Check out our pottery items, quite a few of which were used in the episode! www.townsends.us/collections/pottery

When I was growing up on a farm, we didn't have a freezer so when we butchered a pig my grandfather would fry all the sausage, keep the grease from it, layer the cooked sausage in a stone crock, pour over the grease, layer by layer and top it off with a couple inches of grease, put the wood top on and we ate the sausage through the winter by removing one layer at a time.. it never went bad and no mold ever grew on it.

My husband’s uncle made potted spiced pork until just a year before he died. He simmered pork roast with pickling spices until it was falling apart tender, drained it and removed any tendons and gristle. Then he ground it and packed it into a small-mouthed clay pot (which we now have) he poured hot lard on the meat until it was covered by about a half inch, and set a small plate on top. Then he simmered it in a water bath for at least four hours. Let it cool, remove the plate and cover the top with a piece of greased heavy paper (he used a grocery sack) and tied it on with string. He then tied twine around the neck of the jar and lowered it onto a ledge in the well, as they had no springhouse. (By the time I knew him, he had a refrigerator and kept his potted pork in the fridge.) He would scrape back the lard, dig out some potted pork, and spread the lard back over the meat with a spoon. He ate it with saltines. He also fried it and ate it with sliced hard boiled eggs for breakfast. He would like only offer some to people he really liked, because it was laborious to make.

This dude cooks, does IT work, builds canoes, ovens & and cabins, is a historian,……. And is apparently also a potter. He’s truly a modern interpretation of the time period he’s devoted his life to.

It’s funny, I never realized how important potting was to food preservation and transport, but its prevalence explains why ceramics are always such an abundant thing found on archeological sites.

Would you ever consider making 12 of them and seeing how they age over a year? You'd be able to create a 18th century best by date!

I need this man on my team in case of an apocolypse. With him we wont survive; we will thrive.

My Bavarian great grandmother also poured melted beeswax and paraffin over hers, once the butter/ghee had set. She had little triangular stilts to raise them and poured the melted wax over the entire. There were two shelves in her pantry for potted products, the lower one for waxed pots which had a longer shelf life. I became a ceramist because the process fascinated me.

Potted shrimps are still a delicacy in the north west of England, it is made using tiny native brown shrimps traditionally caught around Morecombe bay and is made much like how you made the potted salmon here. It is always spiced with a little nutmeg and mace and is typically served on hot toast or as a sauce/garnish element over dover or lemon sole.

Potting isn't dead. I learned from my grand-mother how to make potted sausages in lard with paprika. You cook the sausages in lard, pack them in a jar tightly and cover them up in the jar with the lard and paprika. Then you set them up in a cool place like a pantry. They keep for months, and actually get better with time. They get creamy, not quite spreadable but definitely soft. It's my favorite way to cook sausages.

My dude really does things completely authentic. Down to the flintstone pottery wheel.

My aunt Elma and I got caught in a mudslide after a wild rainstorm and we made it to a run down camp near an embankment. This was in Minnehaha Minnesota and the year was 1974. My aunt was 78 at the time, but she was spry and she kept us moving when the mud would rise. We found a family that had too, been cut off by the mudslide. We subsisted on POTTED SALMON for two weeks! We made it and my aunt, how I miss her, said she’d never harm a single little fishy again. Great video as always!

Nothing more soothing than seeing Jon make simple yet perfect clay pots from scratch. Reminds me that there's something beautiful in good, old-fashioned manual labor and artisanship. 💪💪💪💪💪

That intro was fantastic.

Jon's blood type is Nutmeg.

My dad showed me this because I want to get into pottery for canning this summer. Thank you.

Hey, Jon is a wheel potter! I picked up that craft myself a long time ago. It's very gratifying to make your own dishes and beer mugs. Even my cat has his own special treat bowl.

seeing john laugh after saying "woodcock" made me happier than it should have

So how many sprinkles of nutmeg do we need per pot Jon? Never change you beautiful soul.

There is an interesting recipe for potted cheese I made once from one of my Lancashire cookbooks. It is made of several types of cheese crumbled and mixed together with spices, brandy and then pressed into small pots with the clarified butter on top.

I actually made this with cod the other day after watching your video and seeing I had basically all the ingredients. This stuff is great on a toasted bagel for breakfast.

