A Georgia Woman Went Viral for Making Her Own Canned Chicken—Do Southerners Think It's Weird?

Ask Southerners about the weirdest things they've ever eaten, and their responses will run the gamut. Everything from fried frog legs to pineapple-cheese casserole to banana-mayonnaise sandwiches have graced Southerners' plates for generations, and so we're definitely not quick to judge others for their food habits. Unless you prefer unsweetened iced tea. That tends to get people riled up.

Eccentrics aside, even a Southerner who loves atypical dishes will pause at the mention of homemade canned chicken. Canning has long been a necessary agrarian tradition for those who wanted to preserve and prolong seasonal produce, and homemade pickles are an easy way to add deliciously tangy flavor and acidity to any meal. However, canned raw meat? That's not something you'll catch preserving in our pantries often.

Recently, a Georgia woman went viral on TikTok for showing her old-fashioned canning and preserving hobby, which included homemade canned chicken that she had preserved in glass jars in 2020, two years prior to use. The chicken thighs were preserved skin-on and bone-in (which were both removed before use), and she quickly used the preserved chicken to whip up into a batch of chicken salad. See it here or below.

Our question: Do Southerners think it's that weird? Canning raw meat is perfectly safe when done correctly, and it was once a common practice in homesteads throughout the South and beyond. It's just not something you see much anymore. (However, you can still purchase processed canned chicken at the grocery store.) Needless to say, people were highly interested, with some remembering their own mothers doing the same thing and others expressing concern at the idea. The video post amassed nearly 65,000 comments and over 1 million likes.

While many might prefer to keep canning fruit jams and pickles, homemade canned chicken shows just how versatile your Mason jars really are. Would you can raw chicken?