Canning Soup

Well I guess I've been quiet on here for awhile. Between the busy Christmas season and preparing for a new baby (due in four weeks!), I haven't had gobs of time. My free time has been spent napping or hanging out with Adam. This past week I've been getting quite a bit slower with this growing belly in front of me starting to make it hard to move, so daily tasks take more time, cutting into time I get to devote to just playing with him. Thankfully he is more content following me around doing what I am, but I still like to set aside some one-on-one fun time with him, too. 

The week after Christmas our beef was ready to be picked up! We had ordered 1/2 cow from a local friend. We had been mostly out of good meat since fall, and had to wait another couple months before the butcher had an opening to get ours in. This was my second time ordering a partial cow, but first time getting a half. I had bought 1/4 beef right before our wedding, and that lasted us just shy of 2 years. I made the last quite a few months to almost a year stretch as much as I could, knowing that most people don't take their cows in until the fall and we were still a ways away from that season! Aaron and I had been having a hard time figuring out where to get our next beef as I didn't really know farmers around here and neither of us wanted to take a chance on 200+ pounds of meat that we didn't know would taste exceptional. So it was a huge blessing when "by chance" we heard of this grass-fed cow going in! Our freezer had just enough room for all the meat and bones I had ordered. Okay, minus the big batch of bones I started for broth as soon as we got home - I couldn't quite get all of them in the freezer and I needed to get them done anyway. I still have enough for another batch of broth. 

Thinking ahead to after this baby arrives, I had been wanting to have a few meals in the freezer so I wouldn't have to worry about getting up and figuring out what to feed my family right away. It's so convenient not having to cook!!! My gracious husband said he'd take care of it, but I still wanted to help lighten his load some and at the very least have a few loaves of bread in the freezer. Several weeks ago my sister had her first baby and she requested the meal I bring be freezable, so I went ahead and made a couple pans of freezer enchiladas for us, too.

In effort to make some room in our freezer for bread, and also get some more extra meals made, I decided to try my hand at canning soup. The butcher had given us a bunch of "soup bones", which was more like a giant partially-gristly steak on a little piece of bone. It seemed like a huge waste of good meat for just broth. I almost would've preferred them put that meat into ground beef and give me the bones separate. I decided to use it for the canned soup and just cube the meat and save the bones to make broth when I get to making that other batch. Canning soup is something I've never actually done before, so I didn't really know where to start. My Ball Blue Book had a recipe in there for "Beef Stew with Vegetables" that looked very much like the yummy beef stew I make that we like so much, so I decided I'd try that one. It's just a simple beef, onions, carrots, celery, and potato kind of stew. I doubled the recipe so I'd have two canners full and a little extra for supper that night. Thanks to my 16-quart cooking pot, this wasn't a difficult feat. I love having a big stock pot! The downside though, was the huge amount of vegetables that needed chopping and I had to do it all myself. It took me most of an afternoon to accomplish the prep work! When it all came together I was kind of disappointed that the broth it made wasn't richer and heartier. I like my stew nice and thick and rich, like a gravy. I know I've heard you're not supposed to thicken soup before you can it (and I didn't), but even then the broth just seemed watered down to me. I guess it's because I added water and it made its own broth, where normally I would use straight beef broth to make my stew. I was a bit disappointed, especially after spending all afternoon on it, but dearly hoped it would taste acceptable. Supper was a bit delayed simply because of my discouragement and almost not wanting to serve it since I knew it wasn't like the stew I knew we loved so well! I whipped up a batch of biscuits and we ate it anyway. And let me tell you. This soup was delicious! The broth was oh, so flavorful. I couldn't believe my tastebuds! It made me feel so much better about the 14 quarts that were coming off the canner that night. There was a little left for Aaron to take in his lunch the next day, and upon coming home he exclaimed that it was the perfect, most delicious meal! He said he could eat it every day, which is his ultimate compliment that he really liked it and honestly would enjoy having it in our regular meal plan. Success. I agreed that it was yummy enough to make again and again! Don't know what I was worried about. Guess I should've tasted it before making any assumptions. Normally I don't have a problem (or should I say I do have a problem?) sampling while cooking!

So now we have 14 quarts of stew on the shelf, which I figure should be enough for 7 meals. Now not only do I have food stored for those days I'd rather not cook, but there is space in the freezer now for more stocking up.