While I think jerky and smoking is the tastiest way to preserve meat, this is another method someone told me about.
Potted meat or meat potting began as a way to preserve meat before the age of refrigeration. Meat potting is preserving meat in its own grease in a large crock pot.
Meat Potting: An Almost Forgotten Skill Worth Rediscovering
When people slaughtered their own animals, the amount of meat produced was usually much more than could be eaten before the meat began to rot. People evolved other methods for saving this extra meat for later too, such as dry curing and smoking. The potting meat was another means of storing food, and that old tradition lives on today in several parts of the United States.
Early potted meat usually involved the meat of one animal only, most commonly pork. Meat might be ground, or not, and then cooked. The most common method was to use chunks of meat well cooked.
The fat from these chunks of meat was saved and poured onto and around the meat, usually in large jars or in a large crock pot and the fat would help keep the meat from decomposition. Some people added spices to the meat or made sausages from it, so the meat preserved this way had more flavor. As much meat as possible was pressed into the jars so that they formed a compressed, relatively soft end product. This is how we did it. I remember when early in the morning dad killed a pig and started cutting it up.
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He gave the pieces to the mom who had the wood stove in the kitchen hot and ready to cook. She started frying the pork and prepared the 10-gallon crock pot. This pot was about 18 inches in diameter and 24 inches deep. Mother washed it and got it just as clean as she could get it. As the pork fried, it gave off lots of grease. She took some of this very hot grease and poured it into the bottom of the crock, sealing and sterilizing the bottom. Then she put the meat she had just finished cooking down onto this grease.
As she continued to cook throughout the day she added the well-fried meat and covered it with the hot fat that came from the cooking process. By the evening the pig was all fried-up and in the pot, covered over with a nice layer of lard that had hardened. As the days passed by, we dug down into the lard to where the meat was, pulled out what we needed, and put it in the frying pan. We cooked it a second time to kill any bacteria that could have possibly gotten into it. Doing this not only re-sterilized the meat for eating but melted off all the excess fat. The meat was taken out of the pan and the fat was poured back into the pot to seal up the hole we had just made getting the meat out.
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Frequently Asked Questions:
1. How long can pork be preserved in this way?
In the Summertime, we could expect it to last about six weeks. Of course in the Winter it would last much longer. When it went bad there was no question about it, as it really started to stink. (In my research for this subject, I talked with many old timers who never had any meat go bad through many years of potting.)
2. How much did you have to cook it to be sure it was cooked enough?
We cooked it until all the red was gone, then cooked it some more.If there was even one piece put in the barrel partially cooked it could have easily destroyed the meat in the whole barrel. The custodian of the FAQs for rec.food.preserving suggests the meat be cooked to 240 degrees F and the fat that is poured in after it is even hotter.)
3. What other meats can be preserved in this way?
Really, you can preserve any type of meat. But if a low-fat type of meat is potted, there must be an adequate supply of extra fat to cover the meat as it is cooked and placed in the pot. (Several old timers talked about potting beef. But mostly it was used for pork as it furnished its own fat.)
4. Could meat be salt cured and then potted?
Yes, and this was done by some families. It is hard to say how long this extended the shelf life of the meat in the pot.
5. What can I do to enhance my chances of potting safely?
Ensure your crock pot is clean and sanitized before you start. Be sure the grease you pour into the crock is always nice and hot as well as the meat.Keep everything as clean as possible. Don’t use the came cooking utensil to take the meat out of the pan as you used to turn or handle the raw meat. Leave the utensil you use to move the meat from the pan into the pot in the frying pan where it can stay hot and therefore sterilized. Do not touch the cooked meat with anything except the cooking utensil you transfer the meat from the pan to the pot with. When putting meat into the crock, don’t touch the sides of the crockpot and don’t touch the meat. Cover the crock with a lid when not putting meat or fat into it. Remember, your success depends entirely on ensuring that not one cell of bacteria is permitted to remain alive in the pot. And on using the meat, schedule things out so you plan on using the last of the meat within 6 weeks. (This was not a problem for the early folks as they often had 10 or more children.)
6. Should I give this a try to gain experience in this type of meat preserving?
Potting is no longer done for good reason. It’s just not an approved way of preserving meat, considering our present technology. This information is given here for three reasons:
a. Save the skill from being lost in a rapidly changing world.
(There are fewer old timers every day.)
b. Help people realize it is an option (in very hard times).
c. Preserve our heritage.
Should you want to give it a try, go ahead. If you follow these instructions you will probably have good luck. Remember when you re-heat your meat, cook it well a second time to kill any bacteria that might have gotten into it.
And if it starts to smell bad, don’t mess around with it, but throw it away. A last comment: The term ‘scraping the bottom of the barrel’ came from potting meat. By the time the old timers got to the bottom of the pot, the quality of the meat was often very questionable. And hence the term means even today ‘using something rather undesirable because it is all there is.
