# Canning sausage/vegetable soup



## Leay (Mar 4, 2004)

I make a really good sausage/vegetable/lentil soup and want to can some of it. Do I fully cook the soup and then can it? It would seem that the lentils and vegetables would get really mushy after pressure canning. Do I just put the soup together and then can it? Any help would be great!
Leay


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## judylou (Jun 19, 2009)

Pressure canning would be required for those ingredients.

Here are the current approved instructions for canning low-acid ingredient soups. Please note the partial cooking instructions as well as the 1/2 and 1/2 guideline for filling the jars with 1/2 solids and 1/2 liquids. Following these guidelines will insure a safe, high quality soup. 

http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/can_04/soups.html

Otherwise, mixed ingredient personal recipes such as this can be quite risky to can because you have no way to know either the pH or the density of the food and so no way to compute a safe pressure canning time.


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## derm (Aug 6, 2009)

Thanks for the link, I have been going 90 minutes on my quarts with chicken and beef in the soup.


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## Leay (Mar 4, 2004)

Thanks Judylou. I don't know if I will risk it. It does look like, though, if you use standard ingredients that you don't cook it fully before canning. The consistency was a concern I had if you cooked it fully and then pressure canned it on top of that. Thanks again.


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## judylou (Jun 19, 2009)

You are most welcome Leay and you are correct that fully cooked before canning it wouldn't be the greatest texture result. But you can freeze it easily or make it only partially cooked and let the pressure canning complete the cooking.

Derm - please note that it is the 1/2 and 1/2 rule that allows for the shorter processing time. All the extra liquid allows for a reduced processing time because the heat can penetrate so much more quickly.

But that would not hold true for your own recipe unless you do the 1/2 and 1/2. More dense recipes with meat do require the longer processing time.


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