Chicken Soup

We haven't come down with any coughs or colds yet, but when we do we are armed and ready. I have canned for the very first time homemade chicken soup. I really didn't use any particular recipe. I looked at several recipes and just ended up doing my own thing. Basically we just needed to know how many pounds of pressure for how long to cook in order to properly can the soup.

My parent's chickens have been butchered. I know...my dad feels like a piece of him died that day...but new chicks have been ordered and will be arriving in about 2 weeks for round 2. How easily they are replaced...

So anyways to make the soup, I boiled a whole chicken and made some broth and shredded the meat. Set that aside and sauteed some carrots, celery and onions in a little olive oil. Now I was ready to put the soup together. I decided to just evenly divide the veggies into the 7 jars (the number of jars that can fit in a canner at once). Then I added an even amount of chicken to each jar and threw in a small piece of bay leaf. Last I poured in broth until the jars were filled.

I was planning on putting egg noodles in the jars, but after researching a little learned that noodles don't generally can well so when i open a jar I will add the cooked noodles or rice or whatever I plan on serving the chicken soup with. I'll let you know how it turns out this winter when we open them up!