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Video Summary
In this video, I take you through my complete canning pantry organization! As a family of two, my husband Nick and I keep a smaller but well-stocked supply of home-canned goods. I show you everything I’ve preserved including turkey broth, chicken (my favorite!), pork, various vegetables like corn and carrots from our garden, beans, and preserves. I share what I love (raw packed chicken thighs), what I won’t can again (beef that falls apart too much, watery baked beans), and helpful tips I’ve learned along the way. I also reveal where I store all my canning supplies and my favorite canning reference books. Whether you’re new to canning or a seasoned pro, this tour gives you ideas for what to preserve and how to organize it all efficiently!
Video Transcript
Intro
Hello everyone, I’m Carrie and I’m at Keep It Simple DIY. Today I’m going to show you my canning pantry.
So over here I have just some pantries from Home Depot that we added in, stained them, and I keep all of our canned goods in here. Before I get into showing you that, I wanted to tell you a little bit about our family. There are just two of us here, me and my husband Nick, and so we keep a smaller supply of canned goods in stock at all times. And with that, let’s get into it.
Top Shelf
This very top row up here that I don’t think you can quite see is where I just keep extras. Anytime I have like overflow, I stick it up there so I can’t really reach there anyways.
And then the next shelf down, I have turkey broth. Every year at Thanksgiving I like to make turkey broth and I do one full canner load. I use the Presto 23-quart canner and I get 18 pints when I use the wide mouth pints, and I can get 18 pints if I use the regular mouth pints. So I’m trying to get all my stock into regular mouth and then use my wide mouth for things that aren’t liquidy that are harder to come out. We’re getting there. This is the last one of the stock in the wide mouth jar.
Next to my turkey broth I have pork broth. This is something I just recently did. I had canned pork meat and saved the bones, and so now we have some pork stock as well.
Meat
This next shelf down is our meat. First off, I have beef, and honestly I didn’t really love the beef canned because it just falls apart so much that really the only use for it is if you’re making a really, really fine beef. And whenever I’m making something like a stew, I want the beef to be a little bit more held together, so I might not do this. I only have four of these jars left, might not do them again.
Chicken
All right, next I have chicken. I absolutely love canned chicken and right now I only have six jars of this left. The last time I canned it was August 12th of 2022 and it’s currently April of 2023.
And I’ve done this a few different ways. There’s hot packing and raw packing meat, and I have realized that raw packing for meat tastes pretty similar and is just so much easier unless the meat already happens to have been cooked. And so I prefer to raw pack my meat. And then for chicken pieces, I’d rather use the chicken thigh than the chicken breast because the chicken thigh just stays together a lot better. The chicken breast, similarly to the beef, just completely fell apart, and the chicken thigh does kind of fall apart but not nearly as bad.
Pork
All right, next I have some pork, and I have pork in quarts and in pints. And this is great for if I’m making pulled pork. I also love to open a jar, put it on some flatbread pizza.
The next shelf down I have some veggies. I always like to have canned mushrooms, so I’ve got mushrooms actually in pints and in half-pint jars.
Corn
Next to that I have a ton of corn that I canned this winter, and it was just frozen corn that I let thaw out and then put in jars just so I didn’t have to keep it in my freezer. One thing I’m thinking here is that next time I’ll probably do these in half pints because I’m realizing that two cups of corn is, it’s fun to go through unless I’m doing like a corn chowder or something.
Carrots
And then next I have homegrown carrots from last year’s garden. These ones were purple carrots and so they’re a little bit, let me see if you can see this, a little bit darker. And then these ones are a little brighter and these were orange carrots.
Sauce
And last year I didn’t can any tomato sauce. I had a ton from the year before, but this year I do plan to have a bunch of tomato plants and can sauce again.
Balsamic Onion Jam
My next shelf is a shorter shelf, so I have all of my smaller pints here. I have the balsamic onion jam, and I use this for basically chicken, meats, flavoring proteins.
