Listening to: Necroticism- Carcass
Turkey is cheap right now, so grab a few if you can and freeze until you’re ready to can. Canning soup is easy to do if you prep your vegetables ahead of time and assembly-line your process. Pressure can for 75 min for pints, 90 min for quarts at 11psi (or higher depending on your elevation). If you don’t have a pressure canner, DO NOT try to make these shelf-stable, just freeze them instead.
Turkey Soup- Scale up or down as needed
Veggies: celery cut 1/4″ thick, peeled carrots in thin rounds, diced onions. I think those should be a part of almost every soup. You could add just about any vegetable you want, including peeled potatoes, peeled turnips, frozen peas, corn etc. just about whatever floats your little grindcore boat.
Seasonings: 1/2 tsp to 1 tsp per jar depending on how salty your stock is. I added 1/2 t thyme and half a bay leaf in each jar.
Meat: Meat for soup can be either raw or cooked about 2/3 of the way. It’s all going to be pressure canned for the same time anyway, so I just do it all raw and some cooked meat I have on hand. If you’re going to be freezing the soup, obviously cook it all the way through so you don’t give extra offerings to the porcelain gods. Use leftover Thanksgiving meat for this if you’d like
Broth: I used chicken broth I had canned previously. You’re going to need at least 1/2 of the volume of soup to be broth. Store bought is sacrilege, if you need to wait until the turkey broth is ready, please do so. The raw turkey will make a little bit of its own broth in here, but if you need to use store bought, go for turkey. Keep it simmering while you fill the jars so it’s ready to go.
Special Equipment: Pressure canner. I repeat, Do Not Attempt to Can Low Acid Foods Without A PRESSURE CANNER <3
0a. Buy a whole turkey and get the meat off of it. You can roast it and pick the meat off or just break down the bird raw. Either way, save the bones and fat for the broth you’re definitely making with the carrot peels, onion tops, etc. you’re saving for this.
0b. Get the pressure canner ready per manufacturer instructions
- Chop up the vegetables and separate them in their own containers. It’s Pinterest AF and sucks for the amount of dishes, but I promise it helps this whole process go faster. Cube the meat into 1″ portions as best as possible. You can separate the dark and white meat if you’re picky. Save extra meat for canning on its own some other time soon.
- Layer the jars: salt and seasonings first, then 1/4 full of meat, then a few tablespoons of each vegetable. Fill each jar up to 1 in from the top.
- Fill each jar with hot broth, leaving 1″ of headroom. Debubble with a rubber spatula or something that won’t hurt the jars, adjust headroom if needed. Fit the two piece lid on there.
- Pressure can for 75 minutes for pints, 90 minutes for quarts at 11 psi. The clock starts when it comes to the indicated pressure. Turn the heat off when the timer is done, let the canner depressurize on its own. Do not try to “help it”. Keep the lid on for 10 more minutes when it’s depressurized. This helps prevent “siphoning” or when the jars spit hot broth everywhere because of a sudden temperature change.
One project I’m working on as I write this is pressure canning an entire frozen turkey. The idea is to cook it just long enough so the meat is cooked, the skin won’t be crispy like oven roasted, but if it’s done right the meat should be nearly falling off the bone. I’m planning on making a bunch more soup, another batch of broth to reuse the bones, and rendering the fat for schmaltz.