I’ve been curious for a while what moose canned in Clamato juice would taste like. It just sounded different enough that I had to try it.

And yes, it’s safe to do. I covered the whole substitution question in my post “Can You Tweak Canning Recipes? The Truth About Substitutions.” Clamato is a tomato-based juice, so we’re still working within safe guidelines for pressure canning meat.

I went with the hot pack method. I used a chuck roast and sliced it into about one-inch strips, then put those in the oven. I cooked them to medium rare. The reason for that is when I’ve done raw pack before with deer and even chicken, the meat had that boiled taste to it. It was fine, but not something I was excited about eating. I wanted a bit more flavor going into the jar this time.

While the meat was in the oven, I brought five cups of Clamato juice to a full boil on the stove. That’s not just preference, that’s part of the actual hot pack instructions in the canning books. When you’re hot packing meat, you’re supposed to add boiling liquid. So the juice was at a full boil and ready to go.

When the roast came out of the oven, I cubed the strips and filled three half-pint jars, leaving one inch of headspace. None of the books were very clear about how tightly to pack the meat, so I kept it fairly loose. I wanted to be sure there was good heat penetration all the way through. After that, I poured the boiling Clamato over the meat, still keeping that one inch of headspace.

I ran a bubble remover through each jar to get rid of trapped air and checked the headspace again. Then I wiped the rims with a paper towel dipped in vinegar, put the lids on, and tightened the bands to finger tight.

Into the pressure canner they went. I vented the canner for the standard 10 minutes to exhaust the air, then brought it up to pressure and processed the half-pints for 75 minutes. If you were doing quarts, you’d go 90 minutes.

The next morning all three jars looked sealed, but one didn’t have that clear ringing sound when I tapped on it. The lid was concave and it wouldn’t flex when I pressed it, but without that ring I didn’t fully trust it. That was fine with me because I wanted to taste it anyway.

When I opened it, I got that nice pop you expect from a sealed jar, so it had actually sealed.

The flavor was good. Different, but good. The meat was tougher than I expected after being in the pressure canner. I think part of that was on me. I probably left it in the oven a little too long. Rare would likely have been better than medium rare. And instead of cubing it into one-inch chunks, I think it would have been more tender if I had sliced it thin across the grain right after it came out of the oven.

Overall, I’d call it a success. It could have used a bit more salt, but that’s easy enough to adjust next time. Somewhere down the road I’d like to can some in straight tomato juice and do a side-by-side taste test just to see which one comes out better. That’s half the fun of experimenting like this.

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