I’ve talked here many times about canning and preserving, and while I’m going to try hard not to repeat myself, I will doubtless re-visit this subject because it’s such a huge part of our mountain life.

This week my sister’s well-stocked freezer went out. (We’ll pass moment of sadness, and then I’ll hold your place while you go, run check if yours is still running.) Unfortunately, she didn’t discover the outage until the meat was well-thawed, although still quite cold and deemed un-spoiled. Enter her faithful sister – that’s me – to help get it cooked before it would spoil.

And of course this process got me to thinking about preserving meat in yesteryear. The deep freeze is one of those modern conveniences that I praise The Lord for! How nice it is to have all kinds of foods preserved, meats of many cuts and varieties ready for the evening’s meal in a matter of minutes if you use the microwave and in half a day without it.

But it was not always like that. In fact, it wasn’t until 1940 that freezers large enough for more than ice cubes were introduced, and many families on the Cumberland Plateau would not enjoy the luxury for another decade.

And with all modern conveniences, they don’t last forever and seem to fail at the most inconvenient time. What to do with pounds and pounds of thawed meat?

Well, we here talked a couple of years ago about canning sausage, unfortunately there was no sausage in the haul. The Prairie Homestead gives great instructions on how to safely can chicken and I’m following the recipe closely. Now I always like to keep canned chicken in the pantry – it’s so quick to mix with noodles and Alfredo sauce for those last minute meals and it’s a great way to stock up on meat without taking up valuable freezer space, however, I never knew of mountain folks canning chickens. I guess they were one of those things you could just run out and get fresh anytime you wanted to cook one. Come to think of it, that might be even more convenient, except for the plucking part.

Anyway, an old woman once told me that anything you could buy in the store you could can yourself. I have found it to be true. It’s kind of amazing the things we never tried, but I guess that speaks to our food origins and traditions – a subject for another day.

The recipe says to pressure either cooked or raw packed chicken for 75 minutes (in pint jars) at 10 pounds of pressure – I’ll add a picture of my completed jars when they come out.