My Irish grandmother potted fish and seafood in general all the time. We always ate it. My husband's Sicilian family similarly did something like this with olive oil - he grew up with that.

Jon, since this is a preservation cooking method, I think it would be awesome if you kept some of this potted salmon stashed away to revisit maybe 6 months or a year later! I wonder if/how the taste and texture might change.

I've never heard of this. Here in Norway we used to hang both fish and meat in the fresh air until it was completely dry. And then we salted (some do it today also) both fish and meat with an incredible amount of salt. So much salt (and I mean very much) that fish/meat must be put in water for several days before it can be eaten. And many times the water also has to be changed several times before cooking and eating. Vegetables and potatoes were stored unwashed in cold cellars that were buried in the ground some distance from the house. Very rarely there were basements under the house.

honestly one of my favorite channels out there. everything is just so useful. I used the potted beef method for venison and it was amazing. let it set 8 months and was still good.

Wow, Jon, you throw pots too?! That was a beautiful intro.

This technique is still actually used in France - they eat a lot of confit or rillettes which is the same principle. Yours looks delicious!

Your channel has changed a lot over the years. Still seems your focus is to make history fun, and thank you so much for that! Your team keep it interesting and as accurate as you can. It's not always easy for you and your team, so I like to let you know you are appreciated. Thank you and all of your team and your families.

At hog killing time in the fall, one of my grandmothers made sausage and fried it up. Then she layered the sausage patties in a crock. She would start with hot lard in the bottom and then add a layer of patties then cover the patties with hot lard and keep on with this procedure until she had the crock full or ran out of sausage patties. These kept well while she used them all winter. They used both the sausage and lard as needed. A 5 gallon crock hold lots of the patties. I have never tried to do it this way as we had freezers by the time I was 4 or 5.

recipe: "season them with salt and spices" Townsends: ". . . and nutmeg!"

We used to make potted foods at the farmstead. Specifically I remember having the Boy Scouts in my troop visit. We did this, we made butter with a hand churn and ended the day making ice cream!

Man these videos are so refreshing. Perfect for getting away from the madness that goes on in the world.

when my husband was alive we often made potted crab and potted shrimp delicious on toast

It's probably not the "right" way to eat it, but seeing all that liquid butter made me want to warm the final product and have the butter as a kind of sauce.

Native Americans produced Pemican in a somewhat similar way. A meat and berry mixture cooked and covered in hot fat, all inside a buffalo hide ball. Then buried in the ground to keep cool.

Charr is delicious, while stationed in Alaska I greatly enjoyed catching and eating Charr. They are in the salmon family, like trout.

Mr. Townsend, your channel has served to not only renew my own interest in history, but has also become a go-to when I need to smile after a rough day. Cheers to you, and may you never stop enjoying what you do.

There are references in British literature to people having cold beef. I've always wondered how they stored it - if they just set it in the pantry as is for the next day or what they did. Do you think they would have done this or something like it for meat in general?

Aw, you did it AGAIN! I could swear I could taste this...I imagined a slice of sourdough (lightly toasted by the fire, of course) and either a steaming cup of hot tea, or cold glass of white wine, depending on time of day...YUM!

In Italy we do a similar thing, but with oil instead of butter. We have a lot of olive trees. My grandparents make "funghi sott'olio" "mushrooms under oil" in late summer and they last for a very long time. They use the smaller mushrooms that are also quite soft. Butter and oil are both fats and work the same way conserving food.

Gelatinous potted lamprey...As if you could make lamprey any less appealing

What a coincidence! Today I took my family to Beaulieu in Hampshire UK🇬🇧, where the Duke of Montague is originally from. I was looking at his painting today on the wall of his family’s stately house. Anyway! On with the potted goods😀

I am obsessed with all kinds of preserved food/ ingredients. The flavours are one of its kind.

Here in North West England there is a famous and popular dish: potted shrimps. Produced exclusively around Morecambe Bay which has prolific shellfish and shrimps, it’s made by the shrimp fishermen who boil the day’s catch in seawater and then pot it with clarified butter with, I think, mace as a flavouring. It’s considered to be quite a gourmet dish.

