Soup Starter

I don't know if you are like me, but there are days (some days more than others) that I really don't want to cook dinner. However, I do like food, and I love soups during the winter months. This recipe is a pressure canned soup starter. I believe I got this from either our Grandma J. or Aunt Gayle--either way, same side of the family.

Soup Starter
Layer in 1 qt. jar

1/2 tsp. Salt
1 tsp. Beef bouillon (or 1 cube)
2 Tbs. Pearled barley **See note below
Handful of chopped celery
Handful of peeled, diced carrots (I just cut mine into 1/4" thick disks)Peeled, cubed potatoes (fill to w/in 1 inch of rim of jar)

Pour hot water over top of all ingredients to w/in 1" of rim of jar.
Remove air bubbles.
Clean lip of jar.
Adjust 2 piece lid and canning ring.
Pressure can (not hot water bath!) for 75 minutes at 11# pressure.
THIS IS AN UPDATED time from the latest info at the National Center for Home Preservation: http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/can_04/soups.html. Originally this recipe was for 40 minutes at 10# pressure.

You can get 7 quart jars in a pressure canner at once. I usually do 2 batches of soup starter (14 total quarts) and this is what I buy for the veggies.

• 10# of potatoes (it all gets used up)
• 5# bag of carrots (mostly use all the bag)
• 2 bunches of celery (I use about 1 1/2)

Once canned and sitting pretty in your pantry, the only thing you need to do to eat it is warm it up. We usually add chunked stew meat (also pressure canned so I just dump that in too), but you could brown a pound of hamburger and add to it, or some cooked chicken chunks. If you like, add some diced tomatoes to it. My family loves this soup and it is great to eat with yummy homemade bread. It tastes like I've been slaving away all day long....just genius! That then leaves me more time to play in my sewing room!

UPDATE:  Barley is not a recommended item to be canned.  Eliminate this and just add already cooked when opening the soup to reheat.

Canning Venison

It's deer season already--archery starts in mid-September and goes through the end of the year. Hubby is involved in some metro hunts and has had one already as well as one for our oldest daughter. They haven't had the chance to shoot anything yet, because so far their hunts have been antlerless deer only. So the bucks got to just walk on by this time around.  And so did the turkeys.

However, on one of those hunts another guy shot 2 and then didn't want them because he still had meat in his freezer.  Guess he doesn't have 5 carnivorous kids living at his house.  He gave them both to hubby and he brought them home to process.

We are still not done cutting and packaging it up for the freezer, but I had enough stew chunks to pressure can a batch of 6 quarts.  I'm hoping for at least 6 more by the time we're done cutting.

Basic Directions:

Check the Ball Blue Book for more detailed instructions.

1. Cut meat into 1" chunks (venison, beef, pork)
2. In a large pot, cover meat with just enough water and heat through.
3. Add 1 tsp. salt to each quart jar, 1/2 tsp. to pints.
4. Put hot meat into jars--leave 1 inch head space.
5. Cover with hot water. (I usually heat up plain water instead of adding the liquid I used to heat the meat up in the first place.)
6. Remove air bubbles.
7. Place lid and ring on jar.
8. Can in pressure canner at 10# of pressure (adjust for altitude) for 1 hr. 30 min. for quarts or 1 hr. 15 min. for pints.

Usually we just open this up and add it to our soup starter for an easy winter stew--1 qt. of meat to 2 qts. of soup starter.  You can also add some diced tomatoes or a little bit of salsa to spice it up--both to taste.

Rachel over at Adventures of a DIY Mom also has instructions on how to can deer meat.   

She adds peppers and onions to her jars.  I might have to try that version and do a comparison with my family.

'Tis the Season to be Canning

Two weeks ago a gentleman from hubby's work asked if we'd like some tomatoes.  Earlier in the season he had brought a bunch of zucchinis to give away.  Apparently he is involved in a community garden and was "done" with the tomatoes.  They were also not the variety he thought he had planted and so he didn't want them.  I told hubby I'd take whatever he wanted to get rid of.  I'd figure something out based on whatever he wanted to give.

Be very careful of what you say.

The next day hubby brought home boxes, yes, boxes of tomatoes.
This is what I still had left after canning 35 pints of salsa on that first Friday and Saturday.

It didn't feel like I even made a dent in the boxes, but that's O.K.
I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth--or in this case boxes of free tomatoes.
So I got to work and did more canning, almost every day last week.

Vegetable soup (left) and Spicy Tomato Salsa (right)

Spaghetti Sauce

Tomato-Basil Jam

Mandarin Sauce

I added quarts of Vegetable Soup, pints of Spicy Tomato Salsa, quarts of Spaghetti Sauce, Sweet & Sour sauce, Tomato-Basil jam..  After all that I STILL had tomatoes. So I did more Vegetable Soup, more salsas and more Spaghetti Sauce.  The boxes are finally empty, after days of working on them.  I'm tired, but it also feels so good to see all that food on my storage shelves.  I am actually to the point where I don't have much extra shelving space.  That hasn't ever happened to us before.  I also had to go out and buy more jars. Also, can't remember the last time I had to do that.

Now on to something else...anything else.  
I really don't want to see any more tomatoes for quite some time.
That was a LOT.

Free Boxes of Tomatoes Yield:

• 24 pints of Jalapeno Salsa, Ball Blue Book (BBB) pg. 81
• 22 pints of Carrot Pepper Salsa, Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving (BCBHP) pg. 211
• 8 quarts of Vegetable Soup,  BBB pg. 65 or BCBHP pg. 402
• 10 pints of Spicy Tomato Salsa, BBB pg. 83 or BCBHP pg.205
• 21 quarts of Spaghetti Sauce 
• 7 half-pints of Tomato-Basil Jam, Can It!, pg. 61
• 16 pints of Mandarin Sauce (Oriental sweet & sour sauce)
• 7 quarts of Garden Vegetable Soup from BHG You Can Can, pg. 200. 
• 1 tomato cucumber salad for church potluck dinner.
• Gave away about a 1/2 of the small lid box worth of tomatoes to my neighbor Jack.

Total Jars:  115 jars of tomato goodness.

Then on top of those I also canned 28 quarts of soup starter (not involving tomatoes).
And 11 pints of Tomatillo Green Salsa with some free green tomatoes from my friend Jenny's garden.  Her pregnant body doesn't want anything to do with tomatoes right now.

That bumps it up to 154 Jars.

Yeah, no wonder I'm tired.
Redbox is looking good today.

Canning Ideas and Recipes

Here is a list of the canning recipes we have posted over the course of the last couple seasons.  Hopefully we've caught them all.  We will be adding to them as we post more recipes we've tried.

Peach Syrup

Peach Salsa

Dried Beans/ Refried Beans

Soup Starter

Vegetable Soup


Minestrone Soup

Pears and Peaches

Reduced Sugar Raspberry Peach Freezer Jam

Regular Raspberry Freezer Jam

Tropical Breeze Freezer Jam

Tomatillo Green Salsa

Apple Pie Filling

Apple Pie Filling #2

Chili, no beans