Canning Bean Soup

It seems a little warm today to be canning, but since peaches and pears aren't quite ready around here, I had to find something to satisfy the craving to can.  I decided on bean soup...mainly because I had all of the ingredients already.

I followed the recipe in the Ball Blue Book (as usual).  It was pretty simple.  I started by boiling the beans and then soaking them for an hour.  After that, I added onion and ham hocks (one of the ingredients that I was trying to use up in my freezer - yay me).  I brought it back to a boil and cooked it for quite awhile.  I added salt and pepper, removed the ham bones and chopped up the meat, adding it back to the soup.  I then ladled the hot soup into my clean quart jars...six in all.

I started the pressure canning process on the electric stove.  This was not something that I thought much about, but it would become an important point in a few minutes.  I started the stove timer and went back to housework.  Every once in awhile I checked to make sure that I was still at the right pressure - although I never seem to get the canner to back off to 10 pounds...I generally can at about 15 pounds all the time.

Well, the weather became interesting, as it often does in the late spring and early fall.  Thunderheads came rolling in and with them came LOTS of lightening.  The power flickered a couple of times and then it went out.  Immediately, I thought of my bean soup happily cooking, unaware that it was without electricity to keep it going.

 

BBQ Canning - git-r-dun.

Not knowing how long the power would be out, I moved the pressure canner outside to the side burner on the barbeque.  Luckily, we had gas.  I really hadn't been keeping close tabs on how long the canner had been processing, just glancing at the pressure guage as I walked in and out of the kitchen.  So I had to assume the least.  I decided to continue canning for another hour (the total time was one and a half hours and I probably had done at least 45 minutes before the storm hit).

The storm passed.  The canner finished it's job.  And I was greeted with six wonderful jars of bean soup ready to put up for some day in winter when I don't want to cook.  One of the jars didn't seal properly so we will be eating it.  Yum.