Canned Onions
And then recently I just canned onions for the first time, and this has been so helpful. All I did was I boiled the onions for five minutes and then I put them in jars and canned them for, I believe, 40 minutes. And these have been super helpful for just anytime I want to have onions, I don’t want to chop them, I don’t want to sauté them, just dump them in and I’m good to go.
Blackberry Jam
I have one little pint of blackberry jam from last summer left. We don’t eat a lot of jam in this house. I made four of these and we’re getting close to summer again and I still have one left.
Tomato Soup
Next to that I have some tomato soup, and I think if I were to do tomato soup again I would probably use a different recipe. This one wasn’t my favorite and it turned out a little bit more pulpy than I was wanting.
Baked Beans
Next shelf down is our beans. I have great northern beans. I have baked beans. This is my second time making baked beans and the recipe seems to be a little weird. It had me really water down the sauce and I thought that seemed weird when I was doing it, but I followed the instructions because that’s how you would safely can a product, and it just turned out watery as well. So whenever I go to use this I actually have to add in a sauce. So if I were to do this again, I’d go back to the first recipe I was using, you know, if I can find it because I didn’t note down which one it was.
Chickpeas
Next up I have chickpeas. Now chickpeas are an interesting canned item. I canned these originally about three, four years ago, not this jar but for the first time, and they were just sitting in my pantry and I couldn’t figure out how to use them. So I had a pantry challenge one year and I’m like, I have to use these up. And so I put them into curry, and now they’re a staple. Now I keep canning them and I keep putting them in our curry.
Pinto Beans
I also have a quart of pinto beans.
Black Beans
And then I just canned up some black beans about a month ago because I was completely out.
Refried Beans
Some other beans that I’m out of, I like to keep refried beans in here. Now I don’t mash them, I just put all the spices in and the beans, and then when I get ready to use them I take them out and then I mash them. But that is a staple for something like a burrito casserole.
Potatoes
On our final shelf I have some potatoes.
Pork Stock
And then I have half pints of the pork stock. They just wouldn’t fit in my half-pint jar section.
Sweet Potatoes
And then I have sweet potatoes. And you know, I haven’t been a big fan of these sweet potatoes. I love sweet potatoes, but these just came out super mushy. And so I’m finding that even if I make them into mashed potatoes, I really don’t love how they come out. And so some ways that I’ve used it so far is I’ve used it to make sweet potato gnocchi and I’ve used it to make sweet potato muffins. It’s just one jar goes a long way and I still have a ton of jars to use.
Now there are a lot of things in here that I don’t currently have. This year I would really love to get green beans and peas from the garden. There’s also some things that I’ve canned before that aren’t from the garden that I would love to add in again. I’ve made a hamburger soup that was delicious, and I also have canned chicken chili, corn chowder. I’ve done that multiple times and it’s delicious. You just dump it out of the jar, add some mashed potato flakes and then some cheese, and then it’s delicious and it’s a very quick and easy meal.
Jars
So here’s the jars. I’m going to close this off and then I’m going to actually take you off and bring you up above because this is where I keep all of my canning supplies.
All right, if you notice a change in the video quality, it’s because I’m on my phone now because my camera just died. But I wanted to show you these bins that I have up above my pantry cabinet, and that is where I have all of my canning supplies. So I’m actually just going to step on a chair and show you right up here what’s in these.
So this first bin is the lowest down. I can actually reach it from the ground, and so I keep a little bit of everything in this so that when I’m canning I have everything I need. I have lids, rings, funnel, and my de-bubbler, all of those type of things.
In this next one I just have some extra rings and an extra funnel. Then I have some Clear Jel and some pectin and some citric acid. And then these next two were just filled with rings, and then it looks like I have the fat separator for when I do broth in there as well. And so I have my wide mouth rings in the one farthest away and then my regular mouth rings in the one closest to us.
I also wanted to show you two of my favorite home canning guides. I have the USDA’s Complete Guide to Home Canning, and this book I actually love the spiral. I thought I wouldn’t like it because it doesn’t stack well, but I can leave the pages open while I’m canning, which has been super helpful. And then I also have the Ball’s Complete Book of Home Preservation.
Thank you so much for joining me in my pantry today. I hope to see you next time. Bye friends!
