Mason jars, Pressure Canner, Canning THE BEST Homemade Beef Stew

This is another delicious meal in a jar, today I’m going to show you how I can my beef stew with canning season, Here I can combine my garden vegetables along with meat in the freezer to make a convenient and delicious meal in a jar.

To me it’s a win-win-win situation, I get to preserve my summer vegetables I’m using meat in the freezer and making space and making a homemade meal for my family for the future.
I have five pounds of beef stew meat, onions celery, carrots, potatoes and for the liquid i’m using homemade chicken broth, I really like the combo of the beef and chicken broth together, you can also use water vegetable or beef broth.

I have everything prepped and I’m ready to can, I sanitized all my jars and I have my canner on the stove filled with two inches of water and I put in a splash of white vinegar the vinegar helps to decrease the mineral deposits on the jar while canning.

Today I’m canning quart jars and my canner holds seven quarts, I’m evenly distributing my beef cubes into the quart jars, I find that eight to ten pieces of meat per jar fits nicely, remember we have lots of veggies to go in here. I’m just gently pressing down on the meat to fill in some of the air gaps and make room, I want to be able to stuff as much goodness in that jar as i can and be safe you could also brown off your beef before canning, I like the beef for all packs so i’m skipping this step.

Next are the potatoes the key to the vegetables is cutting them in similar sizes, you want them nice bite size and not too small because they will become mushy during the canning process, you can add any amount of each vegetable that you like or delete the vegetables that you don’t like. I’m putting in about a half a cup of the potatoes and a quarter cup each of the onions carrots and celery with each layer I’m giving it a gentle push to make more space you want a little air space for the broth to fill in the gaps the liquid acts as a conductor and will help bring the internal temp of the ingredients, up enough to kill all the bacteria.

I did add a half a teaspoon of salt to each jar but that was all you could add some pepper thyme garlic or any dried herbs or spices that you like. I like to keep it simple while canning and then add the spices during cooking depending on what I’m making.
You can turn this preserved jar of ingredients into beef stew a beef soup by adding more broth tomatoes and spices a beef pot pie you can serve it with rice or pasta and you can make it any flavor profile that you like.

I’m filling each jar with hot chicken broth and I’m leaving the recommended one-inch headspace and don’t forget to de-bubble this is an important step to get out all the extra air give the ingredients another gentle push down and remove any extra veggies if needed to meet the one inch headspace, I’m giving the rims a wipe with a white vinegar cloth placing on my lids and rings finger tight for candy beef stew in court jars.