Oct 25, 2008

Canning Hamburger

I found a really easy way to can hamburger and I thought I would share it with you. I found it rather inexpensive to do and it tastes great! I love the convenience of having cooked hamburger. Especially on nights that seem crazy, and believe me it seems to be happening more often than not.

You will want to take your hamburger (I usually do about 10 pounds at a time.) and season it with whatever spices you like. Mix this right into the raw meat.

  • Hamburger: (that I would like to add to a casserole or something) I would add dehydrated onions, a bit of garlic powder, salt and pepper.
  • Taco meat: I would add taco seasoning



You will want to take mason jars that are clean and sterilized. Running them through the dishwasher is a great way to clean them. I let them cool a bit so that I can handle them without getting burnt. I prefer to use pints over quarts myself. 1 Pint = 1 Pound, 1 Quart = 2 Pounds of raw hamburger. My daughter Katelynn is helping me can meat in these pictures. She loves helping me. She is filling up the jars with the raw hamburger. Trying her hardest not to get the rims of the jars dirty.
Once we have the jar full of hamburger. We use a non metallic spatula to get out all the air bubbles. This is a very important step especially when canning meats because we don't want pockets of air trapped in our jars.


Once we have the jars full of seasoned hamburger it is very important to make sure that your rims of the jars are really clean. I clean mine off with a clean dish rag dipped in vinegar. This helps to loosen up any oils from the hamburger that may have gotten onto the jars. Simmer your lids to ensure a good seal. Remember not to boil your seals. They need to be simmered or else they can split. Add your rings and tighten rather loosely. You don't want your rings to be so tight that a seal is unable to form. It just needs to be finger tight.


You will need to have pressure canner to can all meats. A pressure cooker is not a water bath. You will need to process these at 15 pounds of pressure for 75 min. for pints and 90 min. for quarts. Please let me know if you try this and what you think.

Remember you are not limited to just canning hamburger. You can do this with sausage, ground turkey, chicken, ham. Experiment a little. You will realize its is alot easier than you ever imagined.

7 comments:

NEILANDSHALON said...

AWESOME BLOG!!! NOW I JUST NEED SOME SERIOUS MOTIVATION!! YOU ARE AMAZING!! THANK YOU!!

Unknown said...

what I really need to know is if I can make my spaghetti sauce with the hamburger and then can it?

Steven said...

I just tried canning italian sausage using the directions to cook first and it came out really dark looking. Thanks for the recipe and instructions to do it raw.

Nichol said...

Janet, Yess you can make spagetti Sauce with meat in it. Just remember that you process it for the meat not the sauce. 75 min. pints 90 min quarts.

Anonymous said...

Doesn't hamburger need to be cooked before putting it in the jars? What's the difference?

Anonymous said...

How much head space are you leaving on the jars? It looks like almost an inch. ?
And how do you get the air out with a spatula? I'm always paranoid I'm not getting the air bubbles out. Do you just run it around the edge or mash it down or what?

Nichol said...

You can cook your hamberger first but I do not like the texture. I can my hamburger Raw and it cooks it for me.

I leave about 1 inch head space. and I don't run a spatual down it but I dont worry to much about the air bubbles. The preasure cooker will take care of that. I am using the spatual to push the meat into the jar.