Making and Canning Chicken Soup

If you’re anything like me, you’ll prioritize ease when it comes to making dinner. I love chicken soup, and love even more that I can make a big batch to can and use later. This frees up precious space in the freezer, and is an easy meal to dump into the pot on a cold day. 

This is the second time ever using my pressure canner AS a pressure canner, and since I’m excited, let’s jump into it.

This is a LOOOOOONG process. I took me close to 6 hours from start to finish, so it’s best to do this when you have an afternoon or morning you can block out.

Be sure to check out the video I made for this recipe on my YouTube

 

Ingredients:

 

• 2 chicken carcasses - I use the leftover meat, bones, and skin off whole roast chickens that I save in the freezer. You can also use one full uncooked chicken for this recipe.
  
• 5-6 carrots, chopped
• 1 whole onion, chopped
• 3 celery stalks, chopped
• Salt, to taste

 

Step One

Put your chicken in a 12-quart pot and add water until the pot is roughly ¾ full.

 

Step Two

Next, we’re going to chop and add our veggies.

How small you chop them is up to you, I normally cut them all pretty well, since I like to save the meat and vegetables to keep in the soup. If I were just saving the broth, I wouldn’t bother cutting them any smaller than into a couple inch chunks.

 

Step Three

Bring your pot to a rolling boil. Once it’s boiling, drop the heat until it stays at a consistent simmer, and leave it alone for a couple hours to cook down.

I generally leave it for 3 hours, or until the water has cooked down to around the half-way mark on the pot.

Once it’s cooked down as far as you want it, you can taste the broth and add salt (or any other seasonings) to your liking.

 

Step Four

Place a strainer in a large bowl and carefully pour the pot into the strainer. This will help you separate the broth from the solids.

 

Step Five

Here comes the canning section!

Last time I made this recipe, it perfectly filled four quart-sized jars, so I split the broth evenly amongst those four jars.   

If you are just looking at saving the broth, it would fill two quart jars and one pint.

(Optional)

I like to keep the meat and veggies in the soup, so I endure the painstaking process of sorting every little bit to make sure I’m not accidentally adding any bone back into the broth. Like I mentioned earlier, with the recipe above, I got four quarts with the broth and solids.

Fill your jars so there is an inch of headspace.

Headspace is the distance from the top of the stuff in the jar to the rim of the jar.

 

Step Six

Wipe down the tops of the jars with a damp paper towel or cloth, place your lids, and screw on the rims finger-tight.

Set them into your pressure canner so none of the jars are touching.

Add water until there is at least two inches of water over the top of the jars.

Secure and lock the lid of your pressure canner, turn on the heat, and let the steam build up.

Once steam is coming out the spout, place your 10lb weight on top, and adjust your heat to keep the pressure at 10lbs.

With my canner, I know the lid is locked with a red button on the side pops up. Once that button falls back down I know that the pressure has returned to zero, or is close to zero. Each pressure canner is a little different, so be sure to check the instructions with yours.

 

Step Seven

The jars need to process for 90 minutes, so you can work on other things while this is going. If your canner is finicky, be sure to stay within eye-sight to adjust the temperature as needed.

At the end of the 90 minutes, turn off the heat and let the pressure return to zero. This can take upwards of an hour (or longer), so you’ve got more time to focus on other things again.

Take of that canning weight, make sure your lid is no longer locked, and carefully remove the lid facing away from you so you don’t run the risk of any leftover steam hitting you in the face.

 

Step Eight

Now we can remove our jars! Use a jar lifter (yeah, that’s what those funny looking tongs are called) and carefully pull them out of the water and set them on a flat surface to cool.

As they cool, you should hear a POP! This means the seal is good and the jars can be stored in your cupboard or pantry. If any of the lids do not pop you’ll need to store them in the fridge and use them sooner rather than later. You can test the seal by gently pressing on the middle of the lids. If they do not flex, that means they're sealed. If they do flex, it didn't seal fully.

 

Please let me know if you try my recipe and what you think of it, I’d love to hear from you.

Thank you for joining me, hopefully we’ll get to try some more exciting recipes and other projects in the future.

Hope you all have a freaking awesome rest of your week, and I’ll catch you next time!

 

-Alyx

Canning Green Beans

I don’t know about any of you, but the thought of using a pressure canner has been something that stressed me out to think about for a long time.

