Canning Pot Roast in a Jar

Canning pot roast in a jar puts a whole Sunday dinner on your pantry shelf, so a tender beef and vegetable supper is a jar and a saucepan away on the nights you have no time to cook. You do the slow part once, in the pressure canner, and then dinner is ready to heat, thicken into gravy, and spoon over mashed potatoes or egg noodles whenever you want it.

This is a raw pack recipe, adapted from a tested pot roast in the “Simple One Jar Meals” section of The All New Ball Book of Canning and Preserving. Everything goes into the jars cool and raw, then boiling water or broth fills the gaps, which is a lot friendlier on your hands than wrestling hot chunks of beef into jars. Like all of my meal in a jar canning recipes, it is low acid, so it is processed in a pressure canner the same way I put up canning beef stew and the rest of my beef canning recipes.

If you are new to putting up meat in general, my broader guide to canning meat is a good place to start.

One thing worth knowing up front is that the meal goes into the jar thin. There is no flour or cornstarch in the jar, because a thickened liquid is too dense to let heat move through safely during processing. You can the pot roast with a thin broth and then thicken it into gravy on the stove when you reheat it, which is exactly how it was meant to be served.

The tested batch here is small, four pints or two quarts, but you can run several batches at once to fill a canner load, and I usually do.

Choosing the Beef

Pot roast is a recipe built for a tough, well-marbled cut, and that works in your favor here. A boneless beef chuck roast is the traditional choice, and it is the one Ball calls for, because all of the connective tissue and marbling that make chuck too chewy for a quick sear break down beautifully over a long cook in the canner. Ninety minutes at pressure is exactly the kind of long, moist heat that turns chuck tender, so you do not want a lean cut like round or sirloin here. They dry out and go stringy.

Trim off the big pieces of hard fat before you cube the meat, since a lot of fat can interfere with a good seal and leave a greasy layer in the jar. Then cut the beef into chunks around two inches square. The main thing is to keep them small enough to fit easily through the jar opening, so you can pack the jars without forcing anything, and to divide the meat evenly across your jars so no single jar is overpacked.

Ingredients for Pot Roast in a Jar

The ingredient list is short and familiar, which is part of what makes this such a comfortable recipe for most home cooks. The exact amounts are in the recipe card below, so here I want to walk through what each part is doing and where you have room to change things.

• Beef chuck roast: The heart of the meal, and the reason for the long process time. Trim the hard fat and cube it to fit the jars. If you want to put up beef on its own instead of a full meal, that has its own method in my beef canning recipes.
• Carrots, onions, and potatoes: The classic pot roast vegetables, and each one has a tested home-canning basis on its own, so they are all safe in the jar. You can read through on the guidance in my canning carrots and potato canning recipes if you want to see how those vegetables behave in a jar.
• Celery: Adds background savory flavor. It is allowed by extension guidance for meals, but it is easy to leave out (I do). If you skip an ingredient, do not add something else in its place, just make up the space with a little extra broth.
• Garlic, bay leaves, thyme, salt, and pepper: The seasoning. These are the parts you can adjust freely to taste, since spices and non-safety seasonings are not what makes the jar safe. Fresh or dried both work.
• Dry red wine: Optional, and added at a rate of about half a cup per quart jar. It deepens the flavor of the finished gravy. If you leave it out, replace it with more broth or water so the jars still fill to the right headspace.
• Boiling water or broth: This fills the jar around the solids. Homemade stock, store-bought broth, or plain water all work. It goes in thin, with no thickener, and you will need roughly one and a half to two cups per quart to reach the 1 inch headspace line, though it varies with how tightly you pack.

The one thing that is not on the ingredient list is flour, as that’s not approved for canning. The gravy comes together at serving, not before canning, and that’s the point where you can add corn starch, flour or your thickener of choice when heating.

How to Make Pot Roast in a Jar

The whole process is closer to assembling a jar than cooking a meal, which is what makes it so quick to put up. There is no browning and no simmering before canning, since this is a raw pack. You chop, you fill, you top with boiling liquid, and the pressure canner does the actual cooking.

Read through the steps once before you start so your jars, lids, and canner are all ready to go at the same time, since a raw pack moves quickly once the boiling broth is poured. Here is how it comes together.

Prepare the Ingredients

Trim the hard fat off the chuck roast and cut it into chunks about two inches square, small enough to drop through the jar opening without forcing. Slice the garlic and carrots, and dice the onions, potatoes, and celery. Make sure you peel the potatoes and carrots, as root crops always have to be peeled for canning.

