In previous posts I wrote about finding a good sale at the small local owned community IGA on pork butt for $1.69 a pound and buying 20 pounds. This little store is about 10 minutes down the road from me and employs a full time butcher. I try to give them business and keep my dollars in my community. Now on most things they cannot compete with the large stores but they can run some good meat sales.
Facing a rainy week last week I wanted to play around with a new to me skill of canning pulled pork. Now if you do a search there are all kinds of recipes and videos on this but I have never done it before personally. There also seem to be several different ways of doing it. Cold packing raw meat, precooking and canning cooked meat. I personally opted to precook my meat. I also used my old stand by pulled pork sauce as the liquid to go into the jar. I noticed some people just use a bottled BBQ sauce and some did not use a sauce but rather just covered with broth. Make it your own. As long as it is pressure canned for 75 minutes pint or 90 minutes for quarts you should be golden. Play with it and do what your family likes.
I defrosted a couple pork butts from the freezer that had been somewhat trimmed and deboned. It probably was about 4 pounds but after cooking out the juices and fat maybe 3 and a half.
O Wise One put them in a skillet and just lightly seared them on the outside.
Then I added them to my largest crock pot and cooked on high for about 4 hours. Just until basically they were barely cooked.
Then we allowed them to cool and cut them into pieces or strips that would stand up in a pint jar.
I then added them to hot pint jars. I managed to get about 13 ounces of meat to each jar. To each jar I added some sauce.
Shredded Pork Butt Sauce
1 onion finely chopped
3/4 cup ketchup
3 Tbsp tomato paste
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp ground mustard
1 tsp cumin
3 – 4 pound pork Butt
I simply mixed this up and heated it on the stove and put some evenly in each jar over the top of the meat. Then I took my bubble tool and removed the bubbles. If necessary I topped any that needed it up with some hot chicken broth leaving a 1 inch headspace as usual. I debubbled again and wiped my lids really good. Then add lids and rings.
I pressure canned my pints for 75 minutes in the pressure canner at 12 pounds pressure ( for my altitude).
I ended up with 8 pints for about 3 pounds of meat.
Full disclosure even though I did try to remove most of the fat it is impossible to remove all of it. So in each jar once cooled any remaining fat will rise to the top of the jar and form a fat layer. I simply took a spoon and removed that layer and sent it to the big dogs as a treat on top of their food. Anything you can meat wise even some soups and such you will see this fat layer and I just try to keep it to a minimum.
Once that fat layer is removed the meat shredded beautifully and I just simply added the sauce in the jar back to the meat and heated. One pint was perfect for us for making 2 pulled pork buns. One for each of us and served with a pint of those BBQ beans I canned the other day warmed up and some oven sweet potato fries from last years sweet potatoes. It was a perfect meal for two.
At the end of the day we really liked this recipe and I will do some more of these. You just cannot beat these for convenience especially for two people. A great quick lunch or supper. Next we are going to try these on baked potatoes.
If you give this a try come back and let me know how they turn out for you and what changes if any you make.