Monday, March 23, 2009

Adventures with Canned Chicken

We are working to expand our horizons, food storage-wise, and following the advice of Sister DeWitt to utilize foods that your family actually eats, planned as actual meals, rather than metric tons of pinto beans. One of the recipes that appears in her booklet is for Sweet and Sour chicken, and includes a pint of home canned chicken. Mitch won't eat storebought canned chicken, so we've been apprehensive about the idea of canning our own. I mean, at some point, this is all going to get rotated into our regular diet, and I can only eat so much chicken by myself. Fortunately, Mitch's Mom had canned some chicken a few months ago, and sent us a jar to try out.
I know, it looks like something from a science lab.
But look! Once out of the jar, it looks like chicken!
Logan wanted to give it a try (although he keeps calling it turkey). He actually ate a little chunk right out of the can. This is a minor miracle, since Logan is a total meat-phobe. Worth canning chicken to get my picky toddler to eat? Heck, yeah!!
Here is the Sweet & Sour chicken, bubbling away on the stovetop. It was SOOO easy to make, and only took about 15 minutes (although I cheated and made the rice in a rice cooker.)
And here is dinner! I will say, I thought it was pretty tasty. The pineapple mitigates the strong chicken flavor well. Mitch still wasn't a fan. Well, back to the drawing board...
I already ordered the pressure canner, though, so we'll be trying it out with other meats, chili, tomato sauces and salsas. You name it - I'm gonna can it. But the chicken -- just for Logan and me apparently.

2 comments:

Polly said...

sweet and sour chicken soup? Is that kinda like the Chinese Sweet and Sour Soup? If it is, you are really more Chinese than I am... the soup... the May Tai... :)

Unknown said...

there are a few ladies way into pressure canning in my ward and i went to a class on it with them. the grossest looking thing was the ground beef, but it tasted surprisingly good (they had made spaghetti and sloppy joes for us to try) -- I just can't see if I would ever recoup the costs -- I can buy an awful lot of canned chicken and beans for the price of the pressure canner and jars -- so let me know if you do!