My father's mother canned meats. I thought that the canned chicken she brought to the table could have benefitted from a little better presentation because it was mighty pale and boiled looking, but for people who did not have electricity or even when they had it and did not have a freezer, canning meat was the way to preserve it. I think I would have cut the chicken off the bones and used the canning broth to make a soup with some vegetables and noodles. Hell, if I was really inspired, I might have used it to make chicken and dumplings, but that's not the way it was served and I obviously did not die of starvation.
When Sandy was blowing in and the weathermen were predicting mayhem and power failures and wearing suit coats and blazers to hide the fact that they were tumescent and leaking with excitement, I browned up hamburger and onions, threw Manwich sauce over it and canned it in the Mirro 16 qt because it's easier to get to than the Presto 16 qt. All the while it was processing on the Heat Minder unit set just below 250, I kept expecting the lights to go out, but they never did and my emergency stash of sloppy joes is still on the shelf. If the lights had gone out, that's several pounds of ground meat that was safe without refrigeration.
When I am canning, I add some vinegar to the water so that the inside of the cooker does not discolor so much from the water.
