I got my hands on a box of chicken intended for restaurant use and decided to pressure process it in quart jars.
The box contained 40 pounds of frozen, deboned chicken thighs. We cooked three meals out of the box, and it is Good eats! Then we packaged 21 quart jars of packed thigh meat, and began processing them.
The packed jars are refrigerated to await processing:
We about froze loading these, because overnight was not enough thawing time in the refrigerator!
The jars are prepared by cleaning the seal surfaces:
As with all pressure canning, the lid must be lightly closed, to allow air to escape, but tight enough to keep the product and liquid inside. Once the jars are removed from the cooled pressure cooker, the lids should be fully tightened to cool to room temperature. But I get ahead of myself....
I like to add a single chicken bullion cube to each jar, instead of salt. Just my preference, it can be done with nothing, and still make great Canned chicken!
I like to use my inductive cook top for canning:
It allows me to set a digital temperature control, on three jars at a time; in my 8 quart pressure cooker. This allows me to run at what would be 15 psi temperature, governed by the weight to 10 psi. The pot is brought to full steam pressure, and when it's regulated, I set a process timer based on jar size. For a quart of chicken my book calls out 90 minutes, so I set it for 95 minutes.
Post pressure and cooling:
Here is a batch on a cooling towel, after the rings were tightened; before the seal occurs. Three quarts of chicken to go into preppers storage, once cooled.
15 jars are on the shelf already, at the cost of about $0.50 each. Nice shelf stable food, done while I was doing other things; are done, and I hope to finish in the next day or so.
My dog is not happy...no pressure cooked bones:
But petting won out, LOL!
Now, for a little science. I noticed that as the jars cooled, the juice was boiling in jars I could hold in my hand. I measured the temperature inside with an optical temperature meter, and found it boiled at 110 degrees F.
Looking on engineering sites:
https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/water-evacuation-pressure-temperature-d_1686.html
I found in this article, that to boil at that temperature; the inside vacuum would need to be about 27.5 inches of Mercury! So using this data, we can look at the inside vacuum level, by measuring the boiling temperature. Since a perfect vacuum is just under 30 in of Mercury, 27.5 in of Mercury is pretty impressive!
