Canned sausages like this are one of my absolute favorite home-canned convenience foods. Go into the pantry, grab a jar, heat 'em and eat 'em. A meal doesn't get any quicker than that. The other day, I found 19-ounce packages of these sausages for $2.95 each at my favorite discount grocery store.
Now, I know some folks assume discount groceries are either outdated, dented, or busted packages and cans. Sometimes, but less often than you think. How's that? As a retired truck driver's wife, let me tell you about something that goes on in the food distribution world behind the consumer scenes.
Food is generally shipped and delivered on shrink-wrapped pallets. That makes it easy to move large quantities with a forklift. However, if the pallet has been damaged in any way: maybe a small dent in one corner of the pallet or one box of cereal got punctured, then the entire pallet is rejected. Often, the entire pallets-worth (even the undamaged stuff) gets thrown into a dumpster. Sometimes, it's donated to food banks or auctioned off to discount grocery stores. (This kind of waste isn't just with food. If you want to hear about the ludicrous waste that goes on in manufacturing, ask a truck driver!)
I have no idea about these packages of brats and Italian sausage, but they were intact, not expired, and had been frozen.
Canning these is super simple. They must be pressure canned, with wide-mouth jars being the easiest to work with. They can be canned whole or sliced into chunks.
We like whole ones on brat buns. For those, I like four per jar.
There are two reasons for this. One is practical. It's a good number for just two people. The second is for safety. Because I'm canning a dense (thick) item, I need plenty of space between the sausages to make sure they are all heated properly in the pressure canner.
Five packages gave me six quarts of sausage with one left over. As an afterthought, I wondered why I didn't get six packages so I could can seven quarts (a full canner load), but at the time it was more about making sure my food dollars stretched to cover everything on my shopping list. As it is, that lone sausage was cooked and diced to add to scrambled eggs.
Another option is to cut the sausages into slices or chunks before adding to the jars.
A quart jar can hold five sausages if they're cut like this. They aren't packed down, just loose to allow for heat circulation during the canning process. I can add these to spaghetti and meatballs, or serve with rice.
Raw meat requires no liquid be added to the jar.
This is because it cooks as it cans and makes its own broth. If I was canning cooked sausages (or any cooked meat), I would add liquid to each jar according to instructions for headspace.
Quart jars of meat require 90 minutes in the pressure canner at whatever pressure is recommended for your altitude. Your canner's manufacturer's directions will give step-by-step details of the process. Generally, steam is vented for ten minutes prior to letting the pressure build up. Processing time starts from whenever the correct pressure is reached.
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| Canned whole brat sausages. |
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| Canned Italian sausage chunks. |
So there we are. What about you? What's your favorite home preserved convenience food?
