Canned meat

This topic pops up from time to time, but I wanted to draw attention to a canned meat option available to those with a Walmart nearby, or that shop online for food.

The line of Keystone canned meats carried by Walmart is a quality product. There are 4 varieties that I know of...beef, pork, turkey, and chicken. Each can contains 28 ounces (9 servings they say) of cooked meat with a little salt. That's all. Each has a shelf life of about 4 years.

https://www.walmart.com/search/?query=keyston%20canned%20meat

Because we have celiac disease in our house, prepping is more of a challenge, as all grain-based or cross contaminated foods are not an option. This effectively rules out Wise or Mountain House types of long storage foods.

This canned meat along with water, cooking oil, rice, beans, tomato sauce, etc forms the core of our shelf stable emergency food supply.

Maybe two years back - in what turned out to be a very successful effort to lose weight - we changed our eating habit to include MUCH less carbs (bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, ...) and more eggs, meats, fruits, and vegetables.

Now we have turkey or lite ham SPAM just about every morning for breakfast - diced & fried with scrambled eggs, with diced onions & peppers. I know it is processed, but it is quite tasty and lasts a long long time on the shelf.

We also like canned ham - usually the smaller or mid-size cans, and the canned chicken is great in salads.

We don't so much have a stash of emergency food as much as have a fair amount of shelf-friendly food in our kitchen, and quite a bit frozen food in the freezer (clearly a concern if power goes out in summer). In our retirement home we have a whole house backup generator running on natural gas, so we should be good to go for a pretty long while.

Water comes from a well, and with the generator should be no issue.

The only think I can imagine that would cause a problem is a major earthquake, and those are just not common in the north mid west U.S. If there was a forest fire, then in the short term we're hitting the road with major credit cards, and not likely to be hauling much food.

A (rather boring tasting) option would be NRG-5 ZERO Emergency Food Rations for long term, buy and forget option, for people with celiac disease.

Thanks Tjin. I'm going to order some and ask my wife to try it.

Good job KenK!

Byrd.. have you looked into self pressure canning in glass Mason/Ball jars with an All American Pressure canner?...initial expense but they have a good reputation for longevity...

I have a dehydrator, but I haven't tried to can meat myself. I have had beef pressure canned by others and it is surprisingly good and keeps a long time. I have seen the large American-made pressure cookers. They are so well machined that they require no seals or gaskets. As you say though, they are pricey...

Jackie Clay is both entertaining and incredibly knowledgeable, I would recommend anyone who is interested in canning -- especially canning meat -- to check out her writings at https://www.backwoodshome.com/canning-101/. No affiliation.