…pun kind of intended.
So I showed up at home with 28 tuna fillets. I wish I could have gotten one fish cut into steaks instead of filleted, but that’s the way it goes. I decided that I wanted some fish for searing and some for canning.
The family always just cans tuna, never cooks it as steaks. shrug. One person even mentioned “My boss’ wife gave me a recipe for tuna steak, and it came out raw in the middle”. So the tuna steak concept was not popular at first. But everyone seemed to like the steaks at dinner (I cooked them well-done), so I moved forward with the idea of freezing some of the meat for later steakage.
Canning tuna is a lot of work, and the family “let me learn the ropes” by essentially leaving the whole task to me (normally, the effort is split between 2 or 3 people). I admit that various people helped by finding jars, putting salt and/or garlic in them, and keeping an eye on the canning pressure. But all the butchery was up to me, as well as the can-stuffing.
I learned that tuna butchery is a time consuming and sticky-making task.
I also learned that both of the kids like tuna sashimi.
Oh, and I hate tuna belly meat. Getting the bones out of those fillets sucks. A lot.
The “red stuff” is not fun either, but I got a system for that, and that was OK.
It was a lot of meat. You want a fun afternoon? You go butcher 68lb of meat. Any kind of meat. It’s not easy.
One of the fun parts was cutting the meat to the correct length to go in the cans. 🙂
I used pint jars, because when we do half-pints, I usually end up using 2 every time I make tuna salad. That probably saved my sanity. I ended up running 4 canner runs (3 full and 1 over half) in total.
What follows is the method I used, as taught to me by people who have been canning for a long time. These are my personal notes of how I do it, and not a canning tutorial. Read your instructions. I am not responsible for you giving botulism to your family.
1/2t salt, one clove of garlic (although I did 8 cans with jalapeno instead — we’ll see how that turns out), and fill the rest of the jar with tuna. Turns out it doesn’t much matter how the pieces of tuna work out, just as long as the jars are full-but-not-too-full.
Clean off the edges of the cans carefully, plop on pre-boiled lids, screw on rings, and it’s 16 pints per canner, running 2 canners at once.
Once the pints are in, fire up the canner full heat and lid it until there’s a steady stream of steam coming out the hole and the little emergency valve pops. As soon as it pops, plop the weight over the steam hole and watch the pressure rise. As soon as it hits 11lb of pressure, start timing. It’s 100min (1h 40m) for tuna, do not let the pressure drop below 11lb during this time. When it hits 12lb (I like to give myself a little leeway), start moderating the heat to keep the pressure steady. The “correct heat level” will vary with content, water level, canner seal, whether there is one canner or two running, and whether or not it’s Tuesday and the fridge is still working. All of which is to say, just vary the knob until the needle stops bouncing around and settles in somewhere between 11lb and 15lb. I usually got it to stop between 12lb and 13lb. And one of the canners would start to drift up as the tuna got finished. je ne c’est qua.
When 100m is up, turn off the heat and walk away until the pressure drops to zero. Once it’s down, lock all doors, warn everyone in the area that exploding glass is no fun, and open the canner. Take out the scorching hot jars with the little tool made just for the purpose, and lay the jars out in a towel so they can cool slowly. They will start to “pop” as the canning process is complete. Check for any that do not pop and eat “soon” as these are not really “canned”. I did not have any non-poppers.
Once all the cans are room temp, they need to be washed off to get tuna gook off the outside of the jars. The rings can be removed at this point, as the lids are on to the point of being watertight. You can reuse the rings and the jars but not the lids.
Once the cans are scrubbed, label them (in particular, make sure you find the ones with jalapeno in case other people are not into that). I usually make sure to put the year on the lid; we go through tuna pretty quickly around here and each year’s supply is pretty well gone by one year later. But occasionally I will inherit a jar of something or another that was canned 5, 10, or even 15 years ago. The stuff inside is still good, so keep in mind this stuff could be around awhile.
When all the dust settled, I had 60 cans of 2010 tuna. Hmm… 68lb of meat, 40 steaks, 60 cans… “a pint’s a pound the world around”? interesting.
Had some tunafish sandwiches for lunch the next day. They were yummy. Mmmm… tuna.