These Meals Will Last In A Mason Jar In Your Pantry, So Stock Up

Instead of storing jars of separate ingredients, canned homemade meals can be a good substitute for saving space and for MREs. You can also utilize your seasonal food better this way, saving money. However, preserving home-cooked meals requires more than just putting leftovers in a jar and tightening the lid.

To ensure that the meals in the jar will continue to be safe to eat for years to come, some food science and chemistry are needed. We'll go over the basics today to give you some ideas on what sort of delicious meals you can put away for up to five years for an emergency.

Canned and delicious!Photo byRichelleg

Safe canning requires sterilization, which makes sure that tools, rings, and jars are thoroughly cleaned to avoid contamination. Jars can be dry sterilized in an oven set to 250°F for 15 minutes, or they can be boiled in water for 10 minutes. Mason jars can be used again; however, lids should not.

Fruits like tomatoes, which are acidic foods, are best preserved using the water bath canning process. However, pressure canning is necessary to destroy dangerous microorganisms like botulism from low-acid goods like meat.\

Beef Stew

It would be simple to swap out beef for leftover venison, lamb, goat, or hog shoulder portions. Use whatever you have on hand, make your stew, and pressure can to save for a rainy day.

Canned meat stockPhoto byRichelleg

Use tougher portions of beef for a stew intended for long-term canning, as they will soften during the pressure-canning process. If all you have is ground meat, you can use it, but five years later, the stew in the jar can have a gritty texture.

Pasta Sauce

Grow your own, or purchase from the store or farmers market, but tomatoes that are grown organically are fresher, more flavorful, and free of pesticides and dangerous chemicals.

Not only may tomatoes produced at home be harvested at their ripest, but they can also be obtained at a lower cost than store-bought variety.

Jam with Mixed Berries

With a dash of lemon juice, mixed berries and fruits can be preserved using the water bath method. For this recipe, I like to forage for berries because they're fresher and don't contain pesticides or preservatives.

Mixed berry jamPhoto byRichelleg

Packing them in syrup and adjusting the PH with precisely the appropriate amount of lemon juice is the trick. I feel that the best way to retain the berries' original flavor and texture is to use a light syrup.

The jars can then be preserved using the water bath method with lemon juice. For the assurance that no microorganisms are taking advantage of the high sugar content, I like to pressure can heavy syrups.

Chicken Soup

For me, it's better to leave out any kind of noodles or dumplings when preserving homemade chicken soup. You can always add them when you're heating up your soup to eat it. They are intended to be belly fillers, but when processed, they tend to turn mushy in the pressure canner.

If you really want to add something to make it a meal, try cooked rice. It holds up better. Next, process the chicken soup jars by applying 10 pounds of pressure for 90 minutes, depending on your altitude.

Ham soupPhoto byRichelleg

Ham and Bean Soup

Filling, and keeps for years! The acidity of the bean and ham soup is still too low for water bath canning, even with the salt added from your ham and bean cooking! You must pressure can it for 90 minutes at 10 pounds of pressure if you want it to last up to five years.

Goulash

You must pressure can homemade goulash despite the tomato sauce's acidity in order to completely eradicate any bacterial presence in the meat. Additionally, since the noodles soften and become gross, it is advisable to leave them out of the canning process and add the jar to fresh noodles when you're ready to eat.

For the meat portion, I use chopped chuck roast or small chunks of eye of round instead of ground beef. After searing and canning, they tenderize nicely without acquiring the occasionally gritty feel associated with canned ground beef.

Canned stockPhoto byRichelleg

Citations:

Prepper, M. (2024, June 11). Pantry Essentials: Canned Goods. The Modern Prepper. https://themodernproper.com/pantry-essentials-canned-goods

Naillon, B. (2024, February 13). 7 Must-Have Canned Foods And 7 To Avoid In Your Pantry. Chowhound. https://www.chowhound.com/1515561/must-have-canned-foods-vs-pantry-no-gos/