Chili - with meat and beans

Canned: 2022-11-08

Stored: 6 x 500mL jars + 4 x 250mL jars (+ 3 x 500mL jars in fridge + 1 x 500mL jar for dinner)

What I did:

Ingredients

• 500 g kidney beans(dried. after sorting) (about 3 cups)
• water
• 1.5 kg ground beef (I used lean. Would prefer extra lean. 3 lbs)
• 200 g onion (chopped. Measured after chopping. about 1 ½ cups)
• 150 g pepper (seeded, chopped. Sweet or hot or combo. about 1 cup / 1 large)
• 2 litres crushed tomatoes (or canned whole tomatoes. 2 US quarts / 64 oz. Undrained.)
• 1 little can(156mL) Tomato paste(5.5 fl.oz) + 1L water
• 2 tablespoon chili powder
• 1 tablespoon garlic powder
• 1 tablespoon cumin (ground)
• 1/2 tablespoon ground black pepper
• 2 tablespoons salt
• 1 tablespoons cocoa powder (regular unsweetened)
• 2 tablespoons lime juice (used bottled, but fresh is fine as it's for flavour)

Instructions

1. Sort and wash dried beans. Place in pasta pot, cover with a couple inches of water, let stand overnight (12 to 18 hours).
2. Drain, discarding soaking water.
3. Put beans in pasta pot, cover with fresh water, bring to a boil, then lower to a simmer covered for 30 minutes.
4. Meanwhile, combine ground beef, onion, and pepper in deep frying pan, and fry until beef is browned. Drain excess grease off.
5. Drain beans reserving liquid for future soups.
6. Move beans to stock pot, and add the beef mixture, the tomatoes, and all the flavourings. Stir, bring to a boil, then lower to simmer for 5 minutes to ensure all is heated through evenly.
7. Pack into heated jars: either ¼ litre or ½ litre (½ US pint or 1 US pint), leaving 1 inch headspace.
8. Debubble; adjust headspace.
9. Wipe jar rims.
10. Put lids on.
11. Processing pressure: 11 lbs dial gauge, Processing time: Process jars for 75 minutes .

Notes on this batch:

• Reference recipe
• I used my reusable lids on this batch and flat out forgot how loose they're supposed to be when they go in the canner. I'm lucky none of the jars broke, but because of that I did have 4 fail to seal. We'll eat them for lunches and such through the next week or so.
• The deep frying pan barely held all three lbs of meat plus the veg. Maybe next time do 1 lb with veg and the other 2 lbs in a separate batch. It's all getting stirred into the stock pot after anyway.
• Had to scramble for extra jars. Make a habit of having a few extra jars and lids ready to go.
• They look but ugly after canning but a little rotation re-mixes it
• 2022-11-17 another jar isn't sealed anymore. It's probably the same reason a bunch of the chilli's didn't seal in the first place. The reuseable lids have different instructions to the disposable ones and I don't think these got tightened down when they came out of the canner.

Photos:

Left: as canned, Right: after a lil swish & jiggle