Canned Soup Starter

This recipe is a pressure canned soup starter--As my sister calls it, your very own convenience food to put in your pantry.
Soup Starter
Layer in 1 quart jar

• 1/2 tsp. Salt
• 1 tsp. Beef bouillon (or 1 cube)
• 2 Tbs. Pearled barley
• Handful of chopped celery
• Handful of peeled, diced carrots (I just cut mine into 1/4" thick disks)
• Peeled, cubed potatoes (fill to w/in 1 inch of rim of jar)

Pour hot water over top of all ingredients to w/in 1" of rim of jar.
Remove air bubbles.
Clean lip of jar.
Adjust 2 piece lid and canning ring.

UPDATED PRESSURE TIME

Per the latest guidelines from the National Center for Home Preservation this should be Pressure canned (not hot water bath!) for 75 minutes at 11# pressure. See www.uga.edu/nchfp.

You can get 7 quart jars in a pressure canner at once. I usually do 2 batches of soup starter (14 total quarts) and this is what I buy for the veggies.

• 10# of potatoes (it all gets used up)
• 5# bag of carrots (mostly use all the bag)
• 2 bunches of celery (I use about 1 1/2)

Once canned and sitting pretty in your pantry, the only thing you need to do to eat it is warm it up. We usually add chunked stew meat (also pressure canned so I just dump that in too), but you could brown a pound of hamburger and add to it, or some cooked chicken chunks. If you like, add some diced tomatoes to it. My family loves this soup and it is great to eat with yummy homemade bread. It tastes like I've been slaving away all day long....just genius!