Canning Tomato Soup

Canning is great for preserving your garden produce, yes, but what’s even better is that you can make your own convenience food.

There is nothing better than having your pantry shelves full of homemade meals that are ready to go in an instant.

Having tomato soup base on hand makes a super quick lunch. Perfect served with a grilled cheese sandwich!

In the case of canning tomato soup, you aren’t going to can the whole soup. Dairy products preserve as well in a homemade canned tomato soup recipe. So instead, we’ll actually can the tomato soup base, adding the cream when we open the jar and heat the soup.

You can see in the pictures that I add quite a bit of cream to mine, but this is personal preference. The main point is that you have the seasoned tomato soup base full of delicious onion, garlic, and basil flavor.

The Easiest Way to Can Tomato Soup

My recipe for canning tomato soup differs a little from many others you may find, but I believe mine preserves the flavors while also being easier.

The difference is very simply that I don’t cook the vegetables before canning. This eliminates a lot of time, mess, and dirty dishes, and all that adds up quickly, especially when you’re canning large batches. While your vegetables won’t be sautéed, they will be plenty cooked, and flavorful.

In my opinion, this is the easiest, best way.

Another important note for a canned tomato soup recipe is that this is actually not a pressure canner recipe. Instead, tomato products are canned using the water bath canning method. According to the National Center for Home Food Preservation, tomato products should have lemon juice or citric acid added to them, and be canned via boiling water bath.

This is as easy as boiling water. You just need a tall enough kettle to submerge your jars by at least an inch of water. I have a granite canner, which I use often, and a stainless steel canner, which I like best because the glass lid makes it easy to keep an eye on the boiling water. Both of these canners come with a rack to hold your jars off of the heat source, which is important to avoid glass breakage during the canning process. 

Ingredients for canning tomato soup

Because we’re canning the base, and not the finished soup, there are fewer ingredients here than you may expect.

• Tomatoes. Obviously. I usually use a Roma tomato or Amish Paste.
• Onion
• Garlic
• Salt

• Pepper

• Sugar (optional, helps offset the acid in the tomatoes)
• Fresh Basil
• Bottled Lemon Juice or Citric Acid for ph control.

All of these ingredients will be combined raw.

How to prepare tomatoes

There are a couple different ways you can prep your tomatoes.

With a Strainer

If you can a lot of tomatoes, I highly recommend investing in a fruit/tomato strainer. A strainer enables you to process a lot of tomatoes very quickly and easily, and with less mess. You can get one that attaches to your kitchen Aid mixer for about $75 on Amazon (I’m sure the price fluctuates). I haven’t tried this, but it seems like a good idea!

You can also get a Johnny Applesauce strainer, which is a hand-crank strainer that can come with a variety of attachments for different types of fruit or vegetables. I grew up using one of these, and it’s really good. We processed who knows how many bushels of tomatoes, grapes, apples, pears, and I don’t even know what else. But it is a beast to set up, so I like to use the third option for smaller batches.

Thirdly is the CucinaPro. I really like this one for tomatoes. It takes very little set-up, and suctions to your counter top. You can process a lot of tomatoes fast with this one. It is less thorough than the Johnny Applesauce, so you will need to restrain the pulp two to three times. Personally, I don’t mind doing this (I do run the pulp back through the Johnny Applesauce once with tomatoes as well). The pulp goes through very quickly and easily, and that’s where the good, thick, tomato paste is.

To prep the tomatoes, quarter them, and then gently cook until softened. You can strain your tomatoes while raw, but cooking before straining helps prevent the dreaded “float” of canned tomato products, where the water settles to the bottom of the jar, and the pulp floats on top.

In order to cook tomatoes without adding additional water, squeeze some of the juice from the seed cavity to coat the bottom of your pan if possible, and stir often.

After tomatoes are cooked, strain.

If you don’t have a tomato strainer

There’s nothing wrong with doing it the old fashioned way.

1. Peel your tomatoes (You can see a tutorial in this recipe for canning salsa). 
   
2. Core and deseed tomatoes
3. Cook tomatoes until soft
4. Blend tomatoes. Do this in small batches and be careful to avoid splashing hot tomato on  yourself while pureeing. 

This method does have the advantage of taking much of the water out of the tomato with the seeds, reducing your cooking time.

How to Can Tomato Soup

1. After your tomatoes are prepared by straining or blending, add them to a large pot.
2. Quarter onion, peel garlic, an add both with basil, to a blender, and blend until fairly fine.
   
3. Stir into tomato juice with sugar, salt, and pepper.
   
4. Heat pot over low-medium heat until a low simmer is reached.
5. Cook soup base down, reducing by about one quarter, until slightly thicker than traditional tomato soup.
   
6. If you removed the seed cavities of your tomatoes before blending, you not need to reduce soup as much.
7. After soup is done cooking, you can blend it until smooth with an immersion blender, or in batches in a regular blender if desired.
8. After soup is thickened, and optionally blended, ladle into clean, hot jars, leaving 1/2 inch headspace. This is easiest to do with a canning funnel, which will help keep the top of the jar clean and free from debris that may prevent seal.
   
9. Add one tablespoon of bottle lemon juice, or 1/4 teaspoon citric acid to each pint jar, or two tablespoons of bottled lemon juice, or 1/2 teaspoon citric acid to each quart jar.
10. Wipe rim of the jars with a clean cloth to make sure it’s free from debris.
11. Screw down lids and bands. I use Denali Canning lids, because they have a seal guarantee, and I’ve never had one fail to seal!
12. Process in a waterbacth canner for 40 minutes (pints), or 45 minutes (quarts).
13. Remove canning kettle from heat after processing time, and let cool.
14. Remove jars from water bath. After 24 hours, check for seal, and store in a cool place out of direct light.

To use the canned soup base

Empty soup base into a sauce pan, and heat. Stir in 1/8-1/4 cup of heavy cream per pint of soup.

Serve, topped with parmesan cheese if desired.

Note that this is just a serving suggestion. You can add as much or as little cream, or use half and half, or milk, as you like.

I like to serve it with grilled cheese made from our sourdough sandwich bread. My husband likes chunky soup, so he prefers to add other vegetables, and use the soup as a base for a hearty vegetable or hamburger soup.

Other canning recipes for you:

• How to can vegetable soup
• Canned Beef Stew Tutorial
• Canning diced tomatoes
• Canning cabbage
• How to can corn

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