Chicken and Beef Soup Came Unsealed
 

I like to can up my soups and send with the college student so she has healthy meals and spends less eating out and at the college. I canned 14 jars of chicken soup and five jars of beef soup and they all came unsealed within two weeks. What in the world did I do wrong? I have vegetables I canned over 10 years ago and they are fine. I did a water bath with them and hot packed. Should I have used the pressure cooker? I made tomato soup and it is still sealed. Any suggestions would be great. Also, if I am to pressure cook, how do I do that? I have a pressure cooker but have never actually used it for pressure cooking. My mom bought it for me. Please let me know you experts out there.

I only can vegetables, but I remember my mom always used a pressure cooker when she did soups and meats. Sorry don't recall the details.

It sounds to be like the lids that you used were bad. If all of them came unsealed. Contact the manufacture - they should be able to help you.

Sounds like the seals were defective. :-(

If your soups have corn and/or onions in them, the canning process takes a lot longer than usual. about 4x longer.

The soups did have onions in them, but so does my salsa and it canned fine. I did the tomato soup and the chicken soups at the same time with the same box of lids so the lids being defective seems odd as well, then later did the veg beef soup. Maybe it was the amount of time I processed them, was not long enough, then why would not the canning book tell me any different? Also, with a hot pack you would think it would stay sealed as well because no fresh ingredients to cause harm.

Anything with meat in it HAS to be canned with extremely high heat, at least to 240° F, which means you have to use a pressure canner, not the boiling method. Please advise your daughter to toss the other jars, just to be safe.

There are lots of resources on the web for canning information, you can also contact your local extension office for help and information. Some offices even have classes and will calibrate pressure cooker/canners.

Wow, i did not know that. And yes, they all came unsealed so we had to throw it out. If I just do the broth and vegetables and she add the meat later would that work? Just want to make the cooking a little easier for her. It is her senior year and she is taking 21 credits per quarter so that is a whole lot of work and not much time for fun or cooking.

A "pressure canner" and a "pressure cooker" *may* be two different things.....in that the canner is often much larger than what you have for using to make dinner in a pressure cooker.

There is a good chance that your tops coming loose was a blessing in disguise because these soups may not have been canned correctly and could have made your collegiate really ill.

Then again, if they *were* canned correctly, there's a good possibility that the jostling and bouncing of the jars during packing and shipping to college was enough to breach the seal on the lids. That, too, would make them inedible so they'd cause some serious gastro-intestinal illness.

Never play around with home canning! Always check with your local Home Extension Service for correct methods. Improperly canned foods can be deadly. Seriously.

Jan in VA

You do need to use a pressure canner. If you have one, you are in luck!! And after you use it, you will love it. If you had meat in the cans, it would need to can 90 minutes at 10lbs pressure. Don't try using a pressure canner without correct instructions. You can get a Ball canning book that gives all the info you need. All online, too, I bet. Don't be afraid to use one, though! I was at first, many years ago, but loved it after using it a season. Lots of things still can nicely in a water bath, too. Good Luck and sorry about all the open cans. I hate that~it feels like you worked your head off for nothing.