Pressure Canning Turkey Soup – Easy Homemade Recipe

Canning turkey soup is a great way to use up that leftover turkey and preserve a shelf stable meal you’re actually excited to come back to!

Pressure canned turkey soup is the perfect easy recipe for a hearty winter meal that requires very little work when it’s time to eat. Simply reheat with your favorite noodles, wild rice, or even mashed potatoes to enjoy perfectly cooked vegetables, juicy turkey, and savory broth.

What You’ll Need for Canning Turkey Soup

Tools and Equipment

• Canning jars – we prefer to use quart size canning jars for the size of our family, but you can certainly use pint jars with adjusted (shorter) canning time.
• Canning funnel – to fill your jars.
• Jar lifter – to handle the hot jars after canning.
• Pressure canner – mine is a Presto brand, dial gauge pressure canner.
• Canning lids

Ingredients

• Turkey, cubed – you can use Thanksgiving leftovers, cooked turkey for this, or you can use a cut of turkey you buy at the grocery store. I used a raw pack method using a few cuts from a whole turkey we needed to use up.
• Celery
• Onion
• Carrots
• Water or homemade turkey broth – I use water because the meat creates a delicious broth during the canning process.
• Fine salt – use your favorite salt, but avoid using iodized table salt as it doesn’t do as well in canning applications. I use pink Himalayan

How to Pressure Can Turkey Soup

This recipe is a raw pack method and deals with raw meat. Raw pack recipes are my favorite ways to do canning over hot pack methods because I’m not having to work with hot water, hot jars, and hot ingredients in a hot canner, on a hot stove… You get the picture.

With home canning, any large temperature changes are not good for your seals or glass jars, so I’d rather work with all cold, than all hot.

Prepare and Fill the Jars

The first step is to cut your turkey into 1 inch cubes and adding it to your clean canning jar. You can customize the ratio of meat to vegetables in this recipe without changing the food safety or canning time. I choose to do about 1 1/2 cups turkey with 1/2 cup each vegetable.

If I happened to be out of one of the vegetables, I could choose to use more meat, or replace the volume with a different vegetable, or let it be filled by the water.

As long as cook time and headspace are followed, you can tweak the ratio of ingredients.

After adding your turkey, dice the onion, and add it to your jar.

Next, dice clean celery to the size you’d want to eat it in your turkey soup.

Peel and dice clean carrots to the size you’d want to eat them in your turkey soup.

Add the celery and carrots to your jar.

Add salt to your jar (if using).

Top the jar with filtered, room temperature water, or broth, to 1-inch headspace.

Using a butter knife or chopstick, de-bubble the jar to remove sneaky air bubbles from around your food.

If after removing air bubbles the 1-inch head space changed, add more liquid until that is achieved again.

Once the jars are filled, wipe the rims of the jar with a clean dish towel or paper towel that is damp with white vinegar. This will remove any debris that might be hiding on the jar that could prevent a good seal.

Place the gasket lid on the center of the jar before putting on the ring.

Tighten the ring finger tip tight.

Process the Jars

Add two inches of water to the canner before adding the jars.

Tighten the lid without the weight first.

Turn the burner on to medium heat to medium-high heat, and allow the pressure canner to heat up. As the canner heats, the pressure will build and lift the vent.

Vent for 10 minutes then add the weight.

Bring up to 10 pounds pressure, or the correct pressure for your altitude, and adjust the heat to maintain pressure.

Check your manufacturer’s instructions for the correct pressure requirements for your altitude.

The processing time for quart jars is 1 hour 30 minutes.

The processing time for pint jars is 1 hour 15 minutes.

After the time is up, turn off the stove, but leave the canner on the burner.

Once the vent has dropped, wait an additional 10 minutes before opening the canner.

Allow the jars to sit for 5-10 more minutes after removing the lid.

Using a jar lifter, move the jars of turkey soup to a folded dish towel or drying mat to protect your counters from the heat, and protect the jars from the cold.

Can I Water Bath Can Turkey Soup?

This soup is a low acid food that requires the use of a pressure canner (not to be confused with a pressure cooker) to safely preserve the food. By using the appropriate recommended pounds of pressure, the food is cooked above boiling to prevent the risk of botulism in low acid foods.

I have a post about the differences between Water Bath Canning vs Pressure Canning if you want to learn more about that!

For more information on food safety and processes, you can check out the Ball Blue Book, or the Ball Canning Book for more information.

The National Center for Home Food Preservation is another valuable resource.

You can also look at your canner’s manufacturer’s instructions for helpful recipes and processing information.

Serving Pressure Canned Turkey Soup

Warm up your turkey soup on the stove and served as is, or with homemade egg noodles to make turkey noodle soup.

Try it over wild rice, or even over mashed potatoes!

Instead of cooking the noodles or rice with the entire contents of the jar, strain the liquid from the jar into a pot for cooking noodles or rice. This keeps the meat and vegetables from being over cooked.

Depending on how much you plan to make, you can add extra broth or water to cook your starch first.

After you’ve cooked the noodles or rice, add the rest of the jar to the pot until heated through.

Serve & enjoy with a fresh garnish of parsley or sage and a slice of fresh bread!

Storing Canned Turkey Soup

After canning the turkey soup, remove the bands and wipe the jars thoroughly.

Label the lids clearly so that you know what you are grabbing for your next meal.

Jars of pressure canned meats can last for a long time, up to two years, on the shelf for best quality. However, can technically last indefinitely, if the jar and seal are intact.

To ensure best storage, choose a cool, dark place for storing your jars.

If you happened to have a seal failure, don’t panic! As long as there isn’t broken glass involved, you can store it in the fridge and use it within a week like any other freshly cooked meat leftovers.

Why Should I Try Pressure Canning Turkey Soup?

Grocery store soups are often too small to feed your family. They also can contain ingredients I’m not thrilled about. Instead of turning to convenience foods prepared by a corporation, I prefer to turn to my own arsenal of from-scratch food.

Home canning allows you to source your own quality ingredients and have the knowledge of where it all came from.

I have total control over the salt, seasonings, and vegetables. I even control the size of the vegetables in my home-canned soups.

To me, learning to make from-scratch food is empowering! Any investment into my food storage creates ultimate convenience for my future self.

Canning soup is the ultimate form of meal planning to me.

I just open a jar to put over noodles, and heat it up to serve!

More Soup Canning Recipes

Easy Pressure Canned Beef Stew

Pressure Canning Chicken Soup: A Recipe for Beginners

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