Canning Chicken Broth

 First, a reader asked about freezing pasta. Yes, you can but it may not taste 100% as it did before it was frozen. I take pasta dishes out of the freezer and let them defrost in the fridge at least 24 hours. If there's a dish that I can stir (not things like lasagna), I will add a bit of milk or broth, stir it all up and then heat it. That seems to make it better but even if I don't do that, we've never had a problem with freezing, thawing and re-heating pasta.

Vince had plans to go to the south side of Joplin today, which is where Sam's Club is located. I had been wanting to go there so off we went. He made his stops, then we went to Sam's. I love their rotisserie chickens. Walmart has them too but sometimes the ones from Walmart are giant and the breast meat is grainy or stringy and looks weird. I just can't even look at the ones in Walmart! There are four or five dishes I want to make over the next few weeks that require chicken so we got three of the Sam's rotisserie chickens. By the time we got home, they were cool enough to handle so I stripped all the meat off the bones and got five bags with 3 cups of chicken in each bag.

Next, the bones and skin went into my biggest stockpot, with water to cover them, a bit of vinegar, salt, celery, carrots and onions. That simmered for about four hours, then I strained it and canned it.

I canned 19 pints of chicken broth! Usually I use quarts but at this time of year, my jar stash is slim because the jars are all filled. I need all of the available quarts for freeze dried apples and pears that I'm still working on. Pints are fine for the broth - sometimes a pint isn't enough and a quart is too much. I have 1-1/2 pint jars but the pints were easier to grab. That's one canner load in the photo above. I used the small canner with 8 jars and the large canner with 11 jars. It took the larger canner longer to cool down so those jars didn't get in the picture. In fact, even as I'm writing them, the large canner is just now getting down to zero pressure.

Next project was to get the elderberries out of the freeze dryer. That's three half gallons of dried elderberries. When I need to make elderberry syrup or jelly, I'll just simmer some of these, strain the juice out and be ready to go. That's a lot easier than using the steam juicer and freezing all the juice - especially since I don't have enough freezer space.

Here's a little snapshot of other things (behind the elderberries and chicken broth) I've been busy freeze drying. Lots of powdered tomatoes. some of the little Sweet 100 tomatoes that the dogs love and will get for treats during the winter, another jar of basil.