is it OK if the broth was made with veggies in the pot (NCHFP stock recipe doesn't use veggies or herbs)? Does it affect the acidity, is that why Ball recipe for soup with veggies using stock made with veggies (strained out) calls for longer processing time?

Do you want to can soup or stock? Two different things. You are trying to compare two totally different recipes for two totally different things with different instructions. The different processing times are because of different density. The soup contains vegetables and the stock doesn't.

If making chicken stock that that is pretty straight forward no matter which set of instructions you use.

If it is chicken soup you are making then you can use the Ball Chicken Soup recipe if you wish or if the chicken soup is already made and you used your own recipe to make it then the NCHFP soup canning guidelines are your only choice.

Dave

Thanks Dave, I want to make soup since we like carrots in it, though the onions would be mush after cooking all day then being canned so I would strain the leftover soup to make stock and then add meat and carrots back in before canning. I was just confused since both soup recipes call for stock or broth, but the Ball recipe for stock had veggies in it and NCHFP stock (which may be different from the "broth" called for in soup recipe) didn't, so I as trying to figure out diffrences in processing time between the 2 soup recipes.

I always hear not to make up my own recipes for canning so wasn't sure if I could can my own chicken soup with onions and carrots, cooked all day, or if I had to follow an approved recipe.

so wasn't sure if I could can my own chicken soup with onions and carrots, cooked all day, or if I had to follow an approved recipe.

It is a safety vs. quality issue.

With the NCHFP instructions for soup you could safely can personal recipe soups as long as it doesn't contain any of the listed "no" ingredients and uses the 1/2 and 1/2 rule.

But that doesn't mean it is recommended. The end quality of something that has been "cooked all day" and then canned and processed is questionable.

Dave

Yes, the onions will be mush and I'm sure tha carrots too so I won't put a lot in, we'll eat those the first night and I'll strain the rest for stock, add fresh carrots and follow the NCHFP Soup instructions for canning.

Should have made it this morning - it was supposed to be warm so I threw the carcass in the freezer to make soup this weekend, ended up buying hot dogs for dinner. It was supposed to be near 60 today but I never saw it go over 48, rainy and raw. Would have been a good night for soup - but Sunday night might be appreciated even more.

Our weather was rainy, started yesterday and all day today. A good day for soup, wish I had some to do up. Our temps starts to fall tomorrow.

I often make the Ball soup recipe; I cook the stock with veggies which I then strain out. To make the soup, I add fresh veggies per the recipe; they end up soft, but not objectionably so to me. When I open a jar, I add either a chunk of cooked rice I store in ziplocks in the freezer or thin egg noodles which I cook right in the soup.

Made the soup in the slow cooker today - just finished dinner. I was wondering if I strain the soup through a sieve to get the onions and carrots out, then cool and skim fat from top, can I add the meat (not much left in pot but I have some in fridge I stripped from bones earlier today) and process as Chicken Stock (25 minutes for quarts) IAW NCHFP instructions? Not worth cooking more carrots (5 minutes) and extra processing time (50 additional minutes) to make "soup", I'll just cook carrots with noodles when we open the jars.

NCHFP Stock recipe says to add meat back to jars but stock was cooked without veggies or herbs. I used 1 onion, maybe 6 baby carrots, 1 bay leaf, 16C of water and a chicken carcass plus a few grinds of black pepper. The roast chicken had been seasoned with lemon pepper spice mix.

Ball stock recipe uses onion, carrot, celery etc. but has you pour through cheescloth and I'm hoping to just use a sieve instead if that is safe.

Do the veggies really matter since meat is low-acid anyway? As long as I don't have chunks of carrots or onions left after going through sieve? Lots more meat in the jars than veggies anyway - and I won't be anywhere near half solids.

A fine sieve will work as the cheesecloth. I think they want you to get as much out, just in case some small pieces of veggies would go thru the coarser sieve.

I'm sorry but I really can't follow what you are hung up on.

If I understand you have decided now to forego soup and can it as chicken stock, correct? If so then the half solids rule isn't even relevant and no you don't add extra meat back into it.

Stock is made with a carcass and so contains minimal meat - small slivers of meat boiled off the carcass only. You start adding any more meat and you'll have to go to the meat processing times.

Since you have stock that was made with additional vegetables in it then the Ball Vegetable Stock instructions P. 401 are the ones to use - yes the vegetables can make a difference since they change the pH of the liquid and require longer processing times.

Straining with a sieve isn't the same as straining with cheese cloth but the vegetable stock instructions allow for straining with a sieve.

Dave

Thanks - I didn't know how much meat NCHFP allows for in the "stock" instructions but it's good to know that the veggies do make a difference in the pH - I never looked at the Vegetable Stock recipe, doesn't the meat (even with fat skimmed off as much as possible after refrigerating overnight) make a difference in that recipe? Processing time for that is 35 minutes instead of the 25 for stock (with meat).

