BrambleStitches

This weekend my friend, John Silveira, came over, and together we canned 33 pints of soup. And we had so much fun that we decided to try to can something every weekend all winter long.

Saturday we made kale soup.

The recipe is here. We made a triple batch. Pressure can pints for 75 minutes at 10 pounds pressure (if you are below 1000 feet sea level).

Sunday we made chicken soup with rice, lentils, yellow peas, and pearl barley. It is the best chicken soup I’ve ever had.

The recipe:

Chicken soup with split peas and lentils

7 cups chicken stock

2 cups vegetable stock

4 chicken thighs, boneless and skinless, cubed

1 large onion, diced

1 large carrot, peeled and sliced thin

2 stalks celery, sliced thin

½ cup red lentils

¼ cup pearl barley

1 cup split yellow peas

¼ cup parsley, chopped

1½ tsp Italian seasoning

1 bay leaf

salt, to taste

fresh ground black pepper, to taste

¼ tsp. cayenne pepper

¼ cup short grain white rice

8 medium size white mushrooms, quartered

8 or more cloves of garlic, minced

Combine all but the last three ingredients in a large pot.  Bring to a boil then lower the heat to a simmer and let it cook for about an hour, stirring regularly to keep it from catching on the bottom of the pot.  If it gets too thick, add some water or more stock.  When the peas and lentils are cooked, add the white rice, mushrooms, and garlic and let cook another 25 minutes.  Remove the bay leaf and serve.

When preparing soups to can, you need to adjust how much time you cook the soup before you can it. Canning takes over an hour at hotter-than-boiling temperature, so things like pasta and rice can get over cooked. What we did with the above recipe was put the peas and lentils in and cooked until they were just tender, then threw the rice, mushrooms, and garlic in and canned it without cooking for the additional 25 minutes.

Pressure can for 75 minutes at 10 pounds pressure (if you live below 1000 feet sea level).

Canning/Preserving