in jars and wash your rehydrated beans. Wash and rehydrate the beans using one of the methods we just shared. Then with fresh water, boil the prepared beans for 30 minutes. Next, fill your jars with beans and finish with the cooking liquid, leaving 1 " head space. You'll pour enough cooking liquid in there that you have 1 " head space left. You can then add a two teaspoon of salt per pint or one teaspoon per quart if desired. This is optional. You don't have to put salt in, clean the rim of the jar, and secure a two piece lid to the jar process according to your research based recipe. As far as the altitude recommendation, size of the jar, and the type of pressure canner you're using, You can see if it was pints you process for 75 minutes and quartz would be for 90 minutes, either at ten or 11 pounds of pressure, depending on your canner that you're using. Here's a picture of cannon, Great Northern Beans. 2.4 pounds of dried beans or peas. Enough water to cover them by 2 ". Again, that salt is optional. Next, as we said, we'd wash and sort, put them in a large stock pot, boil the beans for 2 minutes, and then soak for an hour. In the meantime, prepare your jars. Next, you're going to drain and cover the beans with water, reduce heat, and boil for 30 minutes. After filling jars, release any air bubbles, measure head space and get ready to process these beans. Use the quicker rehydrating process, you'd follow the directions in your research based recipe. Then once you get ready to process, you would put them into the canner, as we talked about in the video, after the processing is done, according to that research based recipe, you pull them out of the canner and let them cool for 12 to 24 hours. Now you've got your own cans of Great Northern beans to use in a variety of recipes. These process for 90 minutes in either the weighted, in whatever the Ker recipe recommended. This example was 90 minutes. So it was 90 minutes, Lori. It was in my pressure era weighted gauge. Okay. So 90 minutes in the weighted gauge. Thank you. Yeah, those are Karen's beans. Chili can Carne is a recipe from the National Center for Home Food Preservation. It uses dried, pinto, or kidney beans, and it's pressure canned. And this will be included in our follow up recipes we share with you. I just wanted you to see an optional couple ways you could use some beans and do some canning. This recipe uses pinto or red kidney beans, ground beef, and chopped onions and peppers of your choice. Also, black pepper and chili powder and crushed or whole tomatoes recipe will yield about nine pints. Again, we'll share this. Another option to do some pressure canning with a recipe using beans and meat hummus is another way you can utilize your beans. Blending the garbanzo beans that have been canned, and then adding garlic, lemon juice, and olive oil. You could use sesame paste. You can serve your hummus with lots of different vegetables or tortillas or pita or crackers. Again, just another great way to use up those can garbanzo beans you might have in your pantries if you are interested in processing those ahead of time. Baked sweet beans is one of Karen's recipes using Great Northern Beans. It's an old family favorite. This recipe is what inspired her to can the dry beans that they grow. Again, you can use these items very versatilely to make these baked sweet beans. Great Northern beans. You could use home canned or you could purchase at the store. But if you're canning them now you can use them. Calls for ginger, bacon, sugar, and salt and pepper. To taste, you add all those ingredients together and place in a baking dish, peel a small size onion and slice from the top of the onion close to the bottom, but not all the way through. Do this to make a half, then turn to make quarters, and once again to make eight onion petals. And place the onion in the center. And then four slices of bake and go around the top. Doesn't that look pretty? Then bake at 350 degrees until the liquid is down and it begins to brown up on top. This is something that I think we're going to try. My husband would love that. So, great recipe to use some of your great Northern beans. All right, so I'm going to turn it over to Karen Next, he's going to talk about canning meats and how easy and versatile that can be as well. Thank you, Laurie. Yeah, my family loves those sweet beans. So that's I actually just to add to Lori's, people usually say why would you can beans when you can store them dry? Well, when I want the beans done, I want them done to use. Now, I can't always plan that far ahead. That's why I can several jars of beans. But let's talk about meat. We have three different kinds of meat in this picture. It's venison, which is a wild game obviously, and then we have some beef and some chicken. Those actually have to also be pressure canned because they once again, are a low acid food. We're going to talk about where we get some recipes. We talked about, I'll show you some stuff at the end. That's our tested recipes. But this is from the National Center for Home Food Preservation. It's just a process of going through the beans or the meat. But anyways, there's different ones, Sometimes venison and things like that, but not always. Here's definitely home canning ground, meat strips or chunks of meat in a jar. The process can either be a hot pack or a cold pack. I think we go through that a little bit later and we'll talk about that when we get to that right here. Actually, there are a couple methods for preparing your meat to put it in a jar. First, you're going to remove all the fat to ensure that it has a better seal and a better flavor in your jar. The fat in a jar can go rancid. That's what we try to prevent. Get rid of as much fat as possible. So hot pack is what we're looking at right here, and it's preferred to yield a safe, high quality product. When you hot