Canned Food Recipes: Chicken Noodle Soup

I love chicken noodle soup. It is kind of a feel good and comforting food for me when you come home from outside and feel a bit cold. Did you know that chicken soup is to claimed to have a strenghtening power for your immunity?

It is really handy to have a stocked pantry for the occasions when you need the food quickly. Ideal for this purpose is canned food. Canned food is also a great solution for keeping the seasonal food available for the whole year.

I would like to share here my recipe for home canned chicken noodle soup.

Ingredients

To make chicken noodle soup, get ready the following ingredients:

• 7 onions (medium size), chopp them first on medium size cubes
  
• 7 carrots (medium size), cut them on 1/4 inch rounds
• 3-4 tablespoons of sunflower seed oil (or other vegetable oil)
• 6 celery ribs, cut them into 1/4 inch thick slices
• 1 chicken (6 to 7 pound), cut on quarters
  
• 2,5 litres of a cold water (or adjust amount if needed)
• 5 sprigs of fresh parsley
• 4 sprigs of fresh thyme or 1 teaspoon dried thyme
• freshly ground black pepper
• salt

And what about the noodles?

It is advised for health and consistency purposes to can the chicken soup without noodles and whenever you are ready to eat it, just throw the noodles in and boil it for a few minutes. The soup needs to be warmed up anyway and this way the noodles will always have a decent consistency :-)

Preparation:

For canning any soup, a pressure cooker canner is a must. A hot water bath isn't sufficient to kill all the bacteria.

Place the quarters of the chicken (with bones) in a stockpot. Add enough water to cover everything, including sticking out bones. Cover and simmer 30 to 45 minutes or until the meat can be easily removed from the bones.

Then take the chicken out and remove the bones. Leave the broth to cool and then skim off and discard fat. Remove bits of meat from the bones and cut them into small pieces. Add these pieces of meat to the other ingredients. Finally, reheat broth to boiling point and then turn off the heat.

Meanwhile you can get your (washed) jars and lids ready, leaving them in hot water. Then distribute the mix of chicked, vegetables and spices into jars, putting more or less the same amount in each. Pour the boiling broth into the jars (you can use a funnel) and make sure that you leave about 1 inch space at the top of the jars - do not fill it up too much.

Processing takes about 20 minutes for pints and 25 minutes for quarts. But make sure to read the altitude chart for canning soups in your pressure canner user manual as they may vary a little bit.

Enjoy your canned chicken noodle soup!