Canning Beef Stew

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Here is the direct answer on canning beef stew: the USDA has no tested process for beef stew. Neither the USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning nor the National Center for Home Food Preservation (NCHFP) publishes processing times for a thick, chunky stew, so we won't give you one.

What the NCHFP does test gets you close. You have two safe routes. One is a beef and vegetable soup made with its soup procedure (60 minutes for pints, 75 for quarts). The other is to can the beef, potatoes and carrots separately and combine them into stew when you cook. Both are below, with the exact NCHFP times and pressures.

Don't can a stew recipe from a blog, a cookbook or your family's notebook with borrowed times. Beef and vegetables are low-acid, and a wrong time carries a botulism risk.

Canning Beef Stew: Why There's No Tested Time

A processing time is set by testing how fast heat moves to the center of a specific jar of food. That depends on the ingredients, the size of the pieces, how tightly they pack and how thick the liquid is. University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension makes the point plainly: safe times for soups and stews come from lab measurements specific to each recipe, and the thickness of a soup or stew changes how fast heat penetrates. Times for untested recipes can't be determined. Kentucky's advice for those is to eat them fresh or freeze them.

A typical beef stew is dense with meat and potatoes and often thickened with flour. Heat moves through it slowly. You can't borrow the time for plain beef cubes or for soup and assume it's long enough.

Option 1: Beef and Vegetable Soup (NCHFP Soup Procedure)

The NCHFP soup procedure covers vegetable, dried bean or pea, meat, poultry and seafood soups. Made this way, beef and vegetables come out of the jar as a hearty, brothy soup. You can thicken it into a stew when you heat it to serve.

The key difference from a stew is the fill: jars are filled only halfway with solids and topped up with liquid.

Soup at a glance

Steps

1. Prepare each ingredient by its own NCHFP canning instructions. For beef, that means the strips, cubes or chunks recipe in our guide to canning meat.
2. Cover the meat with water and cook until tender. Cool it and remove any bones.
3. Cook the vegetables as you would for a hot pack.
4. Combine the solids with meat broth, tomatoes or water to cover. Boil for 5 minutes.
5. Add salt to taste if you like. Do not thicken.
6. Fill hot jars halfway with the solids, then add the remaining liquid, leaving 1 inch of headspace.
7. Adjust the lids and process as below.

Soup processing times and pressure

Dial-gauge pressure canner (hot pack)

Weighted-gauge pressure canner (hot pack)

If the soup contains seafood, the NCHFP says to process for 100 minutes instead.

Notice that these times are shorter than the 75 and 90 minutes for jars packed full of beef cubes. They apply only to jars filled the way the procedure says: half solids, half liquid. If you pack the jars full of meat and potatoes, the soup time does not apply.

Option 2: Can the Stew Ingredients Separately

This is the route if you want a true, thick stew. Can each ingredient with its own tested process, then open a jar of each, combine, season and thicken in the pot.

NCHFP times for each ingredient

All four use the same pressures: 10 psi (weighted gauge) at 0 to 1,000 feet and 15 psi above, or 11, 12, 13 and 14 psi (dial gauge) for the 0–2,000, 2,001–4,000, 4,001–6,000 and 6,001–8,000-foot bands.

Canning beef for stew (NCHFP strips, cubes or chunks)

1. Choose high-quality chilled beef and trim the excess fat. Cut it into stew-sized cubes.
2. Hot pack (preferred): precook the cubes until rare by roasting, stewing or browning in a little fat. Fill the jars and cover with boiling broth, drippings, water or tomato juice, leaving 1 inch of headspace.
3. Raw pack: fill the jars with raw cubes, leaving 1 inch of headspace, and add no liquid.
4. Add 1 teaspoon of salt per quart (½ teaspoon per pint) if you like.
5. Process pints 75 minutes, quarts 90 minutes at the pressure for your elevation.

Canning the potatoes and carrots

• Potatoes (NCHFP): peel, hold in an ascorbic acid solution to prevent darkening, cut into ½-inch cubes and boil for 2 minutes, then drain. Fill hot jars and cover with fresh boiling water, not the starchy cooking water, leaving 1 inch of headspace. Process pints 35 minutes, quarts 40. Our upcoming guide to canning potatoes goes step by step.
• Carrots (NCHFP): wash, peel and slice or dice. For a hot pack, simmer for 5 minutes and fill hot; for a raw pack, fill firmly. Cover with hot cooking liquid or water, leaving 1 inch of headspace. Process pints 25 minutes, quarts 30. Our canning vegetables chart collects the other tested vegetable times.

Turning the jars into stew

Brown some onion in a pot, add a quart of beef with its liquid, a pint each of potatoes and carrots (drained) and a pint of stock. Simmer, season, then thicken with a flour or cornstarch slurry. Because the thickener goes in at the end, you can make it as thick as you like.

The Process, Start to Finish

Whichever option you choose, the canner steps are the same:

1. Put the rack and 2 to 3 inches of hot water in the canner (or what your manual says).
2. Load the filled, lidded jars and lock the lid.
3. Heat until steam flows freely and vent for 10 minutes.
4. Add the weight or close the petcock and bring the canner to pressure.
5. Start timing at pressure and hold it steady. If it drops below the target, bring it back and restart the time.
6. Turn off the heat and let the canner depressurize naturally. Remove the weight, wait 10 minutes, open the lid away from you.
7. Cool the jars for 12 to 24 hours, then check the seals.

Our beginner's guide to using a pressure canner explains each step, and our pressure canning altitude chart shows why the pressure changes with elevation.

Beef Stew Canning Mistakes to Avoid

• Thickening before canning. Flour, cornstarch, roux and potato flakes change how fast heat reaches the center of the jar. The NCHFP says no thickeners in canned soups.
• Adding barley, rice, pasta or dumplings. The NCHFP rules out rice and pasta in canned soups. Add starches when you serve.
• Adding dairy. No cream or milk before canning.
• Packing jars full and using the soup time. The 60- and 75-minute soup times assume a half-solids fill.
• Using the potato cooking water. The NCHFP says it holds too much starch. Cover potatoes with fresh boiling water.
• Raw-packing potatoes. The NCHFP potato recipe is hot pack only.
• Using a water bath, steam canner or Instant Pot. None of them is a tested method for low-acid foods. The NCHFP does not recommend its processes in electric multi-cookers.
• Borrowing a time from another recipe. If your stew doesn't match a tested recipe exactly, freeze it.

Storing Canned Beef and Soup

Remove the bands after cooling and check each lid: it should be curved slightly down and shouldn't flex. Store sealed jars in a cool, dark, dry place. The USDA says below 95°F (35°C), ideally 50 to 70°F (10 to 21°C).

Before eating, inspect each jar. Discard without tasting anything with a bulging or unsealed lid, spurting liquid, an off smell or mold. The USDA says to treat suspect low-acid foods as if they contain botulinum toxin and to dispose of them carefully.

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