pack, you can actually partially cook the meat. And then it goes in the jar. Actually you can fit a lot more in it because once meat is cooked, even in a jar, it shrinks a little bit. It depends on your favorite way to do that though, but hot pack versus raw pack. Raw pack will make its own broth, so you don't add anything to that yet. It has less liquid in the jar once it actually cools down and everything. People, we get a lot of questions about why did I lose water in my home, canned meat or other things. But it's because it does create its own liquid, but it doesn't cover all the meat. Sometimes it leaves the meat at the top a little discolored or it's a little off texture at the very top. But that doesn't mean that it's spoiled or anything at that point. As long as you followed a research tested recipe, once again, raw Pac does not use extra liquid. Hot pack does use cooked product. You have to add your liquid like a broth or a tomato juice, or the juice from the pan to add Keep flavor in your product when you can it. The hot pack is preferred for best liquid cover because it doesn't lose that top layer of. The water at the top, it'll cover all of the meat. Then it stays nice and colored in the jars and storage the natural amount of fat and juices. In today's leaner meat cuts are usually not enough to cover most of the meat in the raw pack. That's another reason that sometimes we use the cooked pack to make sure meat is ready to be canned. Again, all the fat and the tallow has to be removed. Cut the meat into 1 " pieces, strips, cubes, or chunks. And then follow your research tested recipe for your canning process. Note that from ground meat freezing yields a better quality product. Instead of canned there you can can ground meat, but it's not quite as good a product. Since we talked about freezing ground meat, freezing is another option. And when it comes to preserving venison or any other meats, however, that can be an hopefully one time investment. But let's talk about the advantages and disadvantages of freezing. There are advantages to freezing. Freezing is as simple and easy and it can save time compared to canning or dehydrating because they do take a little extra time. You can also adopt the portion size based on your family's needs. You can't just put a certain amount in a pint jar and that you're going to have if you have one person. But you can adjust this in freezers to what you're going to use for a certain recipe or something after you take it out for ground meat. Freezing gives a much higher quality product also. That's the other thing to look at when you freeze or preserve meat in a freezer. Some disadvantages to consider. Like I said a little bit ago, the initial investment in a freezer, because it actually, it is quite costly at times. Potentially, it's limited storage space as well. Because depending on the size of your freezer and what other things you keep frozen, you have a limited space to use. Advanced planning can help with that. Also, you have to advance, think ahead to thaw your meat. If you need it to prepare a meal, you've got a plan to do that. The texture of the meat can also be a consideration according to preferences and what you like for flavor as well, because they do taste a little bit different than being canned. When you freeze items, package in freezer paper or butcher wrap, sometimes there are vacuum sealed bags and things like that that you can use or containers. Packaging should be moisture and a durable and leakproof, resistant to brittleness and cracking at low temperatures. Because remember, we are freezing that and resistant to oil or grease or water chilling. We mentioned earlier, freshly slaughtered meat carcasses need to be cooled to below 40 degrees Fahrenheit within 24 hours to prevent souring or spoiling. I'm referring more like to venison or wild game. The meat should be chilled to at least 32 degrees, or 36 degrees Fahrenheit, depending on an individual preference for the number of servings and cooking methods. The meat can be cut into roast rolled roast steaks, chops, stew meat, ground meat, et cetera. Whatever you choose when you're cooking your meat, you do that obviously before you freeze it. With canning, you need to trim as much fat, the sinew, which is that gray covering sometimes, or gristle away from your meat. Then package of meat, like I said, the paper, the wrap the freezer bags or however you choose to do that, put them in a single layer in your freezer and let them freeze. But you can do a lot more smaller portions. The other thing is in canning, you can't do a roast. You do have to have some thoughts on what are the things that you eat the most of, do you need to freeze it or do you need to can it? Once again, once you package all of your meat in your freezer containers, you need to label and date. But also another major thing to consider is get as much air out as possible. Because in a freezer air is not our friend. That's what will actually give you freezer burn a lot of times inside packages and things like that. And definitely communicate with your future self. Know how much is in that package. You can put that on your package so that you know what size package, how much you need to have for a recipe that you're choosing to make for your dinner or other occasions that you're going to use that meat and anticipate taking out to thaw in your refrigerator but also packing. Definitely label in date. I can't tell you how many times in my younger life I've not done that. It ends up thrown out, label and date, and the amount you have in your ingredients is a very important thing. Here are some freezer recommendations. I think we send this out as well. Maybe Laurie can send that out tomorrow as well. But your freezer should be at least kept at zero degrees or lower. Always keep an appliance thermometer inside your freezer and check it