100+ Meal in a Jar Canning Recipes

Canning meal-in-a-jar recipes is the ultimate meal prep! These tasty, nutritious recipes are easy to grab and eat, whether you’re dealing with a busy workday or a power outage.

Many homesteaders start their canning journey by water bath canning jam or pickles, sometimes moving up to pressure canning fresh vegetables from the garden. This is a whole different ball game.

These recipes will leave you with a whole meal rather than just individual ingredients. In today’s busy world, this can make a huge difference in sticking to home-cooked food.

While I still love canning versatile ingredients like green beans, potatoes, and beef, these ready-to-eat meals are priceless. I love grabbing one from the shelf when we’ve had a late night. It makes the difference between a healthy, hearty meal and takeout.

To ensure your family takes advantage of these prepared meals, it’s important to find various recipes that meet two criteria. First, if you have an abundance of a particular ingredient like beef or venison, you’ll need ways to use it. Second, you need recipes that your family will enjoy.

That’s why you need a good selection of meal-in-a-jar recipes.

Fortunately for you, I’ve got you covered! I’ve gathered every good meal-in-a-jar recipe I could find.

Guidelines for Canning Meals in a Jar

Canning can make some people nervous and is sometimes portrayed as complicated or risky. I disagree; canning isn’t scary or complex, but just like when preparing other basic foods like chicken breast, there are a few rules you should follow. Before I list the recipes, I will quickly go over what’s safe and what’s not when canning meals in a jar.

Every recipe in this list is designed for pressure canning. Water bath canning is fine for essential products like jam and pickles, but it isn’t safe for these multi-ingredient recipes that compose an entire meal.

If you’re new to pressure canning, check out my beginner’s guide.

To get started with pressure canning, you’ll need a few supplies, including a good-quality pressure canner. My favorite is the 30-quart All-American Brand Pressure Canner. I haven’t found another that matches its quality. You can find the other necessities and helpful tools in my canning supplies article.

While a pressure canner seems like a miracle worker in the kitchen, there are a few ingredients that are never safe to can! Unfortunately, these ingredients have recently been featured on social media canning recipes, so it’s essential to understand basic canning safety.

Canning recipes should never include:

Dairy products, including milk, cheese, butter
Coconut milk, oat milk, and other plant-based milks
Eggs, including pickled eggs
Rice, pasta, and other starchy foods
Flour, corn starch, and most other thickeners (Canning Clear Jel is the only exception)

Thankfully, all of these ingredients are usually easy to add at serving time. For example, when I use my Beef Stroganoff, I cook some pasta to serve it over while the stroganoff is heating.

The same goes for vindaloo curry. If I’m serving it over rice, I’ll cook some rice while the curry is heating.

As mentioned above, most thickeners except Canning Clear Jel aren’t safe to can. While I sometimes use Canning Clear Jel for pie filling, I don’t use it for savory meals. Some people like it, but I find it has a gooey, pie-filling-like texture. Thankfully, it’s no trouble for me to quickly thicken beef stew and other similar recipes as they heat on the stove.

If you’re worried about keeping these other ingredients on hand in case of emergencies, many of the non-perishable items, like rice and pasta, store well in jars and food-grade five-gallon buckets.

The perishable items are a little trickier, but you can find shelf-stable versions of perishable pantry items that don’t require refrigeration.

These options are great for emergency food storage.

Lastly, if you live above 1,000 feet in elevation, you’ll need to adjust the pressure in your recipes to ensure your meal-in-a-jar recipes are processed correctly. Read the guide for altitude adjustments for pressure canning.

Meal in a Jar Canning Recipes

If you’re ready to start putting up meal-in-a-jar recipes, you’re in luck. I collected all the recipes I could find and listed them in categories. There are plenty of hearty recipes such as chili, stews, sandwich fillings, soups, and more.

Of course, there are also many great recipes that aren’t available online. Some of my favorite recipes are from canning books.

Pressure Canning for Beginners and Beyond by Angi Schneider is my absolute favorite canning book. It has many unique, delicious meal-in-a-jar recipes perfect for filling the pantry.

One reason I rank Angi’s books so highly is that she works hard to ensure that all of her recipes are safe and approved for home canning. In my opinion, if you’re looking for tasty, safe meal-in-a-jar recipes, it’s worth picking up her book; you won’t find her recipes on the internet.

I also use Diane Devereaux’s The Complete Guide to Pressure Canning for inspiration. However, this book requires familiarity with canning safety, as it sometimes lists unsafe ingredients like coconut milk.

Additionally, she uses clear jel thickener in her soups. It is safe, but you may find, as I did, that the texture isn’t great.

That said, Diane still has some creative recipes that can be a great source of information. However, if you only get one book, make it Angi’s Pressure Canning for Beginners and Beyond.

Hearty Meat Dinners

These meal-in-a-jar recipes work well for meals based around seasoned meat. Some, like soup or stew, can be the whole meal. Others are just the main course and pair really well with other canned products like corn or potatoes. A few are excellent served with rice, pasta, tortilla chips, or other non-perishables we often keep on hand.

Rather than having an overwhelming list, I decided to break it down into categories based on different types of meat. You will also find a vegetarian mains section at the end.

Beef

Beef meal-in-a-jar recipes are hearty and filling and an excellent way to preserve extra meat for easy use later on. These recipes will also work with other types of red meat, like venison, moose, veal, or bear. You can also pressure can pork exactly the way you do beef, so you can safely substitute it in any of these.

Using a pressure canner, it’s simple and safe to can beef as steaks, cubes, ground meat, or slices. Usually, I can beef in beef stock, but tomato juice also works well.

