Caitlin's Creations

I've been wanting to can some soups in preparation for my due date, because I'm fairly certain that I won't really want to be cooking all the time. I love having soups in winter, so I decided to can some. I found this recipe in the book A Guide to Canning, Freezing, Curing & Smoking Meat, Fish, & Game by Wilbur F. Eastman Jr. The recipe follows instructions for obtaining the chicken meat for making this chicken soup. Ingredients are: 10 chickens & 8 quarts of water. Well, needless to say, I did not use 10 chickens, I just used some chicken breasts that I had in my freezer. =)

Here is the recipe that I used with my slight variations:

2 1/3 cups chopped celery

2 1/3 cups chopped onion

2 1/3 cups chopped carrots

7 cloves garlic, crushed one at a time

1 3/4 cups cooked, cubed chicken

7 tsp salt

7/8 tsp pepper

24 1/2 cups hot chicken broth

Now, before you start trying to divide all of this in your head trying to figure out how much goes in each jar, I will explain below.

In seven 1-quart jars, place ingredients in the following order: 1/3 cup celery, 1/3 cup onion, 1/3 cup carrots, 1 clove garlic, 1/4 cup chicken, 1 tsp salt, 1/8 tsp pepper, and 3 1/2 cups broth. Solids should not fill more than 1/2 of jar. Leave 1 inch headroom.

Since I really like chicken noodle soup, I did add about 1/2 cup of cooked egg noodles after I'd added everything but the broth.

Adjust lids. Process in a pressure canner for 75 minutes at 15 pounds pressure (unless you live at less than 1000 ft above sealevel, then cook for 75 minutes at 10 pounds pressure). Let pressure decrease naturally, otherwise your liquid will boil over out of your jars, which is a real bummer. Enjoy!

I think that's it, if you have any questions just leave a comment! Don't you just love how pretty they look with all the ingredients layered like that!