I adore canning. After Hurricane Sandy, I learned it was a must if you want to preserve your summer harvest. Why? Picture this. No electricity and 20+ frozen bottled, homemade vegetable and chicken broth defrosting. Instead of whining my pressure canner and I got busy. So from now on, broth and other vegetables canning is my new mantra while I still have electricity. With Climate Change weather who the heck knows what is going to happen next.
Convinced? Let’s learn how to make broth and then can it. If I can do it, so can you.
Make Homemade Broth. No Additives.
Before I get started, homemade broth, whether it is chicken or vegetable is the best. No excess salt, additives, or MSG. (Here is a cheat article on all the hidden alias of MSG in your food. Um, a laundry list.)
- How to Make Your Own Homemade Vegetable Broth From Vegetable Scraps (The broth isn’t overpowering like many store bought broths.)
- How to Make Your Own Homemade Chicken Broth from Chicken Bones. (You can definitely use this broth as soup since it smells and tastes so good.)
- How to Make Your Own Homemade Turkey Broth from a Turkey Carcass. (The smell is addicting.)
I use my crockpot for everything but you could use your pressure cooker too. I own a smaller pressure canner which is made out of stainless steel. The above canner is made out of aluminium and I am not comfortable with cooking food in aluminium.
How to Can
You know I am video happy. So watch the video below. Let me know what minute you see my husband’s finger grace the top of the video. (Or when he hits my gloved hand since it is blocking the video…)
Important Notes:
1. Always heat up your bottle, lids and liquid. I use my oven to keep my sterilized bottles warm. (I set the oven temperature at 200 degrees.)
2. Leave a head space of one inch for the broth.
3. Let the vent blow a nice steady stream of steam for 10 minutes. See the National Center for Home Preservation’s advice on how to use a pressure canner properly.
4. Get the pressure canner up to 11 pounds for 20 minutes for pints and 25 minutes for quarts. (You may have to adjust your times based upon your altitude. Check your pressure canner’s instructions. ) I don’t leave, since it can easily go to 15 pounds in a heart beat. I haven’t gotten the hang of getting the flame just right so I end up babysitting the flame, adjusting up and down. If you have a trick to get your heat up to pressure and not babysitting it, let me know.
5. I use wide mouth Ball quart jars for broth since it is easier for me to reuse those cans for other vegetable canning. You should have some smaller jars available too just in case you can’t fill an entire quart container.
When the recipe calls for vegetable or chicken broth, I go to my pantry and there are my gleaming bottles of broth waiting to for me. No defrosting. Is that love or what?
And it all started with leftover scraps.
Join the Conversation:
- Do you can broth?
- Do you make your own homemade broth?
- Any tricks of the trade to share about canning?
Note: Affiliate Links included in the Post.
Kanelstrand says
February 26, 2013 at 5:31 pmGreat video and ah, the hands here and there are really unimportant when you offer precious information! I have never canned my own broth but I love using all of my chicken when I cook, so I often boil anything that’s left of it, i.e. the bones and make a soup. Lately I’ve come to be completely in love with a recipe that calls for this cubes of dry soup and I have been thinking on how to replace them. That’s why your post comes right on time!
Anna@Green Talk says
February 26, 2013 at 5:45 pmI can the chicken bone soup too. It is so good and beats store bought container broth hands down. Let me know how it works for you. Anna