Combine the beef, vegetables, garlic, salt, pepper, thyme, and bay leaves in a large bowl and mix well. Mixing everything first makes it easy to divide the solids evenly across the jars, though you can also just portion each ingredient into the jars separately if that is easier for you. (Adding 1 bay leaf per quart jar, or 1/2 leaf per pint.)

Pack the Jars and Fill with Broth

Get your pressure canner on the stove with about two inches of water, following your canner manufacturer’s instructions. Because this is a raw pack, keep the canner water only just warm, around 140 degrees Fahrenheit, rather than bringing it to a simmer before the jars go in. Pack the raw beef and vegetable mixture into the jars, dividing it evenly and not packing it down too tightly, then add the red wine if you are using it, about half a cup per quart.

Pour boiling water or broth over the solids until you reach 1 inch of headspace, using a canning funnel to keep the rims clean. Run a bubble tool around the inside of each jar to release trapped air, then recheck the headspace and top up with a little more liquid if needed. Wipe the rims clean, set on the lids, and screw the bands down to fingertip tight.

Canning Pot Roast in a Jar

Once your jars are packed and sealed, the meal goes into the pressure canner. The smallest batch worth running is 2 quarts or 4 pints, and since the tested recipe is on the small side, most people run two or three batches together to fill a canner load.

Load the jars into the canner with a jar lifter, lock the lid, and let the canner vent a steady stream of steam for 10 minutes before you add the weight. Bring it up to 10 pounds pressure for a weighted gauge canner or 11 pounds for a dial gauge canner, adjusting for your altitude using the chart below.

Process pints for 75 minutes or quarts for 90 minutes, keeping the pressure steady the entire time. If it dips below the target, bring it back up and restart the timing.

When the time is up, turn off the heat and let the canner depressurize on its own, never forcing it cool. Wait five minutes after it depressurizes, then remove the lid, let the jars sit 10 minutes, and lift them out to cool undisturbed for 24 hours before checking the seals.

Canning Leftover Pot Roast

This recipe is written as a raw pack, but I get asked all the time about canning leftover pot roast after making a big batch in the slow cooker or oven. Believe it or not, there is a good chance you can put up those leftovers too, as long as you check a couple of things first.

The first is your ingredients. Every part of the pot roast has to be approved for home canning, and the one that trips people up is flour. If you dredged the meat in flour before browning it, or used any flour or thickener in the cooking liquid, that batch cannot be safely canned, even if it is only a small amount. Look back over how you made it before you decide.

The second is the pack. Fill the jars no more than one half to two thirds full of solids, loosely rather than packed down, and then top them off with boiling broth, water, or the thin liquid from the pot roast itself, leaving 1 inch of headspace. From there you follow the same canning instructions, the same pressures, and the same 75 and 90 minute times, and you can put up your leftover pot roast safely.

Serving Ideas for Pot Roast in a Jar

This is the step where a thin jarful becomes an actual pot roast dinner, and it takes about ten minutes. Empty the jar into a saucepan and bring it to a gentle simmer, then whisk in flour to thicken the liquid into gravy. Use about 2 tablespoons of flour for a quart or 1 tablespoon for a pint, adding it slowly and stirring often so it does not clump, then simmer for 10 minutes until it is glossy and thick. If you would rather skip the flour, a cornstarch slurry stirred in at the end works just as well.

From there, serve it the way you would any pot roast, spooned over mashed potatoes, egg noodles, or a split biscuit to soak up the gravy. It also makes a quick weeknight filling for a hearty sandwich or wrap, and the leftovers reheat well for lunch. If you like the idea of dinner from the pantry shelf, it keeps good company with the rest of my meal in a jar canning recipes and beefier options like canning beef pot pie filling.

A few questions come up often enough about canning pot roast that they are worth answering directly before you get started.

Canning Pot Roast FAQs

For more dinners you can pull straight off the pantry shelf, browse the rest of my meal in a jar canning recipes below.

Meal in a Jar Canning Recipes

Canning Boston Baked Beans

Canning Chili Con Carne

Canning Chicken Pot Pie Filling

Working with a pressure canner opens up a whole shelf of savory jars, from meats to soups to plain vegetables. Here are more pressure canning recipes to try next.

Pressure Canning Recipes

Canning Sausage Potato and Kale Soup (Copycat Zuppa Toscana)

Canning Taco Soup

Canning Spaghetti Sauce (Basic Recipe without Meat)