Canning Sausages

 

Happy Fall Y'all!  Our Kroger store Fred Meyer recently had a sale on their store brand brats.  My personal favorite are the Hot Italian Sausages.  I stocked up the last time they had this same sale and I ended up with several extra packages in my freezer taking up quite a bit of space so I decided to slice them up and can them with some peppers and onions.

 

When the pandemic first began back in 2020 one of the items I could not get at the grocery store for quite some time was 15 oz. cans of canned tomatoes.  What the store did have was the big #10 cans for a really good price of $2.97 so I did buy a few.  These are great to use when you want to do some canning so I grabbed one for this project.  I chopped up a nice big onion and three bell peppers I originally had planned to stuff, but changed my mind.

 

I did two batches of tomatoes by placing half of the tomatoes, half of the veggies in my largest mixing bowl.  I added a 3 Tbs. of minced garlic, 2 Tbs. dried basil and a teaspoon of dried oregano and mixed it all together.  My tomatoes didn't have a lot of moisture so I poured in a 12 oz. can of V-8 juice in as well.

 

In a saucepan I heated up a quart of chicken stock.  I sliced up the sausages and layered in the tomato mixture and the sausages and then topped up each pint jar with a little bit of broth leaving a 1 inch headspace in my jars.  Each package of sausage was enough to do three jars.  Three packages of sausage and a bowl of the tomato mixture filled nine pint jars which just happens to be the exact amount my pressure holds.  I then repeated the whole process all over again.

 

Six packages of sausages, the veggies and the #10 can of tomatoes plus two cans of V-8 juice was the perfect amount to fill 18 pint jars.  Each jar holds two servings which works perfectly for me.  Of course you could also do this in quart jars if you want.  It is nice to take advantage of meat sales and preserve them for future use and makes it much more affordable to maintain my Keto lifestyle.  I added some of these jars to my pantry and the rest to my long-term food storage for a lot of quick and healthy meals to enjoy in the future.

 

Other things I've canned recently include ground beef, taco meat, pot roast in seasoned beef broth and cubed chicken breast.  I'll let you know what I end up canning next.