Hooray for homemade convenience food! Whenever I am unable to fix a meal for my family, my husband's options are either fast food or Spaghettios. If it is any more involved than that, we are SOL. Even the thought of defrosting something already fully cooked is a bit too much trouble. So in my effort to minimize the processed foods that we eat, I need to provide him with some homemade meals in a jar.

In my last post I documented my favorite Chicken & Black Bean Chili Recipe. I will now explain how I canned this recipe so that my husband would have a quick and easy dinner option on those nights I am not able to cook. It is absolutely crucial that you use a pressure canner for this. A boiling water bath will not suffice. Any time you can low acid and/or meat products you MUST use a pressure canner.

The recipe makes a little over 2 quarts of chili. Since I was canning it, I tripled the recipe to make it worth my time and effort. One batch of chili makes between 2 and 3 quarts of chili. When I tripled it, I got a solid 8 quarts which was perfect. I fit 7 quarts in the pressure canner and saved one quart in the fridge for immediate consumption.

HINT #1 - Use the dried beans instead of canned beans if you are canning this recipe. They hold their texture MUCH better through the pressure canning process.

HINT #2 - Keep some extra chicken broth (hot and in a separate pan) to top off your canned chili. You'll only need 1 or 2 cups. The chili tends to absorb some broth during the canning process, resulting in a drier chili than what you started with. I usually fill the jars to about 2 inches of the top of the jar with chili and then fill in that extra 1 inch with the broth.

Once you get the chili recipe cooking, but before you add the chicken to the chili, set up your pressure canner. A single recipe will fill at least 2 quart jars or 4-5 pint jars. A double recipe will fill 4-5 quarts or 8-10 pints, and a triple recipe filled 8 quarts of which I only canned 7. Please start with clean jars, rings, and lids. Place your desired number of pint or quart jars into the canner on top of the rack. Fill the jars and the canner to at least halfway up the jars' height. Add a healthy splash (2-3 Tbsp or so) of white vinegar to prevent mineral deposits on your jars. Place the pressure canner on a burner and heat the water and jars over medium heat or until you start to see some small bubbles. Do not bring to a boil. Place the lids in a shallow sauce pan and bring to a gentle simmer as well. Do not boil.

As soon as you have added the shredded chicken to the chili and brought it back to a gentle boil, and your cans and lids are hot, you are ready to start.

Use a set of tongs to remove a jar from the pressure canner, dumping the water inside of it back into the canner. Fit a canning funnel into the mouth of the jar. Ladle hot chicken chili into the jar up to 2 inches from the top. Top off an additional 1 inch of hot chicken broth on top. You want to leave a good 1 inch of clearance between the top of the jar and the chili. Remove the canning funnel. Wipe the rim of the jar with a clean rag dipped in white vinegar. Top the jar with one of your prepared lids. Screw on a band, but only finger-tight. Do not over-tighten. Air needs to escape from the jar during this process so do NOT seal it too tightly. Place the filled jar back into the pressure canner and repeat with all of the jars or until you run out of chili.

Once the jars have been filled and placed in the canner, seal the pressure canner up and turn up the heat. Once the vent starts letting out steam, let it continue to vent for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, place your weight on the vent and bring the pressure up to 10 psi. You want to can the chili at 10 psi for 75 minutes for pint jars and 90 minutes for quart jars. After the proper amount of time has passed, turn off the burner and wait for the pressure to return to 0 psi. Give it an extra 10 minutes past that just to be safe, then carefully remove the lid, using care to vent the steam away from you. Let the jars sit in the hot water for another 30 minutes at least before removing them to cool on the counter.

I had one jar that failed to seal. I simply put that one in the fridge and ate it within a week. All the other ones were perfect. We did notice a few changes in the chili after canning. First it changed from a mostly brownish chili to a more reddish hue. I have no idea why. It also tasted a bit more caramelized for lack of a better term. But it was still absolutely delicious and a much better choice than Spaghettios or fast food.