Save The Meat in Your Freezer: Fail-safe Canning in a Grid Down

For most of human history, daily life has been about surviving to live another day. And over the course of millennia humans got pretty good at it, mastering countless skills in the process.

These skills weren’t “survival skills” as we regard them today, but rather what our ancestors called “daily life”.

Like preserving meat with salt alone, many of these ‘life skills’ were common knowledge up until just a few generations ago. In the past century, a significant amount of knowledge has been lost. Of course, much has been gained, too. Today, we require an entirely new set of skills to get by – but much is at the expense of our ancient know-how.

I knew the way to safely can up meat without electricity existed somewhere. It’s been on my check list to find this information for years. I also knew may sects of the Amish community had always used the 3-hour water bath canning method for meat, and until recently hadn’t dug deep enough to find it.

This water bath method can quickly save thawing meat in our freezers if there is an EMP or any other long-term grid-down situation and your emergency back-ups are gone.

Marandia Wright at Survival How-To has given us such valuable information and I’m passing it forward.

11 minutes.

2:20 Equipment

7:50 Botulism

This Advance Water Bath Canning Recipe Book, shares time-tested ‘Easy Water Bath Canning Techniques that Preserve Traditions‘.

Note: Mirandia uses her 80 quart crayfish pot on a very sturdy, low camp trivet using propane similar to this one.

Mirandia’s basic outline :

• We can expect to get 17 pounds of de-boned meat into (7) wide mouth quart jars. Only use new sealing lids.

• We can get (24) quart jars in the 80 quart pot at one time (12 on the lower level and 12 on the top) separated by a rack or thick towel.

• A metal circular rack or thick towel is also needed on the bottom inside of the pot to prevent breakage of glass clanking around at full boil.

• The jars need to be covered by 2-3 inches of boiling water for 3 hours (so you need enough head space in your canner and a lid). If the level goes down with evaporation, only add boiling water back to raise the level.

• The canned meat will last for many years (15-20 she says) when stored in a cool, dark place.

The video above left me with a couple questions as I hunted for the right VERY LARGE pot, but Mirandia just followed up with a second video (below) containing a treasure trove of solid answers to the inevitable questions. She discusses EVERYTHING we’ll need to know to can meat this way so it won’t be a scary venture any longer.

35 minutes.

7:25 Understanding and Neutralizing Botulism

19:44 Answering All Your Questions About Water Bathing Low Acid Foods

And if you still need to choose on this some more, this video verifies water bath canning meat is safe and answers even more questions you might have from but from a different perspective.

Most Americans are freaked out by water bath canning because the USDA has made us afraid. Read the comments below the videos. They give so much perspective. Here are a few:

“My Mamaw and Papaw canned 500 jars each year meat, fruits & veggies in an old metal refrigerator inner liner over an open fire and raised 6 kids on that food and nobody ever got sick.” ~Commenter

“Water bathing was always the way I saw it done when I was a child over 50 yrs. ago, never got sick. I was always wondering why people in the US seem to have an aversion to this. I guess it’s all to get you to buy buy buy and not trust the tried and true methods of yesterday and now it seems there is an agenda to commercialize everything so that you can feel helpless and unsure about everything and anything.” ~Commentor

“I live in Romania, we’ve water-bathed since forever. You can’t find pressure canners here. I only heard about altitude difference last year, here on youtube.” ~Commenter

“My grandmother and her family, while not Amish, were from Lancaster County, Pa. She had 12 children. They had no pressure canner. She water bathed EVERYTHING!! Everyone lived to a ripe old age.“ ~Commenter

“Im in Australia and I have an old 1950s Australian Fowlers jars recipe book (our version of the ball mason jars) and in the book it also states 3 hours to waterbath low acid foods, meats, veges, stocks etc, the guy who produced the fowlers jars was originally from England and he had all the recipes tested for for food safety back then.” ~Commenter

During the process of water bath canning, jars of food are fully submerged in boiling water. They must be covered by at least one inch of water at all times—so if some of the water evaporates, you’ll need to add more boiling water, notes Tracey Brigman, EdD, MS, RDN, LD, a clinical associate professor and associate director for National Center for Home Food Preservation at the University of Georgia. After the water has boiled for the required length of time, the jars will have an airtight seal.

And finally, as is stated several times in these videos, to be sure there is absolutely no chance of botulism (which in reality is a very rare occurrence), you can bring your meat up to temp and cook it before eating (which you would normally do anyway).

“Thank you for educating people on botulism. Even the USDA says that all you have to do to destroy botulism spores is simply boil the food for 10-15 mins. Fear-mongering has truly created the biggest old wives tales in American canning communities.“ ~Commenter

“Nevertheless, God’s solid foundation stands firm, having this seal: “The Lord knows those who are his,” and, “Everyone who confesses the name of the Lord must turn away from wickedness.” ~2 Timothy 2:19

***For the Full Spike Protein Protocol to protect from transmission from the “V” and to help those who took the “V”, go here.

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