Canning Turkey Soup

Canning turkey soup turns holiday leftovers into a shelf full of easy lunches. It’s a hearty soup with lots of tender turkey, carrots, celery, and onion, plus a little poultry seasoning. Heat a jar, add a handful of noodles, and you’ve got a warm bowl of turkey soup in about 15 minutes.

A roast turkey gives you a lot more meat than one dinner can use. After a round of sandwiches, the rest goes into soup while it’s still fresh. Canning it puts that soup on the pantry shelf with no freezer burn.

It’s ready to heat and eat right out of the jar, any time you want a bowl.

This is a plain, old-fashioned turkey soup, packed full of diced turkey, carrots, celery, and onion. It’s a heartier version of my chicken soup canning recipe, made with the bird that’s sitting in your fridge after the holidays.

The rest of the bird is useful too. The carcass makes canning turkey broth, which is a good base for this soup. If you’d like to keep some of the meat plain for sandwiches and casseroles, canning turkey puts it in jars on its own.

Turkey also works in place of chicken in plenty of other jars, like chicken and gravy meal in a jar, chicken pot pie filling, and chicken and corn chowder, prepped the same way each recipe preps the chicken. There are more ideas for a holiday bird in my turkey canning recipes.

If you haven’t used a pressure canner before, my pressure canning for beginners guide walks through a full batch. This soup is a good first one to try, since the prep is mostly chopping.

Choosing Turkey for Soup

This soup is for leftover roast turkey, and white meat, dark meat, or a mix all work. Use it within 3 to 4 days of cooking, like any leftovers. Pull the meat off the bones, and trim away the skin and any big pieces of fat.

Fat can work its way up onto the rims during processing and prevent a good seal. It also leaves a greasy layer on top of the jar.

Cut the meat into bite-size pieces, small enough to fit on a soup spoon. Stick with diced or shredded turkey rather than ground, since ground poultry belongs only in canning recipes that call for it. Use fresh roasted turkey here, not deli turkey or anything cured.

No leftovers? Roast a few turkey thighs or a turkey breast until they’re done. Let it cool, and pull the meat off the bones.

Ingredients for Turkey Soup

The ingredient list is short, and most of it is the turkey you already have.

• Roasted turkey: Diced or shredded white or dark meat, with the skin, bones, and extra fat removed. It’s already cooked, so it only needs to heat through before going into the jars.
• Carrots: Peeled and sliced into rounds. Carrots have their own tested canning process, which lets them go into canned soup, and canning carrots makes plain jars of them.
• Celery: Diced. Celery doesn’t have a canning process of its own, but extension guidance allows it in home-canned soups in reasonable amounts. It’s a big part of what makes this taste like turkey soup.
• Onions: Diced. Onions have their own tested process too, and canning onions walks through it.
• Garlic: Minced. Extension guidance allows garlic in canned soups in reasonable amounts, so keep it to the amount in the recipe.
• Turkey stock, chicken broth, or water: Any of the three works. Homemade turkey broth gives the soup a deeper turkey flavor, and chicken broth or store-bought broth is fine. Water makes a lighter soup.
• Poultry seasoning, salt, and pepper: All three are optional and there for flavor, so season to your taste. In meat and meal-in-a-jar recipes, I use Redmond’s Real Salt because it tastes better, and a little cloudy broth doesn’t matter in a soup. Canning salt works too if you’d like the broth clear.

Noodles, rice, dumplings, cream, and flour all stay out of the jar.

Starches thicken the soup and slow the heat reaching the center of the jar, and dairy has no tested canning process. Add both at the stove when you heat the soup.

How to Make Turkey Soup

This soup comes together fast once the turkey is off the bones. You chop the vegetables, bring everything to a boil in one pot, and fill the jars hot.

Get your pressure canner on the stove with the water your manual calls for, usually 2 to 3 inches, and keep the clean jars hot in it. Set out lids, bands, a jar lifter, and a canning funnel.

Prepare the Turkey and Vegetables

Peel the carrots and slice them into rounds. Dice the celery and onions, and mince the garlic.

