Over some time, I’ve shown you how to make homemade chicken stock, and how to can chicken. Those two things are wonderful by themselves, but what if you could add Veggie Soup Mix to the package which would enable you to have a healthy meal on the table in 15 min? That is the sort of thing my dreams are made of.

This post is all about that final ingredient. The Veggie Soup Mix. I hear angels singing as I type.

This is so simple to make. However, it does involve a lot of chopping. In my case, I needed veggies for 28 quarts of Veggie Soup Mix.

In my enthusiasm about this Veggie Soup Mix, please don’t think it was my brainstorm. It was my dear friend Kirsten…again. I wish she lived closer. I can’t even imagine all the canning brilliance she could impart to me.

For my family, this is often a lunch meal and we use one pint of chicken/turkey and one quart of Veggie Soup Mix if it is without noodles or dumplings. If I add noodles or dumplings, I will need to open some chicken stock.

Since I currently have 28 pints of chicken/turkey in my canning pantry, I needed 28 quarts of Veggie Soup Mix.

Begin by choosing your veggies. We use onion, green beans, carrot, tomatoes, and zucchini. A quart holds 4 cups; since I had five ingredients I needed a little more than 3/4 of a cup of each ingredient for each quart.

My boys were a huge help with this. I cut up the onions and tomatoes and they cut up the rest. (And ran out to the garden to get more veggies when we needed.)

Once the bowls were full of chopped goodness, we started layering them into the quart jars. On my stove, I had a huge pot of homemade chicken stock and would ladle the stock into the veggie filled jars until I had one inch of head space. Using a plastic utensil (plastic knife or spatula works) remove any air bubbles that might be in the jar. With Veggie Soup Mix, I slide the plastic utensil down the inside of the jar and press toward the veggies, all the way around. If the head space has increased, add more broth to bring it back to the 1-inch head space.

This needs to be pressure canned. Most veggies are too low in acid to safely can using the boiling water bath method.

Let’s look at my ingredients again.

Green Beans         25 minutes pressure canned
Carrots                   30 minutes pressure canned
Onions                   30 minutes pressure canned
Zucchini                 30 minutes pressure canned
Chicken Stock      30 minutes pressure canned
Tomatoes              15 minutes pressure canned

Even though I had two ingredients that can be pressure canned for less than 30 minutes, I pressure canned the quart jars for 30 minutes.

Always pressure can for the ingredient that requires the longest time.

We need to get the pressure canner ready. Put your canner on the stove with the recommended amount of water for your canner. I have a Presto Pressure Canner and I need 3 quarts of water. Let it come to a boil while you are preparing the jars.

Put your veggies in your jars and top with boiling stock. You will now wipe all the rims of the jars before you put the lids on.  Center the lids on the jar, and put the rings on to fingertip-tight.

Place jars into the pressure canner. Put the lid on locking it into place. You do not have the Pressure Regulator on at this point. As the water inside the canner comes to a boil, you will see steam shooting out of the vent pipe. I let mine vent for 10 minutes but you should follow the directions on your canner.

Once the venting is done, put the pressure regulator on and let it come up to 10 pounds of pressure. Adjust your burner temperature so that it maintains the 10 pounds of pressure. Quarts of Veggie Soup Mix will need to stay at 10 pounds of pressure for whatever time your least acidic food requires.

If  the pressure drops below 10 pounds, you will need to restart your timer. I stay close by keeping an eye on it because I don’t want to restart the timer.

Once your timer goes off, turn the burner off and remove the pot from the stove. Allow the pressure to fall to zero all on its own. That can take a half of an hour or more depending on your canner. Once you take it off the stove you don’t have to watch it.

When the pressure is down to zero, wait a few more minutes, then remove the lid allowing the steam to escape away from you.

I let my jars cool overnight, then I wipe them so any residue on the jar is removed and the jars don’t attract bugs in my pantry.

For yesterday’s canning frenzy, I chose to “raw pack” the veggies. I filled with boiling chicken broth but the veggies were cold. As always, when you raw pack, after pressure canning for 30 minutes, you end up with “head space” and the jar is no longer “packed” with veggies. That is fine for me right now because I am pressed for time these days. If I ever have more time (sometimes I wonder if it will ever happen) I will “hot pack” so I get more veggies in each jar.

If I were to do that I would dump all the cut veggies into a large pot of boiling water. Let it boil for 5 min,strain and then fill each jar with veggies and then the chicken stock. The pressure canning time will not change but you will have less “head space” in each jar. Of course when you put the chicken broth in there might be a need to add extra at meal time since the veggies took up most of the space in the jar.

It was a long day yesterday, but at 11:55 p.m. the last canner load came off the stove.

Well, I hope this is as beneficial to you as it is to me.

Soup weather is just around the corner.

Take care,
Karen

PS: UPDATE  NOTE: Canning summer squash, including zucchini, is no longer recommended. There is uncertainty related to the determination of research-based processing times. These products also have very poor quality when canned. Zucchini can be canned with tomatoes. A safety tested recipe is included in this publication.