Yesterday we talked about the difference between water-bath and pressure canning.
Today we’re going to put that knowledge to work.
We’re pressure canning chicken.
But this isn’t just about putting chicken into jars.
The idea behind this particular project is something I really love about preserving food:
What if one afternoon of cooking could give you several future meal starters?
That’s exactly what I was after with this Chicken Meal Starter.
What Is a Chicken Meal Starter?
Think of it as a head start on supper.
Instead of opening a jar and having a complete finished meal, you’re opening a jar containing the makings of one.
Chicken.
Vegetables.
Broth.
Seasoning.
The contents can then become soup, a skillet meal, a casserole, a rice bowl, or something else entirely.
The jar doesn’t dictate the final meal.
It gives you somewhere to start.
And for someone cooking for one or two, that can be incredibly useful.
Why Make a Meal Starter?
There are plenty of ways to preserve chicken.
You can can plain chicken and use it in whatever recipe you want later.
You can freeze cooked chicken.
You can dehydrate chicken.
But I like the idea of a meal starter because some of the thinking and preparation has already happened.
The chicken is cooked and preserved.
The vegetables are there.
The broth is there.
When I need supper later, I’m not starting from scratch.
That’s the kind of pantry convenience I’m interested in.
Not convenience food.
Convenient real food.
My Chicken Canning Day
This wasn’t a theoretical canning exercise.
I actually made this batch.
And I learned something about my pressure canner in the process.
I knew it was a good-sized canner, but I hadn’t realized just how many half-pint jars it could hold until I started loading it.
Twelve half-pint jars.
Not eight.
Twelve.
That gave me room to do a little experimenting with the batch.
I ended up with:
- 8 jars of Chicken Meal Starter
- 2 jars of extra vegetables and broth
- 2 jars of broth
That’s twelve jars of future possibilities from one canning session.
And honestly, discovering that my canner could hold twelve half-pints was a pretty nice surprise.
What Went Into the Meal Starter?
The basic idea was simple:
- Chicken
- Vegetables
- Broth
- Seasonings
The ingredients were prepared according to the tested canning procedure being used for the batch.
The important thing here is that the canning procedure comes first.
This isn’t the place to start changing ingredients, adding extra vegetables, changing the jar size, or deciding that a cooking recipe can simply be converted into a canning recipe.
When you’re preparing food for shelf-stable storage, the tested procedure is part of the recipe.
A Very Important Canning Note
This is where I want to slow down for a minute.
Don’t use this post as a pressure-canning procedure by itself.
Chicken is a low-acid food and must be pressure canned using a current, tested procedure.
The National Center for Home Food Preservation’s tested directions for canning poultry are here:
https://nchfp.uga.edu/how/can/how-do-i-can/meat-poultry-game
The USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning is another reliable reference:
https://nchfp.uga.edu/resources/category/usda-guide
Use the tested processing instructions for the specific chicken preparation you’re making, including the correct jar size, processing time, pressure, headspace, and altitude adjustment.
Don’t substitute a cooking time for a canning time.
Those are two very different things.
Why Half-Pints?
I chose half-pint jars because I’m cooking for one or two.
A quart jar of chicken might be perfectly reasonable for a large family.
For me?
That’s a lot of chicken to use at once.
Half-pints give me much smaller portions and make it easier to open only what I need.
That’s one of the recurring themes in my kitchen:
Preserve food in portions that make sense for the people you’re actually feeding.
What Can You Do With a Jar?
This is where the Chicken Meal Starter gets interesting.
A jar can become the beginning of several different meals.
🍚 Chicken & Rice Bowl
Add cooked rice and whatever fresh or frozen vegetables you have available.
A little seasoning or sauce can take it in an entirely different direction.
🍲 Chicken Soup
Add the contents of the jar to a saucepan with additional broth or vegetables as needed.
Add noodles, rice, potatoes, or another soup ingredient.
Suddenly, dinner is soup.
🥔 Chicken & Potato Skillet
Add the chicken mixture to a skillet with cooked or partially cooked potatoes.
Brown everything together and you’ve got a completely different meal from the same pantry starter.
🥣 Chicken Vegetable Bowl
Serve the chicken and vegetables over rice, mashed potatoes, or another grain.
Add a little gravy or sauce if you like.
🥧 Chicken Pot Pie Filling
The starter can provide the foundation for a small chicken pot-pie-style meal when combined with additional vegetables and a suitable topping.
And this is exactly why I like the word starter.
The jar isn’t trying to be everything.
It’s giving you a head start.
Those Extra Jars Have a Purpose, Too
Remember those two jars of extra vegetables and broth?
And the two jars of broth?
They’re not mistakes.
They’re pantry building blocks.
The vegetable-and-broth jars can become the beginning of soup or a sauce.
The broth can become cooking liquid for rice, potatoes, soup, or another meal.
Sometimes the most useful thing you can preserve is an ingredient that makes the next meal easier.
Stretch Every Grocery Dollar
This is where the economics of preservation get interesting.
When you buy ingredients and use them for several future meals, you’re not simply preserving food.
You’re preserving future convenience.
The chicken that went into these jars will eventually become several different meals.
The vegetables can be stretched into soups, bowls, and skillet meals.
The broth can replace purchased stock later.
And the work happened once.
That’s a pretty good return on a canning afternoon.
Kitchen Confidence
If pressure canning still sounds intimidating, I understand.
There’s more equipment involved than with a boiling-water canner.
There’s more to pay attention to.
And when you’re dealing with meat, there’s no room for guessing.
But there’s also something very satisfying about learning how to preserve a food that would otherwise need refrigerator or freezer space.
Once you understand why pressure canning is required, the equipment and procedure start to make more sense.
And once you have those first jars sitting on the shelf?
Well…
That’s when the fun begins.
Cooking for One or Two
This is really where the Chicken Meal Starter earns its place in my pantry.
I’m not interested in opening a giant jar and figuring out how to use three days’ worth of chicken.
I want to be able to open a small jar, add a couple of ingredients, and make supper.
That’s the beauty of small-batch preservation.
You don’t have to preserve like a family of six when you’re feeding two people.
Preserve according to the way you actually eat.
What’s Next?
This is where I’m going to let the canning series breathe a little.
We’ve talked about tomatoes.
We’ve learned why acidity matters.
We’ve used a boiling-water canner.
We’ve talked about pressure canning.
And now we’ve put chicken meal starters into the pantry.
But those jars aren’t the end of the story.
They’re the beginning.
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be bringing some of those jars back out of the pantry and showing you what I actually do with them.
Because there’s no point in putting food back if it just sits on a shelf forever.
Today’s preserved food is tomorrow’s supper.
And that’s the whole idea behind Putting Things Back.
A Note About the Canning Procedure
The Chicken Meal Starter described here is based on my own canning project, but this post is not intended to replace a tested pressure-canning recipe or procedure.
For current tested guidance on canning poultry:
National Center for Home Food Preservation — Meat, Poultry & Game
https://nchfp.uga.edu/how/can/how-do-i-can/meat-poultry-game
USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning
https://nchfp.uga.edu/resources/category/usda-guide
Always follow the tested procedure for the food being canned, including processing time, pressure, jar size, headspace, and altitude adjustments.
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