My crowd LOVES a good pot of vegetable beef soup, so much so that we’ve started canning it in 1/2 gallon jars!  You can add stew meat or ground beef to it but a good soupy vegetable base is important.

Here’s what canning soup day looks like in our kitchen.  This day we canned nearly 10 gallons.  I like to mark things off my list.  By canning 16 half gallon jars and 12 pints (for our parents) it makes for a lot of work but we’ve got our stash of soup for the year!

Remember when we can, we can big.  This recipe will easily fill 2-3 pressure canners.  The quantities below will give you eight 1/2 gallon jars and a Crockpot full for lunch.

We go to all efforts to keep from using store bought canned vegetables when making our soup.  We use lots of frozen vegetables, dried beans soaked overnight and vegetables that we canned.   Spices in this recipe are an estimate – due to the fact my husband cooks like most Grandma’s – shake and sample.  We grab our largest stock pot and we start by literally dumping our favorite veggies into a the pot, bringing it to a low boil.  The goal is to get this huge pot hot. If you don’t have these canned goods on hand, use roughly the same quantity of store bought fresh, canned or frozen.

At this point I add my jars to the oven and turn it on 200 degrees to get the jars to the desired temperature before filling them.

This will fill a 20 qt pot:

• 3 quarts of canned tomatoes
• 1 lg bag of frozen corn kernels
• 2 small bags of frozen sliced carrots
• 4 – 15 oz cans of diced potatoes, drained and rinsed (I’ve yet to find a frozen diced potato that I like)
• 2 quarts of canned pintos
• 2 quarts of canned green beans (or 1 bag frozen)
• 2 lbs of green dried peas, soaked over night (or frozen)
• 2 lbs of northern beans, soaked over night
• 1 cabbage head diced
• 2 onions diced
• 32 oz Beef Broth

Then start adding the spices listed below to taste….if I had to guess, we start out with 1 Tablespoon of each the salt and pepper, 2 Tablespoons of the Worcestershire and 2 Tablespoons of Texas Pete.  This is where you will have to trust your taste buds.

• Salt
• Pepper
• Worcestershire Sauce
• Texas Pete

Once it is seasoned to your liking, lightly brown the meat in a cast iron pan before adding to the soup.  Or you can add the raw meat to jars; whichever you prefer.  We have found that it’s easier to distribute the meat equally if we add the meat to the jars rather than to the soup pot.

• 10 lbs of stew meat lightly browned

Then begin filling hot sterile jars.

Use a knife to get the air bubbles out of each jar.  Once that is done, wipe rims with a sterile cloth and place on the hot lids and rings. Pressure for 90 minutes on 10 lbs of pressure.  The pints we pressure for 75 minutes.

Enjoy!