On American grocery shelves you can get Underwood's Deviled Ham- which started out in the 1820's as a potted meat in glass jars

Year late, but I absolutely love how at 2:10 you use the actual font (or at the very least close to it) and text to accent your piece. Stunning attention to detail and really just above and beyond.

The fact that you drew little fish on the pots you spun yourself was the best hook c:

You are a man of many talents. Blessings to you and yours.

My mother would always tell me about how they would butcher a hog. Then they would render the lard take the cuttings put them in a barrel cover them with lard they would've eaten throughout the winter months

sometimes life's got a lot of fuss and heartache, but this channel always feels like home. always something fantastic to learn, too! Wonderful hearing these first-hand accounts from letters, journals, etc.

My mother's parents lived the old way. Each Fall they would butcher a Hog and my Grandmother would make dozens of pork pies to keep in the pantry. They didn't have a refrigerator, the pantry on the North side of the house served the purpose. When she cooked the ground pork for the pies, she would skim off the fat, some of which she saved for cooking or making soap, but the rest she would pot-up and cover with wax paper to keep from going rancid. It contained the bits of pork, gelatin and a layer of fat. I loved it. we would spread it on toast or bread, like modern folks use butter. Fond memories of the way people used to live without all the modern conveniences.

I am joining the choir of requests for a follow up video that is testing how long the salmon will stay good! Also: Again the cinematography is beautiful!

I just had some potted salmon at my mum's house yesterday. We still do things like this over here in the UK & I can confirm they are delicious. Next time try leaving a bay leaf on top in the butter : )

as a ceramic artist i love that people sare discovering the historical usage for pots, i feel that to much focus in school is on making , but not the historical significance of the pots or cups and where they came form.

In Ireland and Scotland they are still finding barrels of butter that were buried in the peat bogs from a thousand years ago and it is still good. Butter does not even need to be refrigerated, it can sit on the counter for months as long as it is not too hot in your house and you only use a clean knife every time you take some out. As long as you don't contaminate it, it stays good.

I really like how you make history come back to life . I'm a trained chef. I'm also a history enthusiastic I like how you bring the two together. I live in Michigan and go up to Mackinac when I can and they show a lot of how they used to cook. Please keep up the good work thank you for bringing this to us God bless you

I wonder how this would taste in a chowder, thickened with hard tack, with cream & of course seasoned with nutmeg salt & white pepper?

8:03 Aha, so that's how you preserve butter. Thanks for clarifying!

These older preserving techniques are rather interesting.

When I was small and my uncles were still young, my Grandfolks lived on a homestead in Washington state. No electricity. They would do something similar with venison or whatever and 5 gallon tins. Layer of lard/layer of fried meat/layer of lard...repeat till full. Whenever you wanted meat, just dig down in the can and get what you need, warm it up in a fry pan and eat. Worked like a charm.

I wouldn't mind watching Jon making pottery for hours

Your production quality is getting better each episode! I’m glad your channel is doing well. Best wishes from your fellow Hoosier ☺️

Thanks for sharing with us Jon, interesting how this was done so many years ago. Keep up the good work and videos and having fun with your channel. Preservation of HISTORY In its finest form !! Fred.👏🏻👏🏻👍👍👋👋🙏🏻🙏🏻

This is one of the few channels on KZfaq that is wholesome and not filled with fake people doing fake things.

I don't know about potted butter, but in Bronze Age Ireland, they preserved butter by burying it in a peat bog. We know this because nowadays people are cutting that peat for fuel, and sometimes they find butter, and after thousands of years, it's still edible.

I’ve been watching your videos for years... I just gotta say you’re still my favorite person on KZfaq. I’m always learning something odd or laughing at the quips. Just lovely ♥️thanks so much

Potted salmon with nutmeg... very interesting..

I did not expect the outcome. Getting to see it solidify and complain that salmon so well. I could imagine loads of those made for the winter. It's incredible to see the ingenuity that went into food preservation for the time periods you discuss. Thank you for sharing these forgotten arts that our ancestors used day in and day out. Truly fascinating.

These videos are a lot of fun and really inspire me to go draw and explore what I've learned through writing and art. Thank you for sharing!

