Canning Chicken

They had chicken on sale at Macey's for 1.19 a pound. You had to buy 40 lbs, it came all in one box. There were four separate bags inside. So I got some on Tuesday. I had to cut all the fat and stuff off of it. So Wednesday morning I started and only got about 10 lbs. cut, then I started to get hungry and sick feeling from the poultry smell. So I stopped and did some more later after work. Wednesday night I went to my moms right after work and cut some more and started the canning process. It is alot easier canning when you have a gas stove. I had to wear my apron, so I did not get any chicken goo on me.

For canning chicken all you have to do here in Utah is cut the chicken into strips. I washed the canning jars in the dishwasher so they were freshly clean. I squished the chicken in the pint size jars to about an inch from the top. You don't need to add water. They will make their own juice while cooking. Then you put the lids on and put them in the pressure cooker with a couple of inches of water on the bottom. The first batch I did, I got 18 pint jars in the canner. After all the jars are in the canner, put the lid on and latch it down. The stove should already be on. The vent at the top should be open and once the steam starts coming out really good, then you set the timer for 10 minutes. After the ten minutes, just pop the vent down and start watching the pressure, get it up to 13 and a 1/2 pounds and then set your timer for 75 minutes. Whoa! Get a chair out and sit down, it is going to be a long time.

This is the part I remember as a kid when my mom would sit a stool in front of the stove and watch the pressure gauge. You cannot let it get below 13 1/2 lbs. or you have to start the time over. You don't want it to get to high either.


So, here I sat for an hour and a half last night watching this gauge.

During this process, my mom had gone to class and so my dad made some spaghetti for dinner. There was some french bread leftover from a previous dinner so he decided to make garlic bread. He buttered and seasoned the bread and I turned on the broiler to LOW, and moved the rack up. We stuck it in and a little later I realized somebody better check it(you really should watch it, doesn't take very long), I asked my sister to check on it and you probably guessed it. They were a blazing, my dad rushed in and pulled them out of the oven and blew the flames out and ran outside. The smoke detectors did not even go off. Amazing! Well, no garlic bread for dinner. That is okay, everything else was good.

When the 75 minutes were up, I turned off the stove and my dad moved the pressure cooker to another burner to cool down. This takes a little while. Probably about a half an hour. When the pressure gets down to zero, I took a fork and lifted the vent a little to see if there was any pressure left inside, there wasn't, so I lifted the vent all the way up and waited two minutes. I then lifted the lid off and lifted all the jars out to cool down and seal. They all sealed, yeah!
From start to finish it took around 3 hours. Today is Thursday and I just finished the last of the chicken and got 16 more jars full. I had never thought I would cut up so much chicken and I am glad I am finished. I also thought I was done canning this year, I think now I am really done for the year.

Here is all 34 jars of canned chicken!