Home canned soups must be pressure canned.
There are two categories of recipes for home-canned soups.
There’s the “free-wheelin'” recipe guidelines from the USDA, which give a creative cook a set of safe guidelines inside which to create a limitless range of wonderful soups of varied flavours. We call this the “your choice” canned soup guidelines.”
And there are fixed soup recipes, which you need to pretty much follow to the letter.
Reputable sources for home canned soup recipes
Reputable sources for home canned soup recipes are:
- USDA
- Ball
- Bernardin
- University Extension Services
For the most part, university extensions will just repeat the USDA’s “your choice” soup guidelines.
There are no other reputable sources that we are aware of for safe, lab-tested soup recipes.
Three fixed soup recipes: split pea, zesty tomato, and carrot with fennel.
Fixed soup recipes
The USDA’s “your choice” guidelines require you to adhere to some rules. The USDA’s guidelines say, for instance, not to can thick, puréed soups, because density is normally a problem in ensuring the safety of home-canned soups.
Some soup recipes, though, from Bernardin and Ball break both the puréed and thick guidelines. For instance, they give a recipe for a split pea soup that turns out thick and dense, and a recipe for a puréed carrot soup.
That’s okay though: those particular recipes were lab-tested with jars that had been inoculated with bacteria and then heated with heat sensors in the jars to ensure all the bacteria were killed.
So, while puréeing is generally a no-no, if Ball or Bernardin say a soup should be puréed, then it’s safe to do so and you should. Again, the difference is, they had lab equipment to test.
Ball gives a few soup recipes in its Blue Book (such as its Beef Stew), and Bernardin gives a few soup recipes in its Bernardin guide. There’s not much advantage soup-wise to looking to the Ball / Bernardin Complete book, as that just repeats a subset of the same soup recipes in those two books.
The University of Georgia has released a recipe found nowhere else, “Spicy Tomato Vegetable Soup.”
Here’s a link to the fixed soup recipes for canning we have listed so far.
Home-canned soups for water bathing
Most soup recipes are for pressure canning. Here is a list of soup recipes from reputable sources that can be water-bathed.
What to avoid in home canned soups
Penn State says, “Creamed soups are not suitable for home canning because their ingredients interfere with the proper transfer of heat during the processing step.”1 Penn State should have added this proviso: unless it’s a lab-tested recipe from a reputable source.
Penn State also says, “Avoid canning pumpkin, winter squash, broccoli, or cauliflower soup. These pack together and contain ingredients that interfere with safe processing. There are no scientifically research tested recipes for these soups.”2
Avoid canning tomato soup in a thickened or creamed state. Feel free to do what you will to it once you open the jar, though! Zap in microwave, and stir in a few dollops of thick, non-fat Greek yoghurt. Or stir in a bit of DIY SOS Mix. Delicious!
Making Soup Safely. Blog Entry. Penn State Extension. 22 October 2012. Accessed March 2015. ↩
I have lost my butternut squash and white bean soup recipe that I use to can for the last few years if someone has that recipe also using in it rosemary, I sure would be great full for . Thank you kat
I want to can my zucchini soup, already pureed. It has chicken stock, fresh basil, Greek yogurt, and coconut milk. No pressure canner, just boiling water. Is it safe like the pureed soups mentioned?
Hi Amgie,
According to the research, that would absolutely be unsafe to home can via water bath because it is low-acid and it would need the high heat of a pressure canner, BUT they would say that a pressure canner either wouldn’t be safe for it because it’s pureed (density issues that were untested and zucchini is particularly mentioned in the literature for that) PLUS it contains dairy, so that is a double whammy against it. They would tell you to freeze that.