For as many years as I can remember, we have canned vegetable soup. It’s one of those quick, go-to suppers and or lunches. You can pop open a jar and add hamburger meat to it to make it a bit heartier. Chicken. Pasta noodles… it gives way to a lot of variety.
I’ll give you the way we like it and you can take it from there. The method is the same on all vegetable soups, I would imagine… It’s up to you on what you would like to incorporate.
Green beans
Potatoes
Frozen peas
Carrots
Corn
Onions
Garlic
Tomato Sauce
Water
Salt
Pepper
Those are the basics to what we like in our soup. I know there are many out there who use other types of beans, or veggies. Go for it. Make this to suit your family and your preferences.
We canned 43 quarts yesterday with approximately this much veggies.
10 lb peeled and cubed potatoes
6 lb chopped carrots
7 lb frozen peas (the reason we use frozen instead of fresh, is one…that’s all we had. two, fresh peas get mushy, frozen works best for us)
6 lb diced onions
6 lb corn (you can use fresh or frozen… we have used both, a lot of times, it depends on availability)
10 lb green beans (we had fresh and used those)
18 lb tomato sauce (or there about)
Water to thin
Garlic (to your own taste)
Salt and Pepper (to your taste, but we add about a tsp to each jar)
This is where you get to play… If you like more potatoes, add them… More carrots? Go for it.
Make soup. Make what you like.
Add it to a large stock pot. With your tomato sauce, it can make your soup really thick, so that is why we use a bit of water to help thin it down, slightly. I don’t really want ketchup consistency. 😉
Get your pot of soup nice and HOT! You want to cook it anywhere from 5-15 minutes once it gets hot.
Ladle into your jars leaving one inch of head space and use the same process for canning like you would always do. Hot lids and rings applied after filling your jars.
We process our quarts in a pressure canner (DO NOT USE HOT WATER BATH CANNER FOR THIS!!! ONLY PRESSURE CANNER!) for 85 minutes at 10 lb pressure.
If you want to make pints, it is 55 minutes for those.
Continue to follow your canners directions… allow to cool and for the pressure to drop completely before removing your jars. When our canners are cooled down enough to empty, we have a large, thick towel laid out and set our hot jars on there to finish cooling. You will likely see your jars bubbling still. They are extremely hot, please use caution.
Let your jars rest for a good 24 hours to make sure the seal has been made and your food is nice and safe.
There you go… the way we make soup. Take what you can from our ways and go forth and put up some great garden fresh goodness for your family while you can!
