Canning Bone Broth

Working on reorganizing my deep freezer has been kind of a process during the past couple days, because I was given over 20lbs. of beef bones this week. My Tuesday through Thursday involved making two large batches of bone broth and canning it!

Just add a few carrots (no peeling required!), some celery (leaves and all), onion chunks (only remove the very outer thin peeling), and a splash of apple cider vinegar and cover with water. Let simmer for 24 hours (or a little more), strain through a sieve, add salt and pepper to taste, and cool enough to skim off the fat. Unless you want a 1/2 inch or more of fat in all of your jars. I LOVE meat fat, but not in my broth. I'm not super picky on removing all of it though.

These bones had quite a bit of meat on them still, and I was able to salvage some nice chunks during the straining process. I know some of the flavor will have been cooked out into the broth, but the meat is still good enough to use in something like soup. I saved about 5 cups worth of meat scraps and plan to make borscht on Monday. I had a quart of chopped beets from our garden that I saved in the freezer specifically for a batch of borscht. You can find my delicious Russian beet soup recipe in another blog post here. 

I filled my pressure canner a record-full with my last batch. 19 pints! I purposely used a couple of my narrowest pint jars so I could get all of it in. I didn't want to have to put some in my refrigerator and have to come up with a way to use it later this week. Check it out! 10 on the bottom - 9 on top.

 (Note: a quick check just now revealed that apparently the manufacturer says it can hold 19 pints, so this isn't as great a feat as I thought. I know I couldn't have have fit 10 on the bottom if I used all Ball jars though. I tried.)

This was also the first time I got to try canning on my new (vintage) gas stove! I loved it. I actually had room for my giant canner, plus I didn't have to worry at how well the burner would hold that much weight. I definitely prefer canning on a gas stove!

By the way, if you're looking at investing in a pressure canner, I can not recommend more highly the All-American brand. It's not only heavy duty with handy wing-nut closure, but it has this awesome gauge that tells you how you're doing at maintaining proper pressure. No more having to listen so intently to the jiggle of the weight!

How is this view so satisfying?