Canning Beans:

Before I start my main post, I want to tell you about a Youtube channel that has a lot of good canning info. It’s Sutton’s Daze. This month, she’s having what she calls “Canuary”. I think most of the info is in this video. There are 15 other youtubers contributing so for anyone thinking about canning or wanting to know more about canning, you might want to check it out.

I’ve been wanting to can more red beans. We love them and, I know I don’t think like everyone else . . maybe like no one else but I can spend a few hours prepping and canning and end up with 19 quarts of beans. One quart is at least enough for a meal for us, when served over rice with cornbread and a salad. Why wouldn’t I do that instead of having 6 pounds of dry beans in the pantry, 5 pounds of frozen ground beef, 3 pounds of sausage. If you were to figure how long it takes to cook one pound of dry beans six times, even using the Instant Pot, it’s much faster to can it all at once and then pop open a jar.

I much prefer to have food in jars than in the freezer so having 19 more jars of beans makes me happy.

I used a larger pot this time and still got pretty close to the top. For this batch, I used:

• 6 pounds of beans
• 5 pounds of ground beef
• 3 pounds of sausage
• 7 bell peppers
• 6 onions
• 1 package of celery
• jalapeno peppers (I used freeze dried and put the equivalent of about 3/4 to 1 pepper per jar

I use whatever seasonings we like – a bit of oregano, cumin, salt, Cajun Redhead seasoning, garlic powder.

This amount filled 19 quarts so that’s basically 19 meals ready to heat and eat.