Pressure canning recipes can be a bit harder to find, as most beginning canners are all about simple water bath canning for pickles and jams. Once you have a pressure canner at home, you’ll be able to can almost anything at home, including meat and low acid foods like vegetables.
A selection of pressure canned food. Back Row (left to right): Beef Broth, Pumpkin, Tomatoes, Pinto Beans, Sweet Potato. Front Row: Pasta Sauce, Corn, Beets, Black Beans.
(If you’re not familiar with pressure canning, I’d strongly suggest you read this beginners guide to pressure canning before proceeding. Be aware that a pressure canner is different than a “pressure cooker,” and you cannot make these recipes in your instant pot.)
Water bath canning is a great place to start for beginners, and it’s an easy way to preserve jams, jellies, fruits and pickles. If you really want to put up a substantial amount of food for your family, you’re going to have to graduate to pressure canning.
Pressure canning allows you to put up nutrient-dense meat, vegetables, soups, stews, and stock.
Since they’re low-acid foods, they cannot be preserved in a water bath canner, and they require the higher temperatures of a pressure canner for safe preservation.
What Foods Need a Pressure Canner?
Certain foods, namely low acid foods with a pH above 4.6, must be canned in a pressure canner if they’re canned at all. This includes:
- Meat of All Kinds ~ Beef, Chicken, Pork, etc.
- Stocks and Broths ~ Both Meat and Veggie
- Vegetables ~ Potatoes, Pumpkin, Green Beans, Etc.
- Dry Beans ~ Black Beans, Pinto Beans, Navy Beans, etc.
- Chili and Baked Beans
- Soups and Stews
- Some Tomato Products, like pasta sauce with low acid ingredients such as mushrooms, onions and peppers included.
You can also process water bath canning recipes in a pressure canner, and it’ll allow you to get the job done quicker without steaming up the kitchen (as much).
Keep in mind, that while you can convert water bath canning recipes to a pressure canner, it doesn’t work in the opposite direction.
For example, we can water for emergencies in a pressure canner, though you can also easily do that in a water bath canner.
Things You CANNOT can in a Pressure Canner
Be aware that not everything is safe for canning, even in a pressure canner. These foods are not safe for home canning, regardless of the method:
- Milk, Cream, Butter and Other Dairy Products
- Coconut Milk
- Flour, Corn Starch, and most thickeners (Canning Clear Jel is the only Exception)
- Rice, Pasta and Other Starchy Foods
- Eggs, including pickled eggs
While you likely can find many pressure canner recipes for these things on the internet, they’re not safe for pressure canning.
Pressure Canning Vegetables
If you’re been water bath canning fruits for some time, you’ll love expanding your preserves to pressure canning vegetables. They allow you to preserve garden produce at the peak of freshness, and add savory vegetables to your wintertime table (without taking up freezer space).
Some vegetable pressure canning recipes are quite specific, as in the case of canning pumpkin. It cannot be canned as a puree, and must be canned as pumpkin cubes to ensure that heat can penetrate to the center of the jar.
(Canned pumpkin puree that comes from the grocery store in tin cans goes through a different industrial process, which would break glass jars.)
- Canning Asparagus – Practical Self Reliance
- Canning Greens, like Spinach, Turnip Greens, Collards, Kale, Swiss Chard – Pick Your Own
- Canning Corn – Practical Self Reliance
- Canning Pumpkin – Practical Self Reliance
- Canning Tomatoes (water bath or pressure canning) – Practical Self Reliance
- Canning Okra – National Center for Home Preservation
- Canning Peas – Practical Self Reliance
Pressure Canning Root Vegetables & Tubers
Root vegetables are often stored in a root cellar, but that’s not an option everywhere. Locations dry arid locations out west without basem*nts can’t successfully root cellar vegetables, and it’s not the best option for small homes and apartments either.
Even though we successfully root cellar many crops on my homestead here in Vermont, I still love the convenience of canned root vegetables. I eat canned beets right out of the jar as an afternoon snack, and I absolutely love the convenience of canned potatoes on busy weeknights.
- Canning Carrots – Practical Self Reliance
- Canning Beets – Practical Self Reliance
- Canning Onions – Practical Self Reliance
- Canning Parsnips – New Life On A Farm
- Canning Rutabaga – Healthy Canning
- Canning Turnips – The Canning Granny
- Canning Sweet Potatoes – Practical Self Reliance
- Canning Potatoes – Practical Self Reliance
Canning Potatoes
Pressure Canning Soup Recipes
Homemade soups are an easy meal in a jar that takes the prep work out of dinner (and concentrates it a few months ahead during pressure canning time).
You are still making the soup, along with all the chopping, simmering and prep work that goes along with it.
Still, it saves a lot of time when you make a huge batch and pressure can the soup for future dinners.
Here are some tasty options, but I have a separate article with more than 30 soup canning recipes as well.
- Canning Beef Stew – Practical Self Reliance
- Canning Asparagus Soup – SB Canning
- Home Canned Carrot Soup – Creative Canning
- Canning Split Pea Soup – Creative Canning
- Canning Mushroom Soup Base – Creative Canning
- Home Canned Tomato Soup – Common Sense Home
- Sausage, Potato, and Kale Soup (Copycat Zuppa Toscana) – Creative Canning
- Home Canning Vegetable Beef Soup – Simple Family Preparedness
Our own home canned beef stew.
