Why?

Adventures of a Modern Day, Middle-Aged Hero, on the Glory Road(to family security)

7.21.2012

Well, 80% isn't bad.

Without my wife and kids to get in the way, and emboldened by the canning lesson my wife gave me last week, I decided the time had come to experiment with the pressure canner I got my wife for Christmas. 

Rather than starting with something simple like veggies, I decided to jump right into soup.  From everything I had read, canning soup isn't tough.  If your soup recipe calls for rice, noodles, or barely, they say to leave that out..it will just aborb all your liquid on the shelf.  Likewise, no eggs or dairy. 

Based on those criteria, I decided to make up a big batch of my Zupppa Tuscana, and just do the last step, which is adding cream.  The soup can either be eaten without the cream, or the cream can be added as it heats up.  The flavor is still good without the cream(1 pound of bacon, two of Italian sausage, 3 pounds of potatoes and 2 bundles of kale...how can it not be good?)...the cream just adds a smooth mouth feel.

Pressure canning is not a difficult process...but it is LONG.  Quarts of soup have to process for 90 minutes.  However, your processing time doesn't start until you get to pressure.  Then once your 90 minutes is up, everything says to let the canner cool naturally.  When all was said and done, there was about 20 minutes to get to pressure, and another 50 to cool, meaning the canning took 3 hours, plus whatever time to make the soup.



The one on the right didn't seal.  I only heard 4 of the satisfying 'punk's' from the kitchen, so prior to going to bed I threw the unsealed on in the fridge.  It will make a good dinner Monday night when the wife and kids come home.  

2 comments:

  1. You guys are really getting a lot done! I'm never too sad when a jar doesn't seal because that means I get to EAT it!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks ma'am...coming from you, that means something. We are trying. Got a lot of ground to make up. One of the things we need to get much better at is logistics, as your significant other puts it. Tracking what we have and when it goes bad to make sure it get's used.

    ReplyDelete