I have a good handle on stocking up on most thing but one of the things I am not sure about is stocking up on canned meats. I don't want to can my own but want to buy it at the store and I was just curious what others buy in this line. What brands, and what type of meat is it. I know to stock up on tunafish and I stock up on sardines as well but I would like some thoughts on meats you stock up on and then how you might cook them when you go to use them. Brand names and even prices would also be appreciated. Just looking for ideas because I haven't been too creative in this area.

-- Colleen (pyramidgreatdanes@erols.com), September 21, 2001

Answers

I stock what we will eat normally. One is canned chicken. I like this as a convenience food for very quick chicken soup or salad. We also like salmon for salmon cakes, crabmeat for excellent dips with all those crackers, and oysters and clams to flavor sauces and stuffing.

-- Anne (HealthyTouch101@wildmail.com), September 21, 2001.

Every once in a while I like to eat "Spam" or "Corned Beef". Chili, Viennas, the canned chicken that comes in the same size can as tuna. You can take a couple of cans of "Veg-all" and add a can of "Corned Beef" and little bit of "Ketchup" and wah-la you have instant stew. Not as good as regular homemade but I use it a lot on campouts, fishing, and hunting trips.

-- r.h. in okla. (rhays@sstelco.com), September 21, 2001.

the dollar store has a small canned ham that cost 2.50, it was 2 but last time I was there it went up. there is a minced ham too. do not get this one as it isn't as good. I make a ham salad, potato's / green beans &ham, baked, macroni/ ham cassorole, lima beans/ ham, ham pita's, pizza, sandwitches, pepper/ ham/ potato bake. the list goes on. there is a canned beef at foodlion, I haven't been in for awhile so I don't know if they still have it. You can use canned meat the same as regular meat. yoders has a assorted canned meats. they are out of grantsville, Md. and you can mail order. also carry many different staples. beans/ noodles, they have a catalog. Lexi

-- Lexi Green (whitestone11@hotmail.com), September 21, 2001.

I can alot of my meat for food storage,and make jerky also to store... but also store tuna, salmon, sardines, vienna sausages, potted meat, spam, and the new turkey spam, and little canned hams. I also keep a couple cans of corned beef, and tiny shrimp....what ever is on sale. I rotate and use this stuff as much as I can.

-- Jenny Pipes (Auntjenny6@aol.com), September 21, 2001.

I've eaten just about every type of canned fish, fowl or hoofed animal I could find in my local grocery stores and have come up with one piece of advice about it.

Go to your local grocery and buy ONE can of each type of meat you think you might be interested in and eat it. If you like it then start exploring the various things that can be done with that particular type and brand of meat. I've found more than a few that I hope I never have the misfortune to have to consume again and several that were actually pretty good and we eat regularly now. Sometimes the store brand is just as good or better than the name brand and somtimes they're just awful and each person will have their own perceptions.

For myself I buy the low-fat version of Spam; the Spam oven roasted turkey (it's not a turkey Spam); Hormel or Armour roast beef chunks; those little one and two pound canned hams that you can only seem to find in drugstores and whose brand name I can't recall (NOT the pressed and formed types); Albertson's brand of water packed chunk light tuna; Armour Vienna sausages (NOT the ones with chicken in them); Dinty Moore beef stew; Hereford, Hormel, or Libby corned beef; and a dry salami whose brand name I can't recall either. I keep hens for fresh eggs.

NEVER buy a lot of anything until you've eaten it at least once.

={(Oak)-

-- Live Oak (oneliveoak@yahoo.com), September 21, 2001.

tuna, salmon, chicken, ham, oysters.

-- debra in ks (windfish@toto.net), September 21, 2001.

Pre Y2K, we had a canning class at my house. We taught the younger gals how to raw pack (something frowned upon in the newer canning books) yet we followed recipies from my canning book and even an old Betty Crocker book :) We canned very inexpensive cuts of beef, cut into cubes, in Pint wide mouths, which was the perfect amount to add to stews, chili, soups. We canned precooked sausage patties in neat little stacks in narrow quart wide mouth jars. Showing them to raw pack your 30cent chicken parts, and how much better they tasted canned, how amazed they were when nothing blew up and not a jar, mayonaise jars and all, failed or cracked! Also if you are a novice at bread baking and yeast, think tortillas.

This is what your extension agents are for, ask them to put together a canning class for you, a soap making class etc. Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh TX (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), September 21, 2001.

Very good advice about buying one can and trying it first. I have a lot of food sensitivities and a number of the canned meat products make me pretty ill and wishing I'd never eaten it.

For me, good things are canned sardines, to a lesser extent Tuna, Honeysuckle canned Turkey (this is very good, makes up into a salad very much like crab meat. Got it cheap at Sam's), bottled bacon (Hormel or Oscar Mayer) for flavouring things like soups, and I bought some Black Label canned hams at Wal-Mart that were about $4 each that required no refrigeration until opened, one-pound cans which was about the size that would feed four people (what I was envisioning for a meal). I have also got some roast beef hash and corned beef hash because we have family members that like it.

