My relationship with canned meats is akin to the experience of dating a fat chick: if youre not deterred by the appearance and smell, you might find that, if you give it a chance, you actually like it.
To me, all canned meats, regardless of what they are (turkey, beef, pork, etc.) all smell exactly the same when you open them – like wet cat food. In fact, I have to hold my breath when opening a can of meat. But, as a survivalist, I know there are going to be times where shelf-stable meats that can go long-term are gonna be rather handy.
I discovered that the local WalMart is selling Keystone meats (chicken, beef, and ground beef) a few weeks back. Normally my canned meat needs are met by the Kirkland roast beef at CostCo, which I have been quite pleased with. Although, to be fair, the availability of the Kirkland beef has waned over the years with stretches of time where it was unavailable.
I had seen a good bit of information about the Keystone product on the internet, and reviews I’d seen on YouTube were pretty uniform in that it was a rather good product. Well, before I go and drop a buncha money on a case of this stuff, lets check it out.
This looks like what the investigator sees when he opens a 55-gallon drum that had a mob informant stuffed in it before being tossed into the lake. The white stuff is congealed fat and the liquid is the juices from the meat, since no water is added to this product. The meat is pressure cooked in the sealed can so any liquid in there came outta meat.
Dumped into a frying pan it still looks like an organ transplant that went horribly awry. But, let’s put some heat to the meat and see what happens.
As things melt, plenty of liquid ensues. So, we keep simmering until we get something a bit less soupy.
My standard practice for a fast, cheap, filling meal is to then mix in a buncha salsa and then mix with hot rice. The result:
Gotta say…it was good. And the meat was of very high quality. I recall trying some canned meat a few years back that had tremendous amounts of silverskin to the point it was like trying to chew gum. I think there was one small thumbnail size piece of silverskin in this, which I plucked out, and the rest was all good striated muscle tissue. So, whats my story…recommend or no? It’s a recommend. At least for me it is. I can see this as being an excellent candidate for anything where tender cunks of beef are called for or where shredded beef is needed. Tacos, enchiladas, and that sort of thing seem like a natural for this. If youre a beef-with-noodles kinda guy this might be handy for a goulash or stroganoff. Shelf life is a couple years so it’s definitely a candidate for the long-term pantry.
Price was about $9 a can which isnt bad since theres definitely several days of meat in there. Obviously if you shop around you might do better than that. Overall, I’d say if you were on the fence about buying this stuff go ahead and purchase with confidence.