frequently. You don't want to take the chance that things are going to be thawed when you go check your freezer or go get something out and find everything is gone, that can be very costly. Overloading your freezer and with unfrozen foods, slows it down. You plan ahead a little bit so you can actually, let's say, spread things out, get it frozen. And then you can stack things up and make it nice and neat and section things off in there, and it's not too much to heat it up and then it freezes it down. You want to be able to help your freezer to work better. Once foods are frozen, you can stack and store them on top of each other, like I said. And make it fit a little bit more and keep it organized in your freezer. Now we're going to talk a little bit about dehydrating meat. This is the oldest method of food preservation. Let's see what we have for dehydrating. Drying preserved preserves food by removing moisture and spoilage. Microorganisms like a bacteria, yeast and molds cannot grow without moisture on that product. Enzymes are slowed down, but not completely inactivated. Food also becomes smaller and lighter. That's another advantage of having dehydrated meats. Jerky is a lightweight dried meat product according to the National Center for Food Preservation. It is important to remember, raw meats can be contaminated with microorganisms that cause disease. Harmful bacteria can easily multiply on moisture. High protein foods like meat and poultry cause illness if the products are not handled correctly. If pork and wild game is used to make jerky, the meat should be treated to kill Trichinella parasites because they do sometimes have a parasite before it is sliced or in marinated. This parasite causes the disease trichinosis. To treat the meat freeze a portion that is 6 " or less thick, to zero degrees or below for at least 30 days. Freezing will eliminate bacteria from your meat. Here's a little side note. Freezing can kill a parasite, but not a bacteria. It may have been growing in that meat as well, but from mishandling it, such as not washing our hands or using a cutting board that was already contaminated with other meats or things. Make sure that we need to try to keep things can in order to process our meat. If that's what we're doing at our home and drying it for ideal meat selection, choose lean cuts of meat. Highly marbled meat will have too much fat. Fat turns rancid very easily and it develops off flavors over time. That's definitely something you want to look for. Usda select grade is lean and the least marbled. This is better than choice or prime grades. Believe me, when I researched this, I learned a lot of things about that. Chuck, and flank and round and rump or sirloin cuts are the best. Antelope, and elk and venison make excellent jerky since game meats are already lean and could be used. But the best cuts are lined round and flank ground meat should be about 93% lean for making jerky. Actually we make jerky out of both ways before you prepare the meat, wash your hands for 20 seconds. It's a reminder that the equipment and the food contact surfaces will need to be washed, rinsed, and sanitized as well. For whole meat jerky, partially freeze the meat like we've just talked about in a moisture vapor proof wrap or plastic until it's slightly solid. Then when the meat is slightly frozen, it will slice easier, Slice the meat in a long, thin strip about an eighth to a four inch thick and one to one 2 " wide, or four to 10 " long. Tender jerky needs to be sliced across the grain and trim off any visible fat. Remove any connective tissue and gristle. The grayish, shiny sinwas on there to try and get that off, lay the meat in a single layer. And then use a rolling pin to flatten your strips to uniformity on the tray. Or use a pre measured board for slicing. To use ground meat, do you need to mix the flavoring in there with salt and the spices recommended from research or a tested recipe. The salt will hold the ground meat together and then a jerky gun or shooter can stream it out in a long rope and then use a jelly roll pan to put it about a four inch thick. The here is this picture shows how a pre measured board, and that's up in the top right corner and it is a very sharp knife, can be used to make sliced jerky, which can easily cut the meat to eighth to a four inch thick. The slices can then be placed on a cookie sheet, sprinkle it with the seasonings, and then they are ready for putting in the oven to pre heat or a smoker or a dehydrator Picture in the top right corner is a board that has a certain measured outside edge. You put that other flat board on it and you slice following the bottom board with a very sharp knife and it'll slice the meat to the correct thickness. The strips should be close together but not overlapping or touching. And then place the baking sheet in the oven, preheated to 140 degrees Fahrenheit and dry until the meat bends but does not crack. Internal temperature should be about 160 degrees to ensure bacteria is killed jerky by placing it in an oven at 275 degrees for 10 minutes. The internal temperature for ground jerky should also reach 160 degrees. You check it by using a Biom metallic stem thermometer. Or you could actually use a digital thermometer to do that as well. But definitely check to make sure it reaches safe temperatures. Packaging and storing containers need to be clean, sanitary, and air tight. Air is not our friend when it comes to preserving foods. It needs to be food grade, disposable, or recyclable, moisture resistant, and protected from light when you store it. And it needs to be easy to open and close, durable. We always like things to be low cost. No container has all the characteristics. Choose the containers that fit your storage space. It's your favorite stuff, but as long as it's food grade and it stores it well, that's what you need to look