Canning Parsnips

Canning parsnips is an easy way to keep a sweet root vegetable on the shelf all winter. The jars go straight into soup, stew, or a pot pie, with no peeling and no chopping when you’re already trying to get dinner on the table.

We grow a lot of parsnips, and this is a great way to store them if you don’t have a root cellar or spare refrigerator to keep them fresh all winter. They come out sweet and tender, and having them already peeled and cut makes for easy meals right off the pantry shelf. A jar goes in the pot with no prep at all, which is a lifesaver on busy weeknights.

Parsnips are low acid, so this is a pressure canning recipe. Vegetables cannot be processed in a water bath canner. It just doesn’t get hot enough to preserve anything that’s not a jam, jelly, or pickle. If you’ve never pressure canned, my pressure canning for beginners guide walks through everything you need to know.

The process here comes from the root vegetable directions in the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving, with specific instructions for canning parsnips from the Michigan State University Extension (Michigan Fresh bulletin HNI44). This is a tested, university extension-approved recipe.

Choosing Parsnips for Canning

Go for small to medium parsnips. They’re the sweetest and the least woody. Skip anything wrinkled or rubbery, anything with long stringy tails, and the giant ones that look like a bargain but are mostly core.

Parsnips that have been through a hard frost are sweeter, because the cold turns their starch to sugar. Texture is harder to call. People ask me whether canned parsnips come out mushy, and honestly it depends on the parsnips more than on anything you do. I’ve had firm batches and softer ones from the same method. Bigger chunks hold up better than a fine dice.

You’ll want 16 to 18 pounds for a canner load of 7 quarts, or 10 to 12 pounds for 9 pints. That’s a lot of peeling, so put a podcast on and do it all in one go.

Preparing Parsnips for Canning

Always peel root vegetables for canning. This is a safety step, not a texture thing. Parsnips grow in the dirt, and garden soil carries microbes you don’t want sealed into a jar. Peeling takes most of it off before the jar ever goes in the canner, and it gets rid of the stringy outer layer too, which tastes bitter after processing.

A Y-shaped peeler is fastest on a long tapered root, but any sharp peeler works. Cut the peeled parsnips into chunks of roughly the same size so they heat through evenly. The skinny tips won’t give you decent chunks, so dice those small or set them aside for dinner that night.

Some people core their parsnips first. I don’t bother, since young roots taste the same all the way through. If you’re stuck with big overgrown ones and the core looks pale and woody next to the rest, cut it out.

Ingredients for Canning Parsnips

Three things, and one of them is optional. Amounts are in the recipe card below.

• Parsnips: Small to medium, peeled and cut into even chunks. Fall parsnips are sweeter than summer ones. Turnips and rutabaga can be canned the same way on the same time if you want to swap.
• Water: Plain boiling water, or the liquid you blanched them in. I use the blanching liquid, since it carries a little flavor back into the jar.
• Salt: Optional, and for flavor only. It does nothing for safety. Canning and pickling salt like Morton canning and pickling salt keeps the liquid clear, while table salt clouds it up.

Nothing else goes in the jar. No butter, no broth, no flour or cornstarch, no sugar glaze. Those change how heat moves through the jar, and the tested time assumes plain parsnips in plain liquid. Save the good stuff for when you open it.

How to Can Parsnips

Peel, cut, boil briefly, pack hot, process. Almost all the work is at the cutting board.

Get your pressure canner going with a few inches of water in the bottom, wash your jars and keep them warm, and set out your lids, bands, jar lifter, and canning funnel. Start with warm jars, because hot parsnips in a cold jar can give you a cracked jar from thermal shock.

Blanch the Parsnips

Cut parsnips brown a bit at the edges while they sit. It doesn’t hurt anything and evens out in the jar, so I don’t bother holding them in water. If it bugs you, keep them in cold water and drain them well before they go in the pot.

Bring a big pot of water to a hard boil and add the parsnips. Don’t start the timer until the water comes back up to a boil, and work in batches if your pot is small. Boil 5 minutes. That’s what makes it a hot pack, and it drives the air out so the pieces don’t float. Keep the water boiling, because it’s going in the jars.

Pack the Jars

Pack the hot parsnips into your warm jars, leaving 1 inch of headspace. Don’t press them down into a solid mass. If you’re adding salt, do it now.

Ladle the boiling liquid over them, keeping that same 1 inch of headspace. Run a chopstick or bubble tool around the inside of each jar to let trapped air out, top up the liquid if it dropped, wipe the rims with a clean damp cloth, and put the lids on fingertip tight.

Canning Parsnips

Parsnips have to go in a pressure canner, dial gauge or weighted gauge. A water bath canner can’t get hot enough for a low-acid vegetable, and there’s no tested water bath process for plain parsnips at any jar size. No pressure canner? Freeze them instead.

Load the jars onto the rack, check the water level against what your canner’s manual says, and fasten the lid. Let steam vent in a steady stream for a full 10 minutes before you add the weight or close the petcock. Start the timer once it comes up to pressure.

Process pints for 30 minutes or quarts for 35 minutes, at 10 pounds pressure in a weighted gauge canner or 11 pounds in a dial gauge canner, adjusting for altitude with the chart below.

When the timer goes off, turn off the heat and let the canner come down on its own. Don’t run it under water and don’t lift the weight early. Once it’s down, slowly take the weight off or open the petcock, wait 2 minutes, then unfasten the lid and open it away from you.

Lift the jars out and set them on a towel with an inch of space around each one, somewhere out of a draft. Leave them 12 to 24 hours.

Ways to Use Canned Parsnips

They’re already cooked, so it’s all reheating from here. Drained and patted dry, they roast fast at high heat, faster than raw parsnips, since the water’s already out of them.

Straight from the jar they go into pot pie filling, shepherd’s pie, and any braise that wants something sweet against the meat. That’s where most of mine end up. They also drop into vegetable soup or vegetable beef stew at the last minute, jar liquid and all.

I mash them a lot too, on their own or with celeriac and white beans. But the one I keep coming back to takes two minutes: drain a jar, warm them in a pan with butter and a spoonful of maple syrup, and let them take a little color with salt and pepper. The stronger flavor canning gives them is an asset there. If you’re canning carrots at the same time, carrot soup and beef pot pie filling both take parsnips well.

Storage and Shelf Life

Once the jars have cooled, press the center of each lid. A sealed lid curves down and doesn’t move or click. Take the rings off before you store them, because a ring left on can hold a failed lid in place and hide a jar that never sealed.

Label them and store them somewhere cool, dark and dry. Canned parsnips are best within a year and stay good about 18 months. They’re safe past that as long as the seal holds, the texture just softens.

Any jar that didn’t seal goes in the fridge and gets eaten within a few days, or you can reprocess it with a new lid for the full time if you catch it within 24 hours. Once you open a sealed jar, refrigerate it and use it within three or four days.

Throw out any jar with a bulging lid, a broken seal, spurting liquid, an off smell, or cloudy liquid where it used to be clear, and don’t taste it to check. If you’d rather keep parsnips longer than a year, freeze them instead. And if you’ve got somewhere cold, root cellaring keeps them for months with no processing at all.

I’ve had quite a few reader questions on this one, so I’ll try to answer them all in one place.

Canning Parsnips FAQs

Root Vegetable Canning Recipes

More root vegetables worth putting up:

Canning Carrots

Classic Pickled Beets

Classic Pickled Carrots

Pressure Canning Recipes

Fill the canner the rest of the way with these:

Canning Boston Baked Beans

Canning Sausage Potato and Kale Soup (Copycat Zuppa Toscana)

Canning Taco Soup