Canning roast beef in a pressure canner is an easy, inexpensive way to have several ready-to-eat meals on your shelves. Canning meat also saves freezer space, and you do not have to worry about a power outage and meat spoiling. Also during the pressure canning process, the meat is pressure cooked in the jars and turns out very tender and full of flavor!
There are several different ways you can roast beef. The first two options are the raw pack method or the hot pack method. The raw pack is just putting the raw meat into the jars and not adding any liquid. The meat makes its own juices. You can also hot pack, which requires searing the beef on the outside and then adding hot liquid to a jar, such as hot broth or hot water, or even tomato juice.
Raw packing is the easiest and quickest, but by searing the beef you seal in the flavor and end up with a better product than from raw packing.
You can pressure can just jars of meat to have canned meat ready to eat and will just need to add other ingredients to make into a meal or you can pressure can the beef with other ingredients added to the jar.
For my latest canning experience, I canned 5 quarts of seared beef roast with potatoes and carrots, 2 quarts of beef with pepperoncini’s making it a Mississippi Pot Roast type meal, and 1 jar of seared beef with a pint jar of home-canned mushrooms. I added beef broth to each jar.
Steps to Canning Roast Beef – Several Ways
Raw Pack with Beef Only
- Cut up the roast beef into smaller chunks and remove as much fat as possible
- Pack raw meat chunks into the jars (pint or quarts)
- Wipe the rims
- Add lids
- Place jars in the canner
- Process in a pressure canner for 75 minutes (pint jars) or 90 minutes (quart jars)
Hot Pack with Beef Only
- Cut up the roast beef into smaller chunks and remove as much excess fat as possible
- Sear the meat pieces in a pan with oil or other fat added, option to add seasonings, such as black pepper, salt, or steak seasoning
- Add the hot meat to the jars
- Add boiling liquid to 1-inch headspace
- Wipe the rims
- Add lids
- Process in pressure canner for 75 minutes (pints) or 90 minutes (quarts)
Pot Roast, Mississippi Pot Roast, or Beef and Mushrooms
- Cut up the roast beef into smaller chunks and remove as much fat as possible
- Sear the meat and place into jars about 1/3 of the jar, or raw pack the meat
- For Pot Roast: Add cut up potatoes and carrots, option to add celery or onions and seasonings
- For Mississippi Pot Roast: Add pepperoncini’s, option to add au jus and ranch dry mix
- For Beef and Mushrooms: Add mushrooms, either fresh or home-canned
- Add boiling liquid to 1-inch headspace
- Wipe the rims
- Add lids
- Process in pressure canner for 75 minutes (pints) or 90 minutes (quarts)
Detailed Steps to Canning Beef
Cut up the roast beef into smaller pieces and remove as much excess fat as possible.
I have actually been saving beef fat and putting it in the freezer to make beef tallow in the future. Tallow is similar to lard, which comes from pork. I have been saving pork fat also and plan to render that into lard. I will be posting all of these experiences in the future.
Cut up the roast into smaller pieces. The roast can be raw packed into the jars without liquid, but I chose to hot pack and sear the meat over medium-high heat. I do believe it is the best way as it adds better flavor and quality. I also added seasonings, salt, pepper and steak seasoning.
Add beef to the jars and any meat drippings, then remaining ingredients. For pot roast, add cut up potatoes and carrots. Optional to add, is celery, onions and 1 tsp canning salt.
Add boiling liquid to the jars, I added beef broth. Leave one-inch headspace. Remove the air bubbles, wipe the rims with a damp paper towel and add the lids.
For Mississippi Pot Roast, add pepperoncini’s to the jar. I also added a teaspoon of Au Jus gravy mix and dry ranch dressing mix to each jar.
For the second four quarts that I canned, I had one pot roast, two Mississippi Pot Roast and for the fourth jar, I had seared beef and mushrooms. I added beef broth to each jar, removed the air bubbles, wiped the rims of jars, and added the lids.
Place the canning jars into the pressure canner and process for 90 minutes (quarts). Process pints for 75 minutes.
When the processing is complete and the canner has had time to depressurize, remove the hot jars with a jar lifter and place the jars on a dish towel on the counter and do not disturb for 24 hours.
This video shows how hot the contents are after canning and how the contents continue to cook in the jar after the jars are removed from the pressure canner.
Delicious Results
Here are some pictures of the contents of one of the jars of pot roast, ready to eat in the bowl. It was very delicious and the meat was so tender it fell apart.
The picture below shows how tender the meat was.
These canned meals are also shelf stable and good for long-term storage. I wanted to show how a meal of pot roast looks after a year on the shelf. Below is a photo of pot roast from a jar I canned one year ago. It was still high quality, delicious and tender as the newly canned jar.
Home food preservation is such a great way to save on the grocery store and have shelf stable meals and other food ready to eat in your pantry. I spent $22 dollars on about 6 1/2 pounds of meat and made 8 quarts of ready to eat meals. Other minor costs would be for the potatoes, carrots, pepperoncini’s and beef broth. Each jar equals about 3 to 4 meals.
The above general method can be used to can a variety of meats including wild game, beef stew, ground meat, pork shoulder and chicken. Canning beef stew is very similar, basically just smaller pieces of meat and vegetables.
For more of my canning recipes and other favorite great recipes, plus posts about other homestead-type activities, such as gardening and raising chickens, go to my website at www.HawkPointHomestead.com. For updates, please follow my Facebook page at Hawk Point Hobby Homestead.
