Pressure Canning
Zuppa Toscana Copy-cat

Ingredients for Zuppa Toscana

The ingredients for canning sausage potato and kale soup are quite simple.

To make a pressure canner batch of 7 quarts (or 14 pints), you’ll need the following:

• 3 lbs (1.4 kg) ground italian sausage
• 4 1/2 lbs peeled and cubed potatoes (1/2 inch cubes)
• 1 lbs de-stemmed and chopped kale*
• 10 cups chicken broth, vegetable broth, or water
• 1 to 2 tbsp canning salt
• 1 Tbsp ground black pepper
  
  * you can leave out the kale until you reheat and add the heavy cream

I use Jimmy Deans italian sausage in the roll, like the breakfast sausage. Any ground italian sausage will work. The salt in this recipe is designed to account for seasoned prepared sausage with salt added. Once processed, when you go to eat it, you will want to add the kale if you withheld it from the recipe, 1 cup of heavy cream to each quart or 1/2 cup of heavy cream to each pint.

Adjust to your tastes. You’re always allowed to add more or less salt to pressure canning recipes, and you’re able to use a reasonable amount of any dry seasoning as well.

This is a hot pack canning recipe, and all the ingredients will need to be simmered together before adding to canning jars.

Prepare a pressure canner, along with jars, lids, and rings.  For most canners, this means adding 2 to 3 inches of water and bringing it up to around just simmering (around 180 degrees F).  Follow the instructions on your particular brand of pressure canner.

Once the canner is prepared, you can start making the soup.

1. Start by preparing your potatoes.  You’ll need about 5 lbs of potatoes as purchased to make 4 1/2 lbs of peeled and diced potatoes (1/2 inch dice).
2. *Next, prepare the kale. It takes about 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 lbs of kale as purchased to make 1 lbs of kale leaves (trimmed). Wash it good, destem and cut up.
3. Once your vegetables are prepared, it’s time to brown the sausage.  Raw meat tends to lead to poor-quality home-canned soups, and it’s always recommended that you pre-brown the meat. Brown the sausage over medium heat.  This should take about 10 minutes. Stir occasionally to encourage even browning, but try to leave some small chunks, and don’t break it up too much.
4. Once the sausage is browned, add in the vegetables, seasonings, salt, and the broth or water.  Personally, I like to use homemade chicken broth, but vegetable broth or pork stock also work well.
5. Bring the mixture to a simmer on the stove and cook for about 5 minutes until all the ingredients are heated through.
6. Remove the pot from the heat and ladle into prepared jars (pints or quarts), leaving 1” headspace.
7. Once filled, de-bubble jars, adjust headspace, wipe rims of jars with wet paper towel or dish towel and then cap the jars with 2-part canning lids and seal with rings to finger tight.
8. Load the jars into the pressure canner on your canning trivet and add the lid.  Turn the heat up to high.
9. Allow the canner to vent steam for 10 minutes, then seal the canner and bring it up to pressure.
10. This soup is canned at 10 pounds of pressure at sea level, but you’ll need to adjust for altitude if you’re about 1,000 feet in elevation.
11. Process times are 75 minutes for pints and 90 minutes for quarts.