Canning soup

[prairiemom]

I think I told you last fall about getting 300 lbs of potatoes. At least I hope I did. Anyway, we've been eating potatoes in every size, shape and recipe you can imagine for the last six months or so and now some are starting to sprout. So last week pork roast was on sale and I bought some. I also had some organic celery and carrots. So for about $16 I got 23 qts of soup. In my picture I say 21 qts, because that's how much I canned. I also had 2 more qts that we had today for lunch (along with homemade rolls) So it ended up costing about 1/3 of what canned Progresso Soup might cost, and I used mostly organic ingredients.


On Monday I'll start dehydrating potatoes. My goal is to dehydrate 20 lbs. That will take about 2 dryer-loads, so I figure 2 days. My husband was skeptical when we got so many, but I think we'll come pretty close to using most of them up before they go bad. (I've given about 20 lbs to my married son. I wanted to give him more, but for some reason, he's not as excited to get free food and hasn't used them so much. Maybe the food storage gene is recessive? )

Not bad for an hour's worth of digging, huh?

[GAMom]

Would you be willing to share your recipe for your soup? I love home canning meats but haven't done any soups yet.

[prairiemom]

Just use your favorite soup recipe, multiplied by 100. (Kidding! Multiply your recipe by however much you want to can and/or have enough ingredients for.) In this case I used 7 lbs cubed pork, 5 large onions, 2 whole bunches of celery, 4 lbs of carrots, 6-7 lbs potatoes (not really sure how much, about 15 qts when cubed), six 14-oz cans of diced tomatoes (they were getting old and needed to be used), herbs (1/4 C each parsley and basil and 2 Tbsp oregano) and seasoning (6-7 cloves of garlic, 1 tsp chili powder from my garden, a couple tablespoons of Old Bay seasoning and four tablespoons beef bullion powder.)

I browned the meat and added the juices from that to the soup stock. The pork, veggies, tomatoes, herbs and seasoning went into a BIG stock pot with 10 Qts water. Bring to a boil, pour into prepared jars and process them in a pressure canner.

Rice and pasta don't endure home canning very well. They just turn into a gloppy mess, so you don't use them in your home-canned soups. If I want to, I can add leftover noodles or rice to the soup when I open the jars. I can add extra stock or veggies if I need a bigger pot of soup than one quart. One quart is the equivalent of two cans of Progresso Soup. But this is much tastier and healthier.

I have dozens--perhaps 75 or more--jars of home canned chili, beef and barley soup, turkey and chicken soups in my basement. That means that dinner is always just 10 minutes from being served.