Bad for me -- Spam, any Dinty Moore products (made me sick as a dog, don't know what was in it that did it). I also liked the Hormel Deviled Ham and chicken spreads fairly well on crackers, but it doesn't like me.

-- julie f. (rumplefrogskin@excite.com), September 21, 2001.

Has anyon else noticed the tuna cans got smaller???? WE hadn't bought tuna in quite a while since I had a backstock of it, well dh bought some one day, they had changed the color of the label from green, silver, white, to blue and silver I think anyway when I opened two cans to make tuna salad, there just wasn't the tuna there that used to be, they've done the downsizing again but not price change????? they did this to spaghetti sauce several years back. WE mostly get the tuna, chicken(white meat), and canned ham when I find one that doesn't look gross, dh likes spam, but I just about gag on it unless it's mixed with something else like eggs, the sodium is just terrible. I'm going to can some more soup and chili as soon as some meat goes on sale or I find it in the discount bin.

-- Carol in Tx (cwaldrop@peoplescom.net), September 21, 2001.

I didn't notice tuna specifically, Carol, but that's been a trend since I was a kid (Hershey bars have been shrunken numerous times). Maybe even before that.

First, they change the amount of product you get (like switching from 24 tea bags to 20 tea bags per box), but the price stays the same. Just about the time you've quit griping about that, THEN they raise the price. Geez, no one likes price increases, but I wish they would just do THAT, instead of downsizing the product!

-- Joy F [in So. Wisconsin] (CatFlunky@excite.com), September 21, 2001.

Yes, I know it's been going on for a long time, but it still gripes me every time I notice it, Like you I wish they'd just go up on the price, but then if they did that we'd all complain a lot, it would make it more noticeable. I guess thats why they don't just be honest about it all, cause if they were we'd notice it right away.

-- Carol in Tx (cwaldrop@peoplescom.net), September 22, 2001.

noone wants us to know things increase in price, they want us all to believe the economy is great, prices are o.k., wages are good, jobs are plentiful, I guess they think were all stupid. o.k. I'll stop now I'm getting political and this was a food thread.

-- Carol in Tx (cwaldrop@peoplescom.net), September 22, 2001.

I like the canned roast beef hash and corned beef hash, just found some today that was reduced fat too. I figured during Y2K that it was more efficient to store high fat items since you got more calories in less storage space. I just set up some new shelves today and rooted around in the remnants of the Y2K stuff to get it used up and restocked.

-- Susan (smtroxel@socket.net), September 22, 2001.

I can my own. Far cheaper than buying canned meat, and far tastier. I just sent 7 jars of chicken to the basement with my son a couple days ago. I just skin it, separate at every joint, and pack raw lightly into jars, add salt and water, and process at 15 lbs pressure for an hour. That stuff is absolutely wonderful, as the broth made with the bones in it is incredibly rich. I can beef too, and chunk pork. Oh, and ground pork canned is really really good, too. Another thing I like to do is to put about a cupful of raw beef or pork, either ground or cut small into the bottom of each canning jar, then add layers of celery, carrots, onions, green beans, potatoes, and top it off with chunks of tomatoes, smashed down into the jar for juice. Process as above. Instant condensed vegetable soup. One serving idea for the above soup is to add another pint of water and cook a cup of any kind of pasta into the veggies. Put it in an oven- going dish and top it with cheese for a casserole.

-- daffodyllady (daffodyllady@yahoo.com), September 22, 2001.

Carol, you're right!!! Last night I made grilled tuna sandwiches for supper and only got 2 sandwiches instead of 3 out of one can of tuna. Being in a hurry I just thought, hmmm, what's this all about. It never dawned on me until you mentioned it but that's why only two......DUH, it's a smaller amount of tuna!!!

-- Anna in Iowa (countryanna54@hotmail.com), September 23, 2001.

I seldom buy tuna any more, besides the cans being smaller, there seems to be more water and less tuna. A couple years ago I canned my own tuna and it was wonderful. But it leaves an odor in the house that I could smell for weeks. I used to buy chicken legs, thighs and breasts with bone in and bone them myself. I saved all the trimmed skin and bone once and weighed them and figured out what I had paid per pound for the meat. It was more than the preboned and skin, so I always buy this now. I can my own, also beef and pork purchased on sale. It is handy to have and saves much time cooking, and can be used for almost any recipe. I always keep dehydrated 9% fat ground beef on the shelf, and have found I can use this for any recipe also.

-- Duffy (hazelm@tenforward.com), September 23, 2001.

Duffy, where do you find the dehydrated beef?

-- Joy F [in So. Wisconsin] (CatFlunky@excite.com), September 24, 2001.