Canned Meat: Scary or Delicious?

So I’ve always been a little bit afraid of canned meat. Afraid in that I wont even eat canned soups or stews that have it. It grossed me out. I gave Jodi a sarcastic two thumbs up when she said she was going to start canning meat and figured canned meat would just never be part of my storage plans.

Jodi has been canning ground beef lately and is thrilled at the possibilities it opens up in her storage. I know she’s right in that it’s better for certain scenarios and all, but still… I haven’t wanted her to tell me about it because why bother – if I’m not going to do it … right?

Well the other day I was at Costco and saw this:

In a temporary state of insanity, I thought, maybe – just maybe I could use some of the canned roast beef in a homemade beef stew, or a Quesidilla, or something else non threatening. So I bought some. Who doesn’t love delicious beef stew made from left over roast beef? My problem is I never, ever make roast beef dinners because my family is small and Grandma Lori does that often enough. This means I never have leftover roast beef to make stews with. I figured if I was considering storing some of this, I probably should TRY some of it first…. I finally experimented with the canned meat by making a stew, and was actually very pleased with the results. Wanna know how I made my little beef stew? You’ll be shocked at how I thickened it!

Ingredients:

4 cups of potatoes cubed
2 cups of carrots
pack of onion soup mix
2 cans of roast beef
1 cup of water
Juices from 2 cans of roast beef
4 tablespoons of white bean flour (ground regular white beans in my Wondermill)

Instructions:

Cut up potatoes and carrots. Add the juice from ONE of the cans of meat, the onion soup mix, and 1 cup of water to pressure cooker (You can boil this on the stove, but you’ll probably need more water). The reason I do it in the pressure cooker is because it only takes 8 minutes to cook.

Once your potatoes and carrots are cooked save them in a separate bowl. Combine the juice from the other can of meat with 4 tablespoons of white bean flour (grind in your wheat grinder). You can probably also use white flour, or cornstarch, I just like how healthy the bean flour is. Make sure you mix it well. The picture here is showing it clumpy because I took the picture before I mixed it well.

The mixture will thicken as you bring it to a boil. If you’re finding it’s to thick, you can add water. If it’s not thick enough, you can add more bean flour (just make sure you mix the bean flour with a little bit of cold water first). Once it’s boiling, add the meat.

Once the meat is warm add back in the potatoes and carrots. I actually did this ALL in my pressure cooker and it took me about 25 minutes from start to finish. I added salt and pepper to taste, then bravely TRIED the canned meat. I was so excited it tasted so great.