FINAL WORD
Saving our forefathers ways starts with people like you and me actually relearning these skills and putting them to use to live better lives through good times and bad. Our answers on these lost skills come straight from the source, from old forgotten classic books written by past generations, and from first-hand witness accounts from the past few hundred years. In short, our forefathers lived more simply than most people today are willing to live and that is why they survived with no grocery store, no electricity, and no running water. Just like our forefathers, The Lost Ways Book teaches you how to preserve your food just like the old timers used to do and many other things that were lost through the years. It comes as a hardtop book, a step-by-step guide accompanied by pictures.
The Most Comprehensive Book Available
Our grandfathers had more knowledge than any of us today and thrived even when modern conveniences were not available. They were able to produce and store their food for long periods of time. All the knowledge our grandfathers had, in one place.Here’s just a glimpse of what you’ll find in the book:
The Lost Ways is a far-reaching book with chapters ranging from simple things like making tasty bark-bread-like people did when there was no food to building a traditional backyard smokehouse… and much, much, much more!
Discover how to survive: Most complete survival tactics, tips, skills and ideas like how to make pemmican, snowshoes, knives, soap, beer, smokehouses, bullets, survival bread, water wheels, herbal poultices, Indian roundhouses, root cellars, primitive navigation, and much more at The Lost Ways
Here’s just a glimpse of what you’ll find in The Lost Ways:
From Ruff Simons, an old west history expert, and former deputy, you’ll learn the techniques and methods used by the wise sheriffs from the frontiers to defend an entire village despite being outnumbered and outgunned by gangs of robbers and bandits, and how you can use their wisdom to defend your home against looters when you’ll be surrounded.
Native American ERIK BAINBRIDGE – who took part in the reconstruction of the native village of Kule Loklo in California, will show you how Native Americans build the subterranean roundhouse, an underground house that today will serve you as a storm shelter, a perfectly camouflaged hideout, or a bunker. It can easily shelter three to four families, so how will you feel if, when all hell breaks loose, you’ll be able to call all your loved ones and offer them guidance and shelter? Besides that, the subterranean roundhouse makes an awesome root cellar where you can keep all your food and water reserves year-round.
From Shannon Azares you’ll learn how sailors from the XVII century preserved water in their ships for months on end, even years and how you can use this method to preserve clean water for your family cost-free.
Mike Searson – who is a Firearm and Old West history expert – will show you what to do when there is no more ammo to be had, how people who wandered the West managed to hunt eight deer with six bullets, and why their supply of ammo never ran out. Remember the panic buying in the first half of 2013? That was nothing compared to what’s going to precede the collapse.
From Susan Morrow, an ex-science teacher and chemist, you’ll master “The Art of Poultice.” She says, “If you really explore the ingredients from which our forefathers made poultices, you’ll be totally surprised by the similarities with modern medicines.” Well…how would you feel in a crisis to be the only one from the group knowing about this lost skill? When there are no more antibiotics, people will turn to you to save their ill children’s lives.
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Really, this is all just a peek.
The Lost Ways is a far-reaching book with chapters ranging from simple things like making tasty bark-bread-like people did when there was no food to building a traditional backyard smokehouse… and much, much, much more!
And believe it or not, this is not all…
Table Of Contents:
The Most Important Thing
Making Your Own Beverages: Beer to Stronger Stuff
Ginger Beer: Making Soda the Old Fashioned Way
How North American Indians and Early Pioneers Made Pemmican
Spycraft: Military Correspondence During The 1700’s to 1900’s
Wild West Guns for SHTF and a Guide to Rolling Your Own Ammo
How Our Forefathers Built Their Sawmills, Grain Mills, and Stamping Mills
How Our Ancestors Made Herbal Poultice to Heal Their Wounds
What Our Ancestors Were Foraging For? or How to Wildcraft Your Table
How Our Ancestors Navigated Without Using a GPS System
How Our Forefathers Made Knives
How Our Forefathers Made Snowshoes for Survival
How North California Native Americans Built Their Semi-subterranean Roundhouses
Our Ancestors’Guide to Root Cellars
Good Old Fashioned Cooking on an Open Flame
Learning from Our Ancestors How to Preserve Water
Learning from Our Ancestors How to Take Care of Our Hygiene When There Isn’t Anything to Buy
How and Why I Prefer to Make Soap with Modern Ingredients
Temporarily Installing a Wood-Burning Stove during Emergencies
Making Traditional and Survival Bark Bread…….
Trapping in Winter for Beaver and Muskrat Just like Our Forefathers Did
How to Make a Smokehouse and Smoke Fish
Survival Lessons From The Donner Party
