Ham Broth

I went to Benton’s Hams this week to get some bacon and smoked sausage and noticed a bin of ham bones under one of their work tables. I asked if they sold them and the man told me that they give them away. I asked for 3 of them.

When I got home, I put those 3 ham bones and one that I had in the freezer in a pot of water and cooked them for about 6 hours. I removed the bones and strained the broth and put it in the refrigerator overnight. The next morning, I skimmed the fat off of the top.

I put it in a stock pot to warm it back up.

While I was heating the broth, I put my jars filled with water in the microwave to heat and also got the water in my pressure canner heating.

Once my broth, jars and canner were up to temperature, I filled my jars and added lids and rings and put them in the canner as I got each of them finished.

Once all the jars were in the canner, I put the lid on the pressure canner, but I did not put the weight on the vent, and brought it up to a boil–about 10 minutes. Then I put the weight on and let the canner get to 10 lbs of pressure which took about 15 minutes and processed for 25 minutes at 10 lbs+ of pressure. I let the whole thing cool for several hours before removing the weight and lid. If you want to start doing more at home canning/food preservation, the Ball Blue Book is an invaluable guide to preserving food, especially canning.

Here are the finished jars:

Having this broth ready on the shelf will make it really easy to make potato soup and bean soup. It would also be great for cooking greens.