Canning with Chef Jo: Vegetable Soup

 Some things I can just the basics of and some things I can fully prepared. I find when using jarred ingredients to make vegetable soup, it makes far too much. That's even with using pint jars. I mean, there's only two of us for most meals. Canning some vegetables multiple times affects the texture when it comes to making soups. Some of the vegetables vegetables turn to mush when canned twice. That's just unappetizing to look at even though it tastes great.

Sure, I'll can about a case each of vegetable beef or vegetable chicken soup, but I also make three cases of plain vegetable soup. Why? There are plenty of leftovers that can go into a soup too like quail, lamb, pork, seafood, etc.  I don't necessarily want to can a lot of these soups. I just want to revamp the leftover meat. Remember my rule about leftovers: Serve once as a main dish, once as leftovers, and if it's served again, remake it into something new. Of course if I really wanted to, I could save some two serving containers in the freezer. But, my freezers filled up pretty quick with vegetables in one and meats in the other.

The first order of making my basic vegetable soup is the broth. In soups if the broth doesn't taste wonderful, the whole dish isn't yummy for the tummy. All the vegetable scraps got into the pot. Onion skins, wimpy celery, garlic skins and root end, peeling like carrots, potatoes, turnips, ginger, turmeric, beets, etc. The woody bottoms of asparagus, the stems of herbs I dehydrated, root ends of onions, cukes, celery, mushrooms, and just about every vegetable we eat goes into the pot or pots to make my broth. It also gets a healthy dose of salt and pepper. It's all saved in two-gallon bags in my freezer. It all goes into my vegetable broth before it hits my compost pile. My vegetable broth has to have a strong vegetable taste and be able to stand on its own. I'll can my vegetable broth many times during the year but the biggest bulk of it is early fall with 12 gallons made. I had all the scraps from the normal canning season.

So what goes into my vegetable soup? Think of a bag of frozen mixed vegetables...green beans, green peas, corn, and carrots, right? It's in there. Now, add some small green lima beans, petite diced tomatoes, potatoes, okra, leeks, onions, celery, and a bulb of minced garlic. For additional flavor, throw in some half a dozen ground bay leaves, a tablespoon of each thyme, and marjoram. I just mix it all the cut vegetables in one of those restaurant bus pans. Short on time? Go ahead and add 4-2 lb bags of the frozen mixed vegetables, I won't tell. 😉

Pack all the vegetables to fill three quarters of each jar. I'm using pint jars so I measure 1-1/2 cups of vegetables in each jar. I pour in the strained vegetable broth to within 1" headspace. Pressure can the jars for 75 minutes. 

These jars of locally or home grown yumminess sit on my shelf at the ready for pot pies, casseroles, soups, or a side vegetable. All the hard work of cutting and cooking has been done already for a quicker version of homemade goodness. With the basics on my shelves, a home cooked meal or recreating leftovers into something new is quick and easy.

Y'all have a blessed day!

Chef Jo