What Thinkest Thou of My Food Storage? Bad or Good?

[Still_Small_Voice]

I canned\bottled some hamburger meat yesterday.  This is what I did:

Cooked the glass bottles at 225 Fahrenheit for 30 minutes in an oven.  Then I let them cool for about thirty minutes.

Cooked many hamburgers at 375 Fahrenheit for 30 minutes in an oven. 

After cooking the hamburgers I put them into the sanitized jars and poured broth in to cover the meat.

Then I cooked the hamburgers inside the glass jars inside the broth for about 45 minutes at 225 Fahrenheit in an oven.  The last twenty minutes I put the lids in to the oven sanitize them also at 225 temperature.  After doing this I put on the lids and tested them later.  The glass bottles are sealed up.

Now I fear that the meat may spoil because I did not cook them inside the bottles at higher temperatures.

I left out the sealed bottles for about sixteen hours at normal room temperatures.  What do you think?  Is the meat currently good or bad?  Will the contents last for a few months or years or will it spoil sooner than this?  

[Vort]

No microorganism will survive under those conditions. I'm no doctor nor certified microbiologist, but I'd eat your hamburgers.

[Backroads]

They're probably safer than the hamburger patties I plan to make for dinner. 😁

[Still_Small_Voice]

Thanks for the input.  After watching people canning/bottling with pressure cookers that use much higher temperatures I began to doubt the steps I used.  Lately I have been studying and reading about food preservation.  

How long would you trust food for with the bottling process for that I used in your opinion?

[Vort]

Forever. No microorganisms means no microorganisms. Ergo, no spoilage, no rot, no botulism, no going bad.

Higher temperatures mean you don't have to cook it as long. But 45 minutes at 225° F? Yeah, I'd say you're good.

[Still_Small_Voice]

 I just used the same technique and I canned another two cans of hamburger.  Only thing I changed was the cooking temperature at 230 degrees Fahrenheit and my final cooking was doing the hamburgers inside the broth in the glass jars for about 55 minutes.

[Still_Small_Voice]

Two of my four cans just unsealed themselves today.  That is a bummer to me.  I am going to seal them up and put them into the refrigerator.  Likely I will eat them within the next 30 days. 

In the future I am going to use a pressure cooker to get these bottles really heated up to about 265 degree Fahrenheit and cook them for about 90 minutes.

[Vort]

14 minutes ago, Still_Small_Voice said:

In the future I am going to use a pressure cooker to get these bottles really heated up to about 265 degree Fahrenheit and cook them for about 90 minutes.

If I were to do such a thing, I would experiment with doing so using raw hamburger patties, letting them cook in the canning jar.

[Still_Small_Voice]

Yesterday I ate one jars of beef at lunch.  No food poisoning.  My novice attempt at canning was a success.  I preserved the beef at room temperature for about one week.

[Still_Small_Voice]

I opened one of the jars of beef today in the refrigerator.  It smelled so awful that I threw it out.  The chicken broth and the beef smelled sour to me.  The last remaining jar of beef that I opened and did not smell awful but I decided to go safe.  I drained the broth, filled it halfway with water, closed the jar up and put it in the pressure cooker and cooked it for another forty minutes.  I then opened it and ate it.  Thus far I am not sick. 

In my experience canning beef with an oven only preserves it for about ten days in a cool and dry place.  In the future I will do all of my meat canning in the pressure cooker.

I have canned some white rice in the oven and that has been successful thus far.  I am hoping to make the rice last for over ten years in the jars.

[Still_Small_Voice]

I opened some turkey that I had bottled in July 2021 today and ate it.  I pressure cooked this turkey in the bottle.  It tasted fine.  The food was preserved for 85 days at around 72 degrees (room temperature).  This is success!

In my opinion the bottled meat I have done in my cellar will still be good for over nine more months.  Likely I will eat it before then.  Yesterday I bottled two more jars of hamburger meat to add to my storage.

The rice storage jars are also all still sealed up after about 70 days.

Edited October 8, 2021 by Still_Small_Voice

[JohnsonJones]

Good Job.

Never preserved meat in that way...I always turned it into jerky if I didn't put it in the freezer, so no idea or commentary on how you did it.

But it sounds like you successfully got it into food storage with your method.

[Just_A_Guy]

I hope this doesn’t sound flippant, but . . .

What’s the point of preserving commercially-purchased meat that you’re going to eat in 2-3 months anyways?  I mean, I can understand the rationale for preserving home-grown produce you want to eat out-of-season; but meat?

Or is this hamburger you raised/slaughtered/butchered yourself?

[JohnsonJones]

22 hours ago, Just_A_Guy said:

I hope this doesn’t sound flippant, but . . .

What’s the point of preserving commercially-purchased meat that you’re going to eat in 2-3 months anyways?  I mean, I can understand the rationale for preserving home-grown produce you want to eat out-of-season; but meat?

Or is this hamburger you raised/slaughtered/butchered yourself?

I can only speak on my own part.