We did eat a lot of the meat that was left on the bones, I also filled a jar with the meat, onions, and carrots that were left (about 1/3 jar) and some broth, refrigerated it to give my cousin tomorrow. I have 12 oz of meat left, but only 2 quarts or so of broth (put in the pot I used to cook the noodles, after rinsing it out) so I might just leave that for the guys to eat later this week when DD and I have Girl Scouts. The guys will eat that much by themselves, maybe if I'm lucky they'll leave me a pint, a cup left over will just go down the drain.

I was hoping to just be able to make my own family recipe (how many times have we heard that?) and not go through the extra steps of making the stock, straining it, then making the soup. Ball uses a lot more veggies than I do - but can I skip the cheesecloth? If you're adding veggies to the stock to make the soup, does the stock really need every last particle of the original vegetables removed?

You are trying to "bend" the instructions and make them fit what you want to do. That's not usually recommended but it is possible to do with some things. But to make it work requires experience and a good understanding of the underlying issues, the "whys".

1) you have read the individual instructions carefully and note things like "carcass", bones, trimmings, no carrots included, etc.

2) you have to consider ALL the ingredients and not focus on just one (like the meat).

3) avoid making assumptions because they are usually based on wrong understandings.

I was wondering if I strain the soup through a sieve to get the onions and carrots out, then cool and skim fat from top, can I add the meat (not much left in pot but I have some in fridge I stripped from bones earlier today) and process as Chicken Stock (25 minutes for quarts) IAW NCHFP instructions?

You are talking about canning left-overs, NOT making stock or soup for canning. And left-overs from a crockpot of it? Not much and probably not even worth all the work unless it is a huge crockpot of some kind. Just freeze the left-overs.

What you have is a meat and vegetable based broth. Vegetable broth requires a longer processing time than meat broth because more of the vegetables have dissolved into the broth than has the meat. Straining will remove most of the meat pieces but it will not remove all the vegetable particles.

Sure you can put any small pieces of meat strained out back in IF it is a very small amount similar to what would be off a carcass but no, you cannot add extra meat back in. Do that and it changes from broth back to soup and processing times change.

So if you don't want to just freeze the left-overs then use what you have to actually make chicken soup with and make enough to be worth while canning. Then can it as soup.

Dave

That was what I was originally confused about - why the Ball recipe for stock called for vegetables (celery and onions, a lot more than I would use) and 4 lbs of chicken, no meat or veggies in the finished product but processing time was the same as NCHFP stock with meat from the carcass. How much meat could be expected to be picked from a carcass? NCHFP doesn't give weight/measurement for how much meat is OK per quart. I also can't find pH of meat (just seafood).

Then the Ball soup recipe called for the strained stock, a lot more veggies (4C, including 1C of carrots) and only 3C of meat for 4 quarts of soup, doing the math that's 1.75C of solids per quart which is slightly under half solids but processing time is longer (90 min) than NCHFP soup.

I'm just trying to learn what all the factors are, and given that I don't really trust my stove, I'd like to process as short a time as is safe. The meat processing times assume the jar loosely packed to the top with meat (hot pack) and hot cooking water/broth poured in, so I think that's got to be 3-4x the meat that I would have in a stock, but NCHFP might think even 1C of meat per quart jar for a stock is too much (25 min not long enough). Any insights?

I gave a quart to my cousin so it's really not worth canning what's left in the fridge, I'll save it for tomorrow night. But since I have a lot of thighs in the freezer (bought at 95 cents per lb and now another store has them for 66 cents) I can make a bunch of stock/broth with meat for quick meals. My kids won't eat store-bought soup, it's too salty.

For anyone reading this in the future, I finally did contact Dr. Andress and there really isn't supposed to be any meat left on the carcass when you start, they rewrote the instructions for So Easy to Preserve but she says they might clarify a little more on the website that this is a STOCK not a soup, that's why I kept putting "stock" in quotes b/c to me a stock doesn't have meat. Here's her reply

"Here is how we re-worded it for our University of Georgia So Easy to Preserve book, below, although it's not a lot more specific. And I might now choose to say "Place large carcass bones (with as much meat removed as you can)": Or the other option is to not allow picking of the carcass at all. The directions really only allow for adding back the bits still clinging to the bones after cooling, not the all the meat stripped from the bones. So that's how we tried to word the order of actions for our book. But we can consider rewording on the website from the USDA guidelines, also. Thank you for pointing this out.

Chicken Stock (Broth)

Hot pack-- Place large carcass bones (with most of meat removed) in a large stockpot. Add enough water to cover bones. Cover pot and simmer until meat can easily be stripped from bones, about 30 to 45 minutes. Remove bones. Cool broth; skim off and discard fat. Remove the bits of meat clinging to bones and add to broth, if desired. Reheat broth to boiling. Fill hot jars, leaving 1-inch headspace. Wipe jar rims. Adjust lids and process. CAUTION: Do not add additional meat to this product.

Process in a Dial Gauge Pressure Canner......(etc.)"

