Putting up Canned Bacon!

Well, it will come to no surprise to those that know me that I would have learned yet another way to work with bacon.  Here you will see how I have learned, mostly from BexarPrepper, how to can bacon so that it can be safely stored without refrigeration.

I need to say that you MUST do this using a pressure canner, not a water bath canner.  There is no safe way to can meat products with boiling water, it must be done under pressure.  This article assumes that the reader is familiar with the process before attempting to duplicate it.  This bacon was in the canner at 10 psi for 90 minutes. 

First, you need parchment paper, and it definitely has to be parchment paper, NOT waxed paper.  They are two different things for different purposes.  What I have seen it comes in a 15" width. 

I started out by unrolling some parchment paper.  In the shot below, I have laid out the bacon flush with the bottom edge, and you can see that I have left a space at the left hand edge about the width of a slice of bacon.More on this space later.

Next, I have covered the bottom half of the the bacon with a piece of parchment the same length but cut down to half the width of the bacon strips.

Next, fold the flap on the left over the first piece of bacon, and then take the entire covered bottom half of the bacon layer and fold it up and over the exposed bacon, like this:
 

  Now, starting from the end without the fold, start rolling the bacon up, tucking it in to keep everything even and snug.  When finished, you will end up with something that looks like this:

Insert your bacon roll into a wide-mouth quart Mason jar, bacon end first, and then push the rest of the parchment paper in before applying the lid and band.  Don't add any liquid to the jar, as the bacon will give off both bacon grease and water as it cooks in the canner.

 

When you do open, you will be presented with some soft-cooked bacon, which you can eat as is or cook longer to your desired degree of done-ness.  As a bonus, you will also have all of that wonderful bacon grease that was rendered from the canning process for cooking with as well.  Win-win!