It's one way to have food storage, one can never know what the future holds...and having meat may be something that is nice to have.

I put meat in the freezer because it's good to have a supply there, even if I don't need it so there's always something there...unless of course, we have a 2 day black out....in which case it is wasted money (normally does not happen).

I also put deer meat in the freezer and make jerky out of it.

[Traveler]

On 10/10/2021 at 2:30 PM, Just_A_Guy said:

I hope this doesn’t sound flippant, but . . .

What’s the point of preserving commercially-purchased meat that you’re going to eat in 2-3 months anyways?  I mean, I can understand the rationale for preserving home-grown produce you want to eat out-of-season; but meat?

Or is this hamburger you raised/slaughtered/butchered yourself?

I agree - I was raised in a city, Provo, Utah.  We raised rabbits and chickens for much of our meet that was supplemented with hunted venison.   We did all the butchering ourselves.  One side effect showed up while I was in the military where swearing was quite common.  I had a discussion with a sergeant about using more accurate words.  As an example, I suggested when you are upset with someone that is not performing - calling them a "sewer scum sucking capon" is a better use of vocabulary.  But he did not know what a capon was.  I responded that such vocabulary then has extra benefit.  First because of their ignorance  - thus they do not know what your are talking about and second - by time they look it up, it is too late for them to defend themselves.  So you get to embarrass them twice. 

 

The Traveler

[Still_Small_Voice]

10 hours ago, JohnsonJones said:

I put meat in the freezer because it's good to have a supply there, even if I don't need it so there's always something there...unless of course, we have a 2 day black out....in which case it is wasted money (normally does not happen).

I also put deer meat in the freezer and make jerky out of it.

And that is the point.  To preserve meat and other food that does not need freezing or refrigeration.  Having some food that needs no refrigeration is wise.

[NeuroTypical]

10 hours ago, Still_Small_Voice said:

Having some food that needs no refrigeration is wise.

Abso-positively.  I'm thinking about how much things have changed over the decades, but a couple things have not changed.   Besides the Gospel of Jesus Christ, we also have the above statement.

Yeah, it used to be required by everyone to sustain human life through the winter.  But now, this or that given geographic area is only one hurricane/tornado/earthquake/blizzard/etc away from large areas of no power and no services for a week or more.   And individual people and families can be a lost paycheck or two away from very hard times.  Every year that goes by it's harder and harder to starve in the US, but it's still wise to not have to rely on govt help.  And then there's all the large-scale human-caused things like global disruptions and invading armies and whatnot.  Less likely perhaps than the first two, depending on who you ask, but as long as there's humans, there's a chance.  Plus, the large-scale nonhuman-caused things like the millennium.

[Comp]

I can meat with a pressure cooker. Someone taught me years ago that it is shelf stable for 3 years, so I rotate it using that guideline, and it works well.

[Still_Small_Voice]

On 11/1/2021 at 12:35 AM, Comp said:

I can meat with a pressure cooker. Someone taught me years ago that it is shelf stable for 3 years, so I rotate it using that guideline, and it works well.

What is the oldest canned meat you have eaten that you have personally pressure cooked?

[Comp]

On 11/27/2021 at 10:18 AM, Still_Small_Voice said:

What is the oldest canned meat you have eaten that you have personally pressure cooked?

I can't remember for sure, but probably a little over 2 years. Maybe I should experiment and keep one longer to see how far it'll go.

But I do use them in my cooking and try to go through the jars before they get too close to expiration. I've got a bunch in my closet and under my bed that do great - they smell/taste fresh when opened!

[Still_Small_Voice]

I opened some hamburger meat that was about 135 days canned in the bottle a few days ago.  This meat was cooked in the pressure cooker.  The food was also stored at cellar temperatures during that whole time.

No food poisoning.  This is also good success in my mind.  I have three more bottles of hamburger that are the same age that I will likely eat soon.

[NeuroTypical]

Good deal!  We finally used the rest of our 8-9 year old LDS wetpack cannery-made chicken/pork/ground beef.  We used it as dog food, and it was still probably just fine for humans, but we just decided to play it safe.  Dogs were in heaven.

[Still_Small_Voice]

The dogs had their day with you Neurotypical. 

When I open my bottled hamburger to eat I cook it again in the frying pan usually.  Beats frozen meat as it cooks much faster.  

We also have a lot of tuna fish in water coming up around December 2022 and in 2023 with expiration that was canned commercially.  Likely this meat would be good three to four years after the expiration date but we hope to finish it off within a few years.

[Still_Small_Voice]

I just tried some apple sauce that was one year over expiration.  It tasted as if it were going bad.  Apple sauce I believe is good for about six months after the expiration date.

[Still_Small_Voice]

The other day I opened some Deseret canned chili.  7 years six months past the expiration date.  I smelled it and it smelled okay.  I then ate the whole can without cooking it.  No food poisoning.  The can was stored in a cool and dry location in my cellar.  I would not recommend eating food that is this long past expiration date.  Probably would limit canned chili or tuna in water to less than six years if it was stored in a cool and dry place.