Cut or shred the cooked turkey into bite-size pieces, leaving out any skin, bone, or gristle. Keep the pieces small enough to fit easily through the mouth of the jar.

Boil the Soup

Put the turkey, vegetables, and garlic in a large stockpot, and pour in the turkey stock, chicken broth, or water, adding a little more if needed to cover the solids. Stir in the poultry seasoning, salt, and pepper if you’re using them.

Bring it all to a boil, and let it boil for 5 minutes. The vegetables won’t be tender yet, and they don’t need to be, since they finish cooking in the jars.

Taste the broth before you fill the jars, and adjust the salt now.

Pack the Jars

Use a slotted spoon to pack each hot jar with turkey and vegetables, up to 1 inch from the top. Try to give every jar a fair share of the turkey.

Pack them full, but don’t press down hard. Then ladle hot broth over the top to fill in around the pieces, keeping 1 inch of headspace.

Run a bubble tool around the inside of each jar, and check the headspace again. Top up with more hot broth if a jar came up short.

Wipe the rims with a clean, damp cloth, set the canning lids on, and screw the bands down fingertip tight.

Canning Turkey Soup

Turkey soup has to go in a pressure canner, dial gauge or weighted gauge. A water bath canner can’t get hot enough for a low-acid soup, and no water bath process has been tested for any soup.

Load the jars onto the rack with the jar lifter, and lock the lid. Let the canner vent a steady stream of steam for a full 10 minutes before adding the weight or closing the petcock.

Process pints for 75 minutes or quarts for 90 minutes at 10 pounds pressure in a weighted-gauge canner or 11 pounds in a dial-gauge canner. Adjust for altitude with the chart below. Start the timer once the canner reaches pressure, and if the pressure drops, bring it back up and start the time over.

When the time’s up, turn off the heat and let the canner come down to zero pressure on its own. Wait 5 minutes, remove the lid, and leave the jars in the canner for another 10 minutes.

Lift the jars out onto a towel-lined counter, and leave them alone for 12 to 24 hours. When you’ve got the hang of it, there’s a long list of pressure canning recipes to work through next.

Serving Ideas for Turkey Soup

Empty a jar into a saucepan and simmer it for about 10 minutes. It’s thick enough to eat as it is, or add a splash of broth or water if you like it soupier.

A slice of homemade bread or a few crackers on the side makes it lunch. My bread machine recipes make that easy on a busy day.

For a creamier soup, stir in a splash of cream or milk once it’s hot. To thicken it, whisk a spoonful of flour or cornstarch into a little cold water, stir it in, and simmer a few minutes.

Turkey Noodle Soup

Turkey noodle soup starts with a jar of this. Add the noodles to the pot, not the jar, since pasta isn’t safe in canned soup.

Bring the soup to a simmer with extra broth or water, add a handful of egg noodles, and cook them in the pot until tender. If the noodles soak up too much broth, add a little more.

Turkey and Rice Soup

Rice works the same way. Stir cooked rice into the hot soup, or simmer a little white rice in the pot until it’s tender.

Wild rice is good here too. Cook it separately, since it takes longer, and stir it in at the end.

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.

Remove the bands before storing the jars, since a band can hold a failed lid in place and hide a jar that never sealed. Put any jar that didn’t seal in the fridge and eat it within a few days, or reprocess it with a new lid within 24 hours.

Label the sealed jars and store them in a cool, dark place. They hold their quality for 12 to 18 months, and properly processed jars that stay sealed are safe past that. Once you open a jar, refrigerate it and use it within 3 to 4 days.

Canning Turkey Soup FAQs

What can go in the jar, and how long it processes, are the big questions with a hearty soup like this one.

Soup Canning Recipes

More soups to keep on the pantry shelf.

Canning Taco Soup

Canning Sausage Potato and Kale Soup (Copycat Zuppa Toscana)

Roasted Tomato Basil Soup

More Turkey Canning Recipes

Other ways to put up a holiday bird.

Canning Turkey

Canning Turkey Broth

16+ Turkey Canning Recipes