for. Vacuum packaging is a good option because it reduces the potential of oxidation and eliminates potential mold growth with the type of meat that it is. The pretreatment steps if you can in the date, if properly labeled on the outside of the package, should not have have to open the package to find out what is inside and then discover that's not what you are looking for. The cooler the storage area, the longer the shelf life of jerky, homemade jerky will last two weeks at room temperature and 36 months in the refrigerator up to a year in the freezer. If mold does form, discard what you have, hopefully that we've given you some ideas on how to preserve your meats or wild game, it's very helpful information. Okay, lastly we talked a lot about research, tested recipes. So here are some things that we recommend. Usda, complete guide to home Canning, easy to preserve from the University of Georgia Extension. That's the sixth edition. The latest edition of the Ball bluebook is the 38th edition that was just released 1 February. So it should be on the store shelves hopefully sooner rather than later. I've been looking for it actually, that one, it was sent to me from the ball company. Everybody wants to get updated. It is important to replace those books or any of that retested recipes every so often because they do catch things that, let's say something needs to be cooked a little bit longer or processed a little bit more. Or they've discovered that you've got to use bottled lemon, which is definitely when you use lemon juice in anything to acidify, you need to use bottled lemon because it has a consistent ph, things like that. It's always important to update your books in your information that you have. A good example too. The first ball blue book I ever had doesn't even have salsa in it. Now I think, I don't even know how many types of salsa there is in all of these books. But that could just give you an idea how long I've preserved food. But it's important they come up with new recipes. I do believe in that ball blue book, they actually have 40 new recipes, and there are several that are updated. It's very important to get updated books. I think it's fun. I like reading my recipes. Here's another thing we want to let you know about. I do believe you'll be receiving these handouts, but these are our Michigan Fresh fact sheets that we put together and we work on, we keep those updated and we'll definitely send those to you. And those can be gotten on a website. There'll be a link for a website that you can go find all kinds of fruits and vegetables that are grown in Michigan, in how to use them, how to preserve them, and how to keep them safe. Also, National Center for Home Food Preservation is definitely a great resource for all of that information as well, and we will send that link also. I think I'll just do the next couple slides for you, Laurie. This is our hot line, our food safety hot line. We have that available from 09:00 A.M. to 05:00 A.M. or 05:00 P.M. every day during the week, Monday through Friday. And it's a real person that you'll get on the line. The number is 877-643-9882 The reason we started that is because we have a lot of questions for food preservation. If you have a question you're canning something and you need an answer, you can call that number and they'll help you out. If you have other questions like garden question for example, you'd use what's called the ask extension. You'd go to a link on the internet. That's this one right here. It'll, they'll put your question to the appropriate expert. Let's say if it was a garden question, it would be a gardening person and they would get back with you on an answer within a couple of days. We have several ways to ask or answer questions that you may have for important things in our lives. Then also, we want to ask you to follow our Facebook page for food safety. Food safety page has lots of information on it. We have recalls that are listed. We have food safety tips, our programs that we have regularly. We have a regular Q and A webinar. We also have a regular food preservation webinars twice a day on Thursdays. All of that information is on our Facebook page. If you can like us on Facebook at Think Food Safety, we welcome you to join us in all that information. Food preservation is a science and we really just want to make sure people are doing it safely. To prevent food borne illness and using safe methods and safe recipes. A number one things that we can do as home food preservers to make sure that we are preparing food that is safe for our family and friends to enjoy. We do have one question, Karen. I did answer one already, but Michelle has read that home can soup should be boiled for 10 minutes before eating. I followed tested recipes and confident I followed safety procedures. Does 10 minutes of boiling, is it still recommended? No, that's actually an older recommendation, and I think that was when I looked at that a couple of different times. But that's when they were trying to assure that if you had a botulism spore in there, it would kill it and stuff. But I don't I don't believe that is something that kills any botulism. But no, it's not recommended. It's not a 22 thing anymore. It's not a bad thing. But it's still a good idea to heat it to 160 degrees, you know, when we reheat foods that have meat or other TCS foods. And so it's yeah, definitely good to reheat to that temperature might not take 10 minutes though, right? Okay, good. A great question. Thank you. Use the hotline for questions. Reach out to your local food safety educator, depending on where you're at in the state of Michigan. If you have questions, we do. Thank you for your time this morning and we hope that you were able to glean some new information to help you feel more confident about preserving these low acid beans and meats using your pressure canners.