Canning Meatballs - Not Sure I'd Bother Again

Canned meatballs after work tonight. All I did was use my favorite meatloaf recipe, which is a pound of ground meat, a couple of tablespoons or so of dried onions, a teaspoon of dried mustard. I usually put in a handful of rolled oats and an egg or two as well, but thought it would be better to leave them out for canning. I also normally top it with ketchup, but I left if off of the ones I planned to can.

As I write this, the canner is chattering away. Only managed to get three quarts done, but that's three more than we had before! There were a half-dozen left over, which made a nice dinner for us. I started with about 12 pounds of pork cushion steak (tri-tip), which I put through the grinder last night. I'm a little surprised -- usually when I pressure can things after work, I'm up until midnight, at least. But it's only 9:20, with only 20 minutes left before the canner can be turned off. Then twenty minutes for the pressure to come down, two after the weight comes off, and ten more before the jars can be taken out. So I'll be finished with this adventure before 10:30! Cool!!

I decided to pressure cook the meatballs before I packed them in the jars. Some recipes call for them to be raw-packed, but most suggest browning them first. Although I do raw-pack some things (cubed chicken breasts or thighs, cubed pork, cubed ham), I'm a little uncomfortable with the idea of raw packing meatballs. So I layered them in the pressure cookers (luckily I have several, with baskets, trays, etc. to fit in each), brought them up to pressure, and cooked them for about 6 minutes. Then hot-packed them into quart jars, wiped the rims, put the on the lids & rings, and put them into the canner. I sure hope all three jars seal -- I've had such an awful time getting things I've pressure canned to seal lately. Except for the corned beef. I canned some over the weekend, and all 7 jars sealed! Hurray! Maybe that's because it must be hot-packed -- I'm not sure. But in any case, I'm really glad they all sealed!!

It's a good thing we had the leftover ones for dinner -- the texture was a little coarse, so I realized that it would be a good idea to run the meat through the grinder again. I have another batch to can tomorrow night, so I'll go ahead & re-grind it tonight. Although, this might not be necessary -- I know that canning changes the texture of ground meat. For example, I canned some sloppy joe filling awhile back. Before it was canned, it had the texture of regular old ground beef (even though it was made with pork -- we're not big beef eaters). However, the canning process seemed to make it very fine. I presume meatballs would be the same way. Still, I'd rather take the time to prep it as well as possible.

Update: Wahoo -- all three jars sealed! I'm convinced that hot-packing made the difference. I also re-ground the meat, and I can tell just by looking at it that it was a good thing to do.

Update #2: We sampled the meatballs the next day, and decided we don't need to add any more to our food storage. Raw-packed canned meat acquires a flavor for which we don't care, and I'd hoped to avoid that by pre-cooking the meatballs. No such luck. So I think I'll stick to canning cured meats (ham, corned beef), because their flavor doesn't seem to change after canning.