Home Canned Vegetable Beef Soup

Many perceive home canning to be making strawberry jam, canning peaches, making dill pickles and applesauce but in reality home canning is so much more than that.  With the exception of a few commercially canned foods like pickled eggs and canned pastas pretty much anything can be home canned and more.  Now, it is not recommended to home can pasta, rice and barley but I have had good success with all used in low amounts.  Home canning is an excellent way to put convenience foods on your table for a fraction of the cost of store bought.

The beauty of canning homemade soups aside of being frugal and preservative free is they are about the easiest thing to home can in a pressure canner.  You don't need an actual 'recipe' which fits into my way of thinking when it comes to soups.    There are two rules.  Only fill the jar with solids half full and always process in a pressure canner to the timing of the lowest acid ingredient.

I made a layered beef soup to home can.  Really this is just a name because the ingredients are added in layers but they don't quite stay in layers afterwards.  I had five 1 - L jars with one seal failure (right) that just happened to be testing a new homemade stock with.  Still, I put four jars in the pantry and enjoyed the other for dinner.

Home Canned Vegetable Beef Soup
recipe by: Garden Gnome

2 lb lean stew beef
3 stalks celery
3 lg carrots
1 med onion
12 small potatoes
2½ L beef stock
1 tbsp Montreal steak spice
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
½ tsp herbes de provence per jar

Brown the stew beef and cut into bite sized pieces.    Stir in Montreal steak spice and Worcestershire sauce.  Let simmer 2 minutes.  Remove from heat.  Place each vegetable into a separate bowl.  Cut the celery into thin slice.  Cut the washed carrots into coins  Chop the onions.  Cut the potatoes into chunks.  Cut corn from the cob.  Slice carrots.  Chop celery and onions.  Heat stock.  Layer the ingredients to fill the hot, prepared jars half full.  Add herbes de provence.  Pour hot stock over the solids leaving a ½ inch headspace.  Wipe rims.  Adjust two piece metal snap lids (or Tattler reusable lids or glass inserts).  Screw bands on jars (adjust accordingly if not using metal snap lids).  Process for 500 ml for 75 minutes [90 minutes for L] at 10 lb pressure in pressure canner at altitudes up to 1,000 feet above sea level.  At higher altitudes refer to altitude adjustment chart on Canning FYI page.  Remove from canner.  Adjust bands if using Tattler or glass inserts.  Allow to cool 24 hours.  Remove bands and test for seal.  Wash and dry bands and jars.  Label and store.