We did that to show you that home canning does have its place in long term food storage even though I would not recommend keeping your food for that long.
Today I will show you one of my favorite recipes for using canned chicken as well as a tip for making EASY chicken and dumplings that I learned from my mother.
Flour tortillas are an easy way to make the dumpling portion of chicken and dumplings.
Ingredients:
- Chicken
- Either you can boil a whole chicken and pick the meat off, or you can use chicken you canned at any amount you desire
- Chicken Stock
- Flour Tortilla Shells
- Cream of Chicken Soup
- Salt and Pepper
- Cheese (if desired)
Equipment:
- Stock pot
- Ladle
Procedure:
1.Fill pot 2/3 full of Chicken stock and bring to a boil
1.If you using chicken you have picked from a whole chicken use the water you cooked it in, otherwise use the water from your canned chicken. Add additional water to fill pot to desired level.
2.Add chicken
3.Add soup
4.Rip (or cut depending on your levels of neatness) several flour tortillas into pieces approximately the size of a business card.
5.Drop tortilla pieces into the boiling water until the surface is covered with tortillas. Let cook 20 seconds or so before pushing them under the water with your ladle.
6.Repeat step 5 until you reach your preferred “dumplings” to chicken ratio.
1.Remember that tortillas will swell as they cook.
7.Add seasonings if desired
8.I like to add cheese to the mix, as it cooks, but you can throw some on the top of each bowl or leave it out entirely.
Alternatives:
Sometimes I use cold stock to make dumplings by mixing in All Purpose flour and stock until I get a dough and then dump spoonfuls of the dough into the coiling water.
I also make a lot of chicken and rice by cooking the rice in the stock instead of adding dumplings.
At my house I make this a lot and then eat it at work. A big pot lasts me a week.
Personally I don’t want to eat any canned food that has sat in a storage bin for 15 years BUT….
If I had nothing else to eat and the can is in good shape, I may try it.
My belief is the contents should be safe to eat, although the taste, texture and nutritional value of the food can diminish over time.
However, I had some old chicken and wanted to do a 2 Year Canning Update and actually try it.
USDA Says:
I know that’s the stance of the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service when dealing with COMMERCIALLY canned items even though on their FAQ they say…
Store canned foods and other shelf stable products in a cool, dry place. Never put them above the stove, under the sink, in a damp garage or basement, or any place exposed to high or low temperature extremes. Store high acid foods such as tomatoes and other fruit up to 18 months; low acid foods such as meat and vegetables, 2 to 5 years.
Canned meat and poultry will keep at best quality 2 to 5 years if the can remains in good condition and has been stored in a cool, clean, dry place.
Beware the Enemies of Food Storage
From other posts I have said that Heat, Light, Air, and Moisture are the enemies of food storage. I have kept this meat upstairs in our air conditioned living space, in our storage room and away from light. The can is not bulged to indicate botulism growth (I am scared of botulism to the extent my best friend is scared of clowns)…
I have several of these cans of chicken that I pressure canned at the same time 2 years ago. The dates were written on the can and I promptly forgot about them. My intent is to open a can or two every year until I run out that way I can unscientifically experiment with the taste and texture changes over time.
When I opened the cans, I checked to make sure the lid was not “bulged” and there was no external damage to the jar. I then made sure the chicken smelled normal, and looked normal. This is a little subjective, but I err on the side of caution and listen to any nagging doubts. I follow a simple concept with home canned food.
“IF IN DOUBT, THROW IT OUT”
This batched passed muster, and I kept a couple jars back to try next year and each following year until I run out of this batch. I made some pretty decent chicken and dumplings with it, which you can find as a later post.
There is a really good book called Sunshine To Dollars that has some really cool projects that give you an immediate return on you investment of time and energy.
So after reading this book and others like it, I decided to make a DIY Solar Cooker. I resisted the urge to make a huge solar oven out of a new fiberglass tub my old tenants inexplicably left in my basement. What I decided to do was to build a small wooden solar box cooker. It would have been easier and faster to build one of the many cardboard cookers that places like Build it Solar shows, but I figured that since the technology was pretty well developed this was not an experiment, and I should probably invest the energy into making a more robust and permanent cooker that I could use rather than a throwaway model for a proof of concept.
I decided on building one modeled after a cooker I saw on youtube. The user supergokuel had a really cool 2 part video, so I basically just modified his idea.
I could not find any replacement glass sheets at the local hardware store, but I did find a sheet of Optix brand clear plastic that would fit very nicely on the box I was trying to make.
The bigger your cooker the more efficient it will be, and the larger the pots you can use, so my 1×2 sheet of plastic will work well. I also bought some screws, hinges, and a 4×8 sheet of exterior grade plywood. The black paint and caulking I already had.
Basically I just cut two side pieces in a rectangle, and then cut a 45° angle down one side. I made the rectangle wide enough so that the angled end would be as long as the shorter side of the plastic. (I know this is confusing, this video helps).
The ends and bottom of the oven are cut to match the side pieces and are screwed together to make a box. The top is simply the clear plastic sheet of Optic attached to the box by hinges.
I painted the box black to absorb heat, and when I get more reflective film I plan on mirroring the inside of the box to help generate more heat. Larger box type collectors can get hot enough to bake or roast meat – upwards of 220°
This is a pretty simple project using hand tools and a power saw, but will allow you to cook many types of foods without electricity. For us disaster conscious types, the ability to bake and cook foods outdoors on something other than a grill or campfire has some serious advantages. For those that choose to reduce the use of resources – whether for ecological or self-reliant reasons, this is also a very useful project.
This is a project that I would highly recommend you duplicate of modify for your own usage.
