Canning Soup

A few years ago my younger brother taught me how to can soup. He had learned the recipe from someone else and had made it so many times that he no longer needed to follow the recipe.  He just knew what to do.  That made it a little tricky for me to recreate it later on my own.  But I googled and found something similar and now I've done it so many times that I too can make *my* version without looking at a recipe.  Plus it's never exactly the same, even if I try.  Inevitably I forget something, or I decide to try something new, so every time it's a little different.

Two of my friends had expressed an interest in learning how to can soup so I invited them over for a canning session.  Unfortunately life happens - stuff came up -and we had to postpone our canning date.  But this morning, when it turned out that my little one was a little bit sick and would be staying home from preschool (life happens, remember?), I decided to take advantage and can some soup...even if I was doing it solo.  I documented it thoroughly so that I could share it with my friends.  Although I do hope that we'll still get together in the next couple of days for a canning session.  I mean, pictures are great and all but they can't compare with doing something in person with someone. But hopefully the photos will be a handy reference AFTER that!

I love this tomato based vegetable soup. In fact, I've shared the recipe before.  I'm not actually going to repeat the recipe now. This post was really just intended as a demonstration of how to can the soup. And even though I'm sure no one needs the photos of the soup-making part, I just went ahead and documented the whole deal.

Let's make some soup!

My brother puts a little vegetable oil and a little olive oil.  Sometimes I do that or I do one or the other.  Today I just used a little olive oil.  I threw the onions in first.

I didn't actually saute the onions, per se.  I just threw them in there and let them start to heat up while I cut up the cabbage.

I like to cut the cabbage in nice big chunks.  Those white parts from the stalk are my favorite part of the soup.  Yum!

I added all of the following to my soup.  I'm a vegetarian so I add some "fake meat". Sometimes I use Morningstar crumbles but I prefer the Boca crumbles. I think maybe they're a little bigger than the Morningstar crumbles, which I apparently like.  I also like to add some chunks of a soy product called "Vegetable Steaks".  I'm sure it's not the healthiest - with all kinds of preservatives and sodium - but they're yummy so I try to not think about it too much.  I like to throw in some dark AND light kidney beans.  I also typically add diced tomatoes and tomato paste.  Unfortunately I couldn't find tomato paste in my pantry so I grabbed a can of tomato sauce instead.  I happened to have vegetable broth so I put in two boxes of that as well, though usually I just add water.  I also added what was left of my Marmite, to add some flavor.

Typically I add the cabbage right away but today I added other stuff first.  I don't think it really matters what order you choose to add things. 

Let me put in a quick plug for my Pampered Chef garlic slicer.  I love having slices of garlic in my soup, as opposed to just mincing the garlic.  I use more garlic than my recipe called for, because the garlic isn't as strong this way, but it's oh so yummy! 

I added some green pepper.

 I added some celery.

At this point I tasted the broth and found it lacking so I added a cube of vegetable bouillon, to give it a little more flavor.

When my grandmother was alive, she loved to make soup and she always added bay leaves.  So now I always add bay leaves.  I'm not even sure what flavor they contribute and you wouldn't want to actually eat any of the bay leaves you encounter, but they make me think of my Grandma so they go into every soup I make.  And I have no doubt it wouldn't taste right without them.

I typically don't add a lot of seasoning - I think the veggies are tasty enough all on their own but I was being fancy for the camera so I threw in a bunch of stuff - parsley, basil, Italian seasoning...I'm not even sure.  I just sniffed spices and if it smelled like it would be good with my soup, I added it. 

I also added enough water to come up to the top of all the stuff in the pot.

After mixing all of that in, I took another taste of my broth.  I was feeling sad that it wasn't quite thick enough for my liking, so I looked around in my pantry and TADA I found the box of tomato paste.  I knew I had tomato paste.  So I added a can of that. (I always add some water to it first because I think it's easier to mix in that way.)

I put the lid on to help it get boiling.  At which point I realized that I never actually did add the bay leaves - just took a picture and then put them back away.  Oops!  I also remembered that I had some grape tomatoes I had wanted to use up...so I added both those things.

At this point it had already been sitting on the stove for a while but I set the timer for 45 minutes.  I just wanted to make sure that it didn't sit there too long without my realizing it. 

While my soup was simmering, I filled up an 8 qt pot of water.  You have to figure out how much water to add to the pot of water so that when it's full of jars, the water will come up to about an inch below the top of the pot.  Typically I just hold down 4 jars while I fill up the pot with water.  But since I was being all fancy and taking pictures, I actually filled them with water too to keep them down in place.  Once you have the right amount of water, remove the empty (or water-filled) jars and get that pot of water boiling.

One the soup starts boiling, I turn the heat down to about medium...maybe medium high.  I always crack the lid because otherwise it gets super messy as the lid bobs around and tomato soup sprays everywhere.