You can find more individual beef canning recipes on the site, but these are my favorite beef meal-in-a-jar recipes to start with:

Beef Meal in a Jar Recipes. Clockwise from top left: Chipotle Beef, Beef Pot Pie Filling, Pot Roast in a Jar and Beef Stroganoff

Ground Beef

Ground beef is also an excellent option for canning. It’s perfect for creating easy-to-use, economical meal-in-a-jar recipes. I love using it for chili, taco filling, and Sloppy Joe Filling.

It may sound strange, but you can also can plain ground beef and hamburger patties. Once you take them out of the jar, you can cook them like a regular hamburger, brown the outside crisp, and serve them just like a regular hamburger.

Sloppy Joe Filling

Pork

Pork is easy to pressure can, too! It’s similar to canning beef; you can preserve it as slices, steaks, cubes, or ground pork.

However, this only applies to fresh pork. Cured pork products like ham and bacon aren’t safe for pressure canning. Curing makes meat denser, and it doesn’t reliably heat the same way raw meat does.

That said, there are a few tested canning recipes that use ham or bacon, like Boston Baked Beans. These recipes have been specifically tested and only include a small amount of cured meat for flavor.

You shouldn’t add more to these recipes or try to can a whole jar of ham or bacon. So far, there is no safe way to do that. However, if you’re interested, there are ways to cure your pork at home so it can be stored without canning.

Here are a few safe ways to pressure can pork:

Canning Sausage

Chicken, Duck, & Rabbit

Chicken, duck, rabbit, and other poultry and small game, including goose, partridge, game birds, and squirrel, can all be canned the same way.

Depending on your recipe, you can pressure can your poultry boneless or bone-in. Surprisingly, bone-in canning is processed for less time because the bones are excellent conductors of heat, and they actually heat up the center of the jar faster than with boneless canning recipes. It may also be easier to remove the bones after canning, once the food is cooked.

However, canning bone-in meat generally means you get less usable meat in each jar, but I still think it’s a good option sometimes, especially for small pieces that are hard to bone raw, like wings and legs.

I have some other chicken canning recipes, but these are my favorite meal-in-a-jar recipes using chicken, duck, and rabbit:

Pressure Canning Chicken

Fish

You can also pressure can several types of fish and seafood, which make good main dishes. These can be helpful recipes if you catch fish yourself or find some on sale. Here are a few of my favorites:

Canning Crab

Vegetarian Meal-in-a-Jar Canning Recipes

While the above recipes rely on meat as the star of the meal, there are plenty of tasty, meatless meal-in-a-jar recipes. They’re a great way to use beans and vegetables from your garden during the summer months.

Enjoy tasty meals like chili, baked beans, soups, and more:

Canning Vegetable Soup - Pressure Canning Recipe

Classic Vegetable Soup

Chili Canning Recipes

Chili is one of my winter go-to’s for quick meals that are filling and comforting. Chili con carne is always a classic choice, but there are many unique recipes, like white bean and chicken chili, to mix things up.

I love serving these ready-to-go chilis with cornbread, baked potatoes, or nachos. These recipes allow for so much variety!

Beef Chili Canning Recipes

These recipes all call for beef, but you can substitute any red meat. If you need to preserve venison, elk, moose, or bear during hunting season, try making chili with it.

Home Canned Chili Con Carne

Chicken Chili Canning Recipes

Most traditional recipes call for red meat, but you can also make delicious chili with chicken! These chicken recipes usually call for light beans rather than kidney beans and leave off the tomato.

These recipes are hearty, like traditional chili, but offer a new twist.

You can also substitute other poultry into these recipes to use up goose, turkey, or duck you have processed on your homestead or got on sale.

Home Canned White Chicken Chili

Other Chili Canning Recipes

Sometimes, I substitute other meat into beef recipes, but there are a couple of recipes specifically designed for other meat that I enjoy.

Meat and Bean Canning Recipes

This category may seem similar to chili, but a lot of chili doesn’t even include beans. Plus, there are so many great meat and bean combinations that I felt it needed its own category.

Here are a few excellent meat and bean canning recipes:

Boston Baked Beans

Soup Canning Recipes

Canning soup is one of the easiest ways to create ready-to-go meals. Whether you need something extra nourishing for when you’re under the weather or just need something quick, canned soup is a great option. It’s also much more flavorful and healthy than store-bought canned soup.

I have a separate list with more than 100 soup canning recipes, but here are a few of my favorites:

Other Meal-In-A-Jar Ideas

There are also several other canning recipes that include most of a meal. While recipes like pasta sauce with meat aren’t technically a whole meal, heated alongside some fresh pasta, they quickly provide a homemade dinner.

These are my favorite recipes that makeup almost an entire meal:

Canning Recipe Guides

Here are a few great sources for finding other canning recipes to stalk your pantry.

Comments

Ann-Marie

October 23, 2024 at 7:17 am

I applaud you for the incredible amount of research and work you did to prepare this.
That being said, I was very disappointed to find out most of the recipes basically cook everything before you can it.
I’ve been canning a long time and 99% of what I can is raw packed as pressure cooking for 90 minutes quarts and 75 minutes pints certainly cooks the food as well as preserving it.
I have followed you since you started, and I am amazed at hoe incredibly informative and varied the information you are sharing.
In fact, I have stopped about 75% of my other followed individuals regarding food and homesteading because you cover it all so well.
I want to thank you very much and although at 82 I don’t have the need I still get great enjoyment out of knowing there are people like you out there preserving the heritage.

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