I so love this channel. Just makes me feel good. I can't describe it. Soothing in a way. Brings you back to much simpler days. I would have liked to live back then. IF anything for like a vacation for a month or so. Wish there was a time machine LoL

My papaw used to keep a crock of sausages.....he would precook patties and layer them in the crock and cover them with lard then top the crock with lard. Then when he made breakfast he would scoop out what he needed and heat it up then pour the hot fat back in the crock to reseal it. Not sure how long it would keep that way but I will always remember him doing this

A home care client of mine told me about preserving pork. They rendered the lard and pored it into jars with lids. They also cooked thin to medium pork steaks to just done and put 2 or 3 slices in some of the jars . The hot liquid lard was pored into the jar covering the meat by at least 2 inches and lids were added. The jars were marked and put into the deepest part of the root cellar. They pulled them out only when they needed meat during the lean months and used the lard for normal cooking. They tried to preserve enough meat and lard for a month until they could butcher another hog

I'm so glad one of your videos got to me in my recommendations. It's really cool to see these older techniques.

Love those handmade plates and pots. Wish I could get them in the UK.

Tuna in oil, make way for salmon in clarified butter.

20th Century: Butter is so fattening. 18th Century: Hold my flagon of ale!

I love seeing history in action. This is a great series and I can't wait to try these recipes

The quality of your content is just absolutely marvelous!! Can’t get enough of it, keep it up you guys!!

This is like the pork and trout rillettes we learned to make in culinary school.

In the pioneer days butter was heavily salted, worked over several days to get it really dry, and pressed into crocks before being covered in a thick layer of salt. It was hard to keep it from taking on flavours though. I have always been intrigued by potted meats. Thank you for this!

Absolutely love your videos, thanks for this "snapshot" of the past.

All the preservation techniques you show are fascinating. Seeing the beginning of how food was preserved will help me have the knowledge so I can better survive without modern conveniences.

So potting is basically sticking cooked food in a can of Crisco. I'm with it.

This sounds to me like a variation on confit, but instead of using rendered meat fat it uses butter.

so glad your channel showed up in my feed! I love history, Learning so much from your videos and I just love how you live and cook like they did! very impressed. Great work! Awesome channel!

so fascinating - this is why i love living history museums and learning from the interpreters about the recipes

I'll bet that "potted butter" is the same as ghee.

the pottery wheel makes it look easy, but that is not easy to do without a lot of experience!

The first minute was tranquil and awesome to see the pottery being made. Fantastic information, thanks for the video! Cheers!

Okay, LOVING the pottery portion at the beginning. I wasn't aware you did this! So thankful for this channel

Things were just so labor intensive back then. I'm sure preservation options like this were a god sent.

My Scottish Grandma used to make a dish called Potted Hough and it was beef potted in a gelatin and really good. The beef wasnt minced it was like pot roast and kind of stringy like pulled pork and that texture still worked great potted.

I just found your channel through a throwaway comment by Tasting History with Max Miller, and I have been enjoying it very much. I like your film setting and the seemingly natural lighting which goes a long way in setting a scene. While I do like Max's deepish dive into the history of what he is presenting, I really like your setup and how I feel like I'm not only learning about the history of cooking, but taking in the beautiful setup of your filming area. I enjoy Lego more than I do cooking most times, so I pay close attention to the scene I'm trying to set when telling my story, and you do a very good job at that. Thank you for the content you have been providing! I was a GM of a fine dining restaurant with a waterfall wall in the middle of the restaurant. I put a lot of attention into the details of the table setups and decorations. Setting the scene so to speak is just as important as the main act, and your attention to detail (whether intentional or not) goes a long way.

I cannot get enough of your videos. Thank you.

To pot butter you essentially salt it (with brine) then remove all excess moisture (very heavy rolling pin) twice. On the second rolling add dry salt. Then pack it in very tightly (no air gaps) and salt the top heavily (2 inches thick). When you go to use it you need to re-hydrate it (also it going to be very salty to the taste)

I wonder how much nutmeg Jon added into the clay 🤔 seems like something he would do 😉

Your channel is so warm and calming. Glad I found it 👍

Just starting watching. Love the show, the history and the time period. Great job

The gang have a nutmeg intervention for John and take over Friday's show.

Oh but we do still use this preservation method. I love duck confit or rillettes using duck fat instead of butter. And then there’s the British dish of potted shrimp.