In a third pot of water, you will boil the lids.  You do this to a) sterilize them and b) soften the wax to seal the lids onto the jars.  I think you're supposed to boil the lids for at least 10 minutes (when using this method of canning).

These are the supplies I use.  At some point I purchased a canning kit from Amazon and I think it's totally worth the $12.  A couple of them items are pictured below.

(Sept 13, 2013 note: Not all of the items pictured are from the kit but not all of the items in the kit are pictured...just in case that wasn't obvioius.)

As the soup simmers, I watch for the cabbage to soften.  In this case, I started canning after about half an hour.  And really I should have started before that but I had forgotten to start my other pot of water boiling so I had to wait on that for a couple of minutes.  You want to get started while it's still a little undercooked because the soup will heat some more when you place the jar full of soup into the pot of boiling water and of course when you reheat it at some later point. 

There's my big pot of soup (I think that's a 12 qt pot), the small pot of boiling water for the lids and the 8 qt pot of boiling water for the cans, after I fill them up with soup.

My first jar is filled with soup and ready to move to the pot of boiling water.

I use this handy dandy tool to move the jar.  My brother drilled into me what a bad scene it would be if one of those jars fell while doing this so I'm always super careful about moving them.  The thought of hot soup and broken glass about my feet is enough to keep me hyper focused every time. 

I actually bought some new jars for this canning adventure.  In the past I've always used regular size jars but I had always regretted not having purchased wide mouth jars.  I was certain that they would be easier to work with.  Well, guess what?!  Almost immediately I realized that I'm not actually crazy about the wide mouth jars. The wide-mouth jars probably *would* have been helpful my first couple times canning but then I bought that kit from Amazon, which came with that great funnel.  With the funnel, the wide mouth jars were equally easy as the regular jars to fill.  Unfortunately that wide rim made them a pain to move.

(Nov 19, 2012 note: one of my kind, discrete relatives quietly pointed out to me that I was using this tool upside down.  *ha*  Which totally makes sense and I think it will work much better in the future.  So you can disregard all subsequent grumbling about how my tool didn't work with the wide mouth jars.)

If you're not using a funnel, make sure you don't have any food up around the rim of the jar, that could potentially cause a problem for the seal.

Here are four of my jars in the boiling water.  You can see here why it's important to get the water measured correctly ahead of time so that it's not spilling out of the pot when you add the jars of soup.

I can't remember when my brother told me to add the lids but I typically do it when the jars are still in the boiling water.  I have this fancy shmancy magnetic tool to move the lids from the pot of boiling water to the jars.  Once again, the wide mouth jars messed me up because these lids were bigger and therefore heavier so they didn't work too great with my little magnetic tool.

I used my same grabber tool to remove the jars from the pot.  (I do not have a clue what it's actually called, but I'm guessing not a grabber tool.)  I was again regretting the wide mouth jars because it was hard to get my tool in there without sliding the lids around on the other jars.  But it still worked.  I get a rotation going.  I take a jar out and then move a new full jar into it's place, before taking the next jar out.  That keeps the water up nice and high on the jars to keep everything sterile.

When I so remove the jars, I use this tool to hold them while I tighten the rings onto the jars. This helps get a good seal.

Since the wide mouth jars were giving me trouble, I eventually stopped even trying to use my little magnet tool and I just used tongs instead.  (These tongs also came with the canning kit I purchased from Amazon.)  The tongs worked fine.

Here are the finished jars of soup.  As they're cooling, you'll hear the lids pop when they seal.  Once that happens, the lids won't have much give to them - if at all.  These jars all had great seals so they didn't budge at all, when I pushed on them. 

After the jars were cool, I wrote the date on the lids. Now they just need to get put away on a shelf for a rainy day...or tomorrow.

One quick note about this particular soup.  It seems to be quite forgiving but the one thing that I learned is to  not add pasta.  My husband and kids love it when I add noodles but if you're going to do that, add the pasta when you re-heat it.  The time I tried canning it with pasta, I think the pasta pickled so it did not taste right and I ended up dumping a couple of the jars.  I don't think they had actually gone bad but they didn't taste right to me and I wasn't about to take chances.  Not to mention, the pasta soaked up all the liquid.  This pasta thing is probably some known fact and experienced canners are probably chuckling at my mistake but I learned through trial and error.  So yeah, take it from me, don't add pasta to this soup before you can it.

If you do give this a try, tell me how it goes.  I hope you enjoy your canned soup! My kids love to add gold fish crackers so now we call it "Goldfish Soup"...because we're creative like that.

Post Script: If you read the comments below, you'll see that my brother called me out on my broth and called this one a "crime".  (*hehe*  He's passionate about his soup!)  He doesn't approve of my adding the seasonings.  And honestly, I have to agree with him.  This tasted fine but I do prefer the garlicky-tomatoey goodness of my usual simple broth. He actually adds a de-veined jalapeno pepper as well.