Since how much meat is left on the carcass can vary, I think it's best not to put any meat back into the broth for canning, though I suggest that straining to get any bits floating might not be necessary. I also wouldn't add anything left at the bottom of the stockpot to the jars (sometimes I get little bits of bone as well as meat at the bottom of the stock).

I knew what stock meant to a chef, couldn't figure out why NCHFP website was saying to add meat back into the broth, this was from very old procedures and it turns out stock really means stock. Maybe this is clear to someone who's been canning for a long time, but I haven't had any training (beyond NCHFP course, reading, and what I've picked up on this forum) so when I read that you could have meat in the jars my first question was "how much" - answer turns out to be "really nothing". HTH

I think one has to understand the principles about canning beyond a recipe'. The guideline should be considered just that "GUIDELINE" and not rigid rules that one cannot deviate from it by following and understanding the principles.

The principle are, as I understanding:

1) to raise the temperature to destroy the harmful bacteria.
2) to acidify to prevent bacterial growth(if any left )
3) to seal by expelling the air out and make it air tight, by vacuum or closing the lid tightly.

JUST MY OPINION.

Stock/soup is not an acidified food. The question here was how much meat could be added for a 25-min processing time, didn't seem right, going to the other extreme you could fill the entire jar with meat strips or cubes (or even ground/chopped, I'm sure shredded is the same) and process for 90 minutes. I thought there must be something in between, or else a VERY small amount of meat for the 25 minutes. I am not about to make up my own processing time.

Killing the bacteria is dependent upon processing the food at the proper pressure/temperature for long enough to assure adequate heat penetration, which is dependent upon density. Shredded meat in broth is not very dense, but I'm not a food scientist, and no one has done any testing on different ratios of solids to liquid other than the "soup" processing time of 75 minutes. No equation exists to safely determine processing time for 1/4 solids, 1/8 solids, etc.

Sheila I understand that you are just trying to learn but you over-complicate the learning and make it much more difficult on yourself by throwing in all the extraneous variables and by trying to make the instructions fit what you want rather than using them as written.

For example - why the Ball recipe for stock called for vegetables (celery and onions, a lot more than I would use) and 4 lbs of chicken, no meat or veggies in the finished product but processing time was the same as NCHFP stock with meat from the carcass.

Trying to compare it to how much you would use isn't relevant. It is the way it is simply because all the ingredients for some vegetables ( not all the ones you use) were measured to create a total amount (far different from your end amount) and because there is no meat or vegetables left in the finished product (like you want in yours.

As I said above, you are talking about canning crockpot leftovers, not making soup. There are no approved recipes for canning leftovers. And you can't force existing recipes for canning chicken soup or stock or broth to work for canning leftover crockpot chicken soup. I can't say it any plainer than that.

Especially not for leftover chicken soup that you now want to play around with the vegetables and meat amounts.

If you want to make and can chicken soup there there are simple instructions to do so. You want to make vegetable broth, fine, as instructions exist. You want to can chicken stock, great, easy directions to do so. But you can NOT compare, inter-mix, or combine all the instructions for them to fit your needs.

For most of us a carcass is a carcass is a carcass so no, we don't need to know "how much", exactly how many ounces of meat will fall off to be equally distributed over the 4-5 quarts of stock because we know it will be minimal. That is the nature of beginning with a carcass. But in no way does the fact that a specific amount is not mentioned mean you can add MORE meat to it.

Ball recipes are safe. NCHFP recipes are safe. Choose whichever one you want to use for what you are making to can, not what you have left over. Do not compare them and do not try to adjust/combine them to fit your needs. They are not intended to be used that way.

Dave

I was confused to see that NCHFP "stock" had any meat in it, I was trying to see if my "soup" or (with veggies strained out) "stock" fit with any of these processing times, I wasn't trying to make the processing times fit my recipe since I wasn't even sure I could can it, and I had made it for fresh eating, not specifically for canning. I tend to leave a bit of meat (wings and whatever doesn't cut off easily with a carving knife) on my carcasses to make soup so I didn't know what "most of the meat removed" was.

But Dr. Andress did clear it up. She said really there should be practically no meat, and might change that recommendation in the future not to even pick the carcass.

And while I still have almost a quart of stock plus some meat left over after the guys made a 2nd meal of it (and I gave a quart to my cousin), in the future I am not going to even *think* of canning any leftovers. DS is having a pizza party after school so the rest of us might just finish up that quart tonight.

When I have time to do it and want to make room in the freezer I will probably make the Ball stock starting with chicken pieces since I have a lot of them, and either freeze the meat from the chicken pieces, or make soup according to NCHFP guidelines of half solids. Realistically, I'd probably have 1/4 jar or so of meat and no veggies (so they don't get mushy), 3/4 jar of broth. That's roughly the ratio we seem to eat, with lots of noodles thrown in after cooking in a separate pot.

My dad will pick a turkey carcass practically as clean as a vulture LOL, so if we have turkey bones left after Thanksgiving (he usually breaks it up and gives us a gallon bag of bones), I will make NCHFP stock from that and can it as stock. We don't usually have too much turkey meat left over after Thanksgiving ;-)