As winter approaches, many people start making pickles, winter vegetables, compotes, canned meat and more.
If you are reading this article on an empty stomach, then eat something quickly, because reading it will quickly make you hungry.
How to prepare delicious canned meat for the winter
There are several ways to can meat, but here we will consider the most famous and well-known in all ways, which is sterilization. The sterilization process takes a long time to boil food in jars, which are placed in water. This canning process happens by tightly closing the jars to prevent air from entering.
For starters - you're probably wondering if you need to process the meat in advance before canning. If you follow the sterilization method correctly, pre-treatment of the meat is not necessary. Also, if you use chilled meat, where there are no ongoing processes of reproduction of organisms, or in other words - if you want to can meat that has a long shelf life, you must prepare the following things:
Good and quality fresh or chilled meat, clean jars whose caps are stable, as well as time and patience. It is true that nowadays people do not have enough free time or do not have any desire to make winter food. Generally in summer, people do not make canned meat.
As Christmas approaches, people who raise pigs slaughter them, because the temperatures are low, which will prevent the formation of bacteria. When the weather is warm and good hygiene is not observed when processing meat, this can lead to a risk of botulism disease after the meat has been eaten. The bacteria that cause this disease are called butoline bacteria and are found in the pig's digestive system and intestines. If you are not completely sure that there are no such spores in your canned meat, you should leave it at a temperature between 28 and 30°C for 2-3 days to allow the spores to settle and turn back into bacteria. Then boil again at high temperatures for a longer time, so that the bacteria will disappear completely.
If there is a jar, which lid seems to have been with inflated, you should not consume the meat in it, but throw it away. If you wish, you can process the meat through heat treatment - boiling, roasting or frying.
Myths about canned meat
1. There are many preservatives in canned meat - This is by no means true. The canning process itself excludes the use of additional preservatives. The jars go through the required high temperature and nothing but beef, pork or lamb, salt and spices you want to use are put in the meat jars.
2. The nutritional value of canned meat is reduced - When we cook meat and especially when we fry it, we can kill all the nutrients in meat. There is no such danger when canning meat. All fiber and protein are preserved in the meat during canning. However, there is a small loss of some vitamins;
3. Canned meat is processed food - Every single food is processed after we cook it. Canned meat is just as processed as the regular food we cook every day;
4. There is a lot of salt in canned meat - It is not a lie that all canned foods have large amounts of salt. Yes, but salt is not needed for the canning process. Salt is added only for flavor.
