Canning Soup – 12 Recipes to Warm Your Belly This Winter (2024)

FAQs

Can homemade soups be canned? ›

Answer: Vegetable, dried bean or pea, meat, poultry or seafood soups can be canned.

Simply fill your mason jars as directed by whatever repine you're using, put the lids and rings on, and place the jars into the stock pot. Fill the pot with enough water to cover your jars by at least 2 inches. As long as your stock pot is deep enough for that, you are ready to can.

Butter, milk, cream, cheese, and other dairy products are low-acid foods that should never be added to home canned soups before processing. Add butter and milk to soup just before serving. Products high in starch also interfere with heat processing.

Filling room temp jars with hot liquid is fine. But don't put hot liquids into cold jars, nor should you take piping hot just-filled jars and pop them immediately in the freezer. Let them cool a tad on the counter, then chill in the fridge, and pop them in the freezer the next day.

How long will soup last in a Mason jar? It's best not to keep these Mason jars longer than three to five days. During that period, check the smell and appearance of the food to determine whether it's safe to eat. Otherwise, past five days, toss the contents.

Chicken soups or other meat-based soups are also safe for canning when using a pressure canner, and those jarred soups can last for a whole year—just be sure to fully cook your meat before canning. You should not can milk- or cream-based soups, such as a New England clam chowder.

If you are canning a clear broth or stock—be it meat, fish, poultry, or vegetable—bring it to a boil before filling the jars. Use the soup pressure recommendations for your style of canner and altitude, processing pint jars for 20 minutes and quarts for 25 minutes.

I know that the Instant Pot Max has a button for canning, however, the research done by the National Center for Home Food Preservation found that it is not safe for canning because the temperature fluctuates during processing. This fluctuation can cause under-processing and you can risk foodborne illness.

Fill the pressure canner with one to two inches of water and get that warming up on the stove. Next, take the hot soup and ladle it into hot jars. Keeping mason jars in the oven on the lowest temperature until ready to use is an easy way to keep your jars warm until ready to use. Fill the soup up to 1-inch headspace.

Can you can soup with pasta in it? ›

Products high in starch also interfere with heat processing. Thus, add noodles or any type of pasta, rice, or dumplings to canned soups or stews at serving time. Avoid using noodles, alphabet noodles, spaghetti, or other pasta, rice, barley, etc to canned soups.

Evaporated milk gives body to smoothies, thickens up and sweetens coffee, and adds nuance and richness to creamy soups and chowders, not to mention savory sauces and even oatmeal. If you don't have much of a sweet tooth, you can also use it in place of sweetened condensed milk in plenty of desserts.

Use mason jars for quick-heat items like pre-cooked pasta, soup, cheese dips and other products that only require a few minutes to heat. If your company packages freezable products in mason jars, disclaimers should be included that inform consumers not to thaw them in the microwave.

3 Storage Containers for Frozen Soup

Glass containers: You can use glass containers like mason jars to store soup so long as you protect their contents with plastic wrap. Keep in mind that the sturdiness and inflexibility of glass containers can quickly add up in a way that isn't true of other alternatives.

It's important to warm up mason jars specifically because they're thick and sturdy. Glass doesn't conduct heat well, so when you pour hot liquid into a jar, the inside heats and expands. The outside doesn't get as hot though, so if the inside expands too far, the entire vessel will shatter.

Fill canning jars halfway with solids from the soup mixture. Continue filling jars with hot liquid from the soup mixture, leaving 1" headspace. Process in a pressure canner. Use 11 pounds pressure for dial-gauge canner or 15 pounds pressure for weighted-gauge canner.

Caution: Soups contain low-acid ingredients and cannot be safely canned in a boiling water bath or an atmospheric steam canner. Soups must be processed in a pressure canner.

As long as the can is in good shape, the contents should be safe to eat, although the taste, texture and nutritional value of the food can diminish over time. Home canned foods should be used within 1 year.