Pressure Canning Broth Recipes
While I love the convenience of home-canned soup, I’ll be honest, I can plain broth much more often. It’s incredibly versatile, and provides that start for hundreds of different nutrient-dense homemade meals.
I probably have 60 to 80 quarts of pressure-canned broth in my basem*nt at any given time. Jars of beef broth, duck stock, and pork stock are our favorites, and cover the vast majority of our homemade recipes.
(Seafood stock is the next one I’d like to try, once I can get a good supply of fish bones and tails.)
- Canning Bone Broth – Practical Self Reliance
- Strong Fish Stock – Get The Good Stuff
- Organ Meat Stock – Practical Self Reliance
- Pheasant Stock – Hunter Angler Gardener Cook
- How to Make Pork Stock – Practical Self Reliance
- Shrimp Stock – Canning and Cooking at Home
- Canning Beef Stock – Creative Canning
- Canning Chicken Broth – Creative Canning
Pork Bone Broth Home Canning
Pressure Canning Bean and Chili Recipes
While soups usually provide a light meal in a jar, pressure-canned beans and chili are better at providing a hearty meal in minutes.
Homemade dry beans can take 2-3 hours to simmer on the stove, and believe it or not, it actually takes less time to pressure can them!
Plain pinto beans (and black beans) are some of my favorite pressure canner recipes, since they not only cook dinner faster, they preserve it for future meals at the same time.
- Pressure Canning Chili Con Carne – Creative Canning
- Boston Baked Beans – Creative Canning
- Canning Beans: How to Can Dry Beans at Home – Practical Self Reliance
Canning Baked Beans
Pressure Canning Meat
Preserving meat without refrigeration can be tricky, especially if you’d like to avoid massive amounts of salt (as in bacon, salami and dry cured meats). Living on a solar powered homestead, our freezer space is at a premium and I’ll often can up meat for quick weeknight meals when I need a bit more room in the freezer.
Many of my readers born in the ’30s and ’40s have related fond memories of eating home-canned beef right out of the jar, stealing it from grandma’s pantry shelf as an after school snack. Great nutrition and convenience to fuel growing bodies!
- Pressure Canning Beef – Practical Self Reliance
- Canning Turkey – Practical Self Reliance
- Canning Chicken (or Rabbit) – Creative Canning
- Canning Pork – National Center for Food Preservation
- Canning Beef – Practical Self Reliance
Canning Chicken
Pressure Canning Wild Game Meat
Since game meat is often a bit tough, and harvests are sometimes much larger than even the biggest freezer, pressure canning recipes can come to the rescue. They tenderize the meat while at the same time allow you to store a huge harvest without additional freezer space.
This can be a lifesaver if you’re in a rural cabin without dependable access to electricity.
- Canned Canada Goose Meat – Cornell University
- Elk, Moose, or Caribou – The Canning Diva
- Canning Quail and Other Game Birds – On Big Turtle Creek
- Canning Chicken or Rabbit – Creative Canning
- Canning Squirrel – Meats & Sausages
- Canning Turtle – Life With A Good Wife
- Canning Venison Cubed and Raw Packed – Simply Canning
- Canning Bear Meat – Montana Outdoor Radio Show
Pressure Canning Seafood
Canning fish and seafood is a bit more complicated than canning most meat, and pressure canning recipes for freshwater and ocean seafood are sometimes a bit more involved.
The process for canning tuna, for example, is very specific and it’s important that you follow it to the letter.
- Clams – National Center for Home Food Preservation
- Canning Crab Meat – National Center for Food Preservation
- Canning Tuna – National Center for Food Preservation
- Canning Salmon – Bernardin
- Canning Shrimp – Washington State University
- Canning Smoked Fish At Home – Pacific Northwest Extension
- Canning Trout – Simply Canning
Pressure Canning Organ Meats
While these days organ meats are often tossed, they’re actually some of the most nutritious parts of the animal.
Canning up organ meats means you preserve the best parts and can slowly eat them for all their benefits throughout the year.
- Canning Beef Lengua (Tongue) – Kusina ni Manang
- Pressure Canning Giblets – A Traditional Life
- Canning Organ Meat Stock – Practical Self Reliance
Organ Meat Stock
Pressure Canning Pet Food
Honestly, I’ve never tried canning my own pet food…but there no reason not to!
Here are a few pressure canner dog food recipes to try:
- Canning Your Own Dog Food by Frugal Living On The Ranch
- An Experiment in Canning Dog Food by Canning Granny
If you know any good pressure canning recipes I’ve missed, please leave me a note in the comments! I’m always looking for new ways to fill a jar.
Pressure Canning an assortment of pressure canned food, cooled, with the rings removed for storage.
Canning Recipes
Looking for more canning recipes? I have over 100 canning recipes for just about everything under the sun…
- 12+ Apple Canning Recipes
- 30+ Strawberry Canning Recipes
- 12+ Beginner Canning Mistakes (and How to Fix Them)
Food Preservation Tutorials
Want to learn a few new techniques for preserving outside the jar?
- Beginners Guide to Cheese Making
- How to Make Apple Cider Vinegar
- How to Preserve a Whole Pig without Refrigeration
- How to make Mead (Honey Wine)