Recently I decided to tackle it head on and try my hand at canning green beans. Because green beans are less acidic than canning items like jams and tomato sauce, to ensure it has a full seal and is safe to store and eat later, you need to use a pressure canner.

I’ve skipped the whole section of cleaning and preparing the beans, as well as how to prep your jars and lids, since I plan on going over both those processes in the future.

So, let's jump right into the canning!

Check out the full process in my YouTube video 

 

Step 1

Before we actually do anything with our jars, we’re going to set up the pressure canner so it’s ready to go, since the water heating up takes the longest amount of time.

We want there to be enough water in the pot to sit 2 inches over the jars, but we can get this fully set up later when our jars are prepped and ready to go.

The recipe that I was following called for 2 quarts of water in the pot. After adding this, I ended up needing 24 additional cups of water to fully cover my 7 jars. I set the heat on medium to start the heating process.

 

Step 2

Now we’re going to fill our jars. Doesn’t matter how well you pack them, there will be gaps between the beans, and that’s perfectly fine!

I normally cover the top of the jar with my hand and give them a good shake to settle the beans as much as I can before adding anything else.

I had enough to perfectly fill 7 jars.

 

Step 3

During this section, we’re going to get a pot of water on the stove and heating up to an almost boil.

Next, we’re going to add salt to our jars. This step is optional, but I personally think it helps with the flavor.

Regular table salt is perfectly fine to use in canning, but the additives in it will cause your water to look cloudy, which is why most recipes call for purer forms of salt or canning salt. Again, regular table salt is safe, it just won’t look as beautiful and Instagram perfect.

For pint jars, you’re going to want to use a ½ tsp, if you are canning in quart jars you’ll want to use a full tsp.

 

Step 4

Take your hot water and carefully pour into the jars over your beans and salt. You want to leave an inch of headspace. Headspace is the distance from the rim of the jar to the top of the contents of the jar.

 

Step 5

Using a narrow spatula or chopstick, gently move the contents of the jar around to help release the air bubbles trapped in the beans. Another method you can do is to very gently tap the jars on a soft surface, like a folded towel.

Most likely you’ll need to add more of that hot water to make sure your headspace is at the 1 inch mark again.

 

Step 6

We want to make sure our lids have a clean seal so bacteria don’t have a chance to get in and grow, so we’re going to wipe around the rim of the jar with a clean, damp towel.

Now we can set the lids on top and screw on the rims so they’re finger tight.

 

Step 7

Now we add the jars to the water! They need to sit flat, and none of them should touch, so they don’t knock against each other and crack or break. My pressure canner easily fits 7 pint jars in one batch.

Again, double check that the surface of the water is at least 2 inches above the tops of the jars. This ensures that the water won’t boil down past the tops of the jars and cause issues in the canning process.

Put the pressure canner lid on and lock it into place. My canner doesn’t lock until pressure actually builds up in the pot.

Wait until steam starts coming from the spout, we’re going to pop on our 10 lb canning weight onto it. Once your pot has sealed, set a timer for 20 minutes, and let it boil away. Like I mentioned before, my pot doesn’t actually lock until pressure has built up in the pot, so once I’ve set on my weight, I went ahead and started my timer.

Keep a close eye to the weight to make sure it stays pretty close to 10 lbs, you can easily do this by adjusting your heat. Depending on your canner’s age, you might not even have to touch the temp at all.

 

Step 8

Once your alarm goes off, turn off the heat and let the pressure gage return to zero. With mine, there is no gage, just the button on the side that indicates whether it’s fully sealed or not. Once that lock drops down, I knew that the pressure was back to zero and I was able to take the lid off.

This is one of the more dangerous sections, so be careful! Use hot mitts to remove the canning weight and remove the lid. Always make sure to open it away from your face so any excess steam doesn’t burn you!

 

Step 9

The best way to take your jars out is using a jar lifter.

Set your jars on a wire cooling rack, clean counter space, or a towel laid out flat. I felt adventurous and used a thick wooden cutting board.

 

Step 10

This is the final step!

Your jars need to cool, and as they’re cooling you should hear the lids popping. This is your indicator that the seal was successful and your jars can be stored.

Any jars that don’t pop, you’ll be able to press the middle of the lid up and down to test this, will need to be refrigerated and eaten sooner rather than later.

 

 

 

And look at your beautiful canned beans!

Thank you for joining for this learning experience, hopefully we’ll get to try some more exciting recipes in the future.

Hope you all have a freaking awesome rest of your week, and I’ll catch you next time!

 

-Alyx