Makin Bacon

This is my bacon canning saga. Sorry about the little bitty pictures but I haven't yet mastered the picture-on-the-phone-to-email-and-onto-the-blog sequence yet. Anyway, as you can see, the picture to the right shows frying bacon. Another way of precooking it would have been on pans in the oven but I didn't have enough pans. If you plan on refrying it to reheat, I would suggest you not fry it much....maybe just enough to render some of the fat without getting it too brown. This bacon has been cut in half to fit better in the wide mouth quart jars.

This next picture show the "jelly roll" configuration that I used to wrap the partially cooked bacon in. I just cut unbleached scrolled paper that I bought at IKEA in about 5 foot lengths and then cut THAT in half lengthwise. Place the bacon on the paper like little soldiers in a line. If you want, you can put a line of bacon horizontally as well. Be careful not to make the roll too fat or you won't be able to fit it in the jar. Though other sites suggest you fold over the paper, I found it worked fine to just start rolling.

These are the finished jars. As you can see, I processed one pint....I just ran out of bacon. And for some reason that jar didn't seal which worked out ok for me because I really wanted to test the product anyway and I have a problem opening perfectly good jars just to test it.

When I opened the pint jar, the paper roll dropped out pretty easily. Because it had been processed, it's perfectly ok to eat it cold, but the taste was much better after a few minutes in the frying pan. Yes, there is a lot of grease. In a survival situation, we'll want all the fat calories we can find!!

So, in a nutshell, here's the skinny.

You will need:

About a pound and a half of bacon per quart jar

Wide mouth quart jars (duh), fresh lids and good rings

Parchment paper or the rolled paper from IKEA

Pressure canner

A couple extra jars to catch the bacon grease

1. Cut the paper about 5 feet long and the width that will comfortably fit in your quarts. This worked to about half the width roll of the paper I used. You'll need one for each jar. I like not worrying about the paper so I think I wasted a bit. Oh well!!!

2. Wash the jars and lids. Keep the lids simmering in water to soften the rubber around the edges.

3. Cook the bacon!!! Because I chose to fry it, it took me hours to get it all done and prepared. Anyway.....after the bacon is at the desired state of "doneness," drain it a bit and don't forget to collect the grease in a jar as you'll need it later.

4. Start water heating in your canner.

5. Lay your paper out on a nice flat surface and line your bacon up. Start rolling and adding until your roll is just capable of fitting into the wide mouth jar. Stuff it in. Repeat the process until all your jars and/or bacon have been used up.

6. At this point, use a funnel to put a couple inches of bacon grease in each jar. I used a cloth lightly moistened in rubbing alcohol to cut and clean the grease from around the rims. Not enough to drip into the jars of course!!!

7. Put your lids on each jar and screw a ring on each jar.

8. Place jars in the simmering canner.

9. Process the jars for 90 minutes at 10 pounds (at sea level to 2000 feet). If you choose to process pints, you only have to process for 75 minutes.