Pressure canning pumpkin soup

Our barn only has 2°C at the moment which is not ideal to store pumpkin. As I understand from searching in the internet they should be stored by room temperature. I have a lot of pumpkin from the garden and it would be a waste to let them go bad. I have already cooked some in the oven, pureed them and froze the puree portioned for pumpkin pie and pumpkin pancakes. I do not like just putting everything in the freezer. It uses power and if there would be a black out everything in the freezer could turn bad. And since we are going to travel for a longer period of time and I can not take the freezer with me, I am trying to can some of the pumpkin.

I am starting with using pumpkin for soup. This way I will have some convenience food and I can use some other vegetables from the garden. I cut up 2 pumpkins (selecting some seed for sowing next year), some onions, a bit of garlic (the garlic is very strong in taste), carrots and some root celery. This was topped of with freshly cooked bone broth from chicken carcases from chicken we had bought and took the meat of to pressure can. I filled 5 big jars and 5 small jars, to fill up the canner as much as it can take.

The pressure canner guide says to pre cook the pumpkin for 2 minutes. I did not do that and I do hope this will not get me into trouble. The pumpkin has the longest pressure canning time of all of the ingredients, so that is the time I went by.

Shortly after canning the soup we tried some. The taste is not quite as I wanted it, but to use up as much pumpkin as possible I left out the leek and turnip. These obviously change the taste. When I find the time I might do another round of soup and at the leek and turnip. I am going to pressure can the pumpkin by it self and do it by the book this time. This way I have pumpkin for puree to make pumpkin pie and pumpkin pancakes while we are travelling.

For the pumpkins which I do not manage to process before we leave, I will store these underneath the seating area in our caravan and hope they will stay good until I manage to use them up freshly.

Maybe you have noticed some toy’s in the background of my pictures. Well I do have our children around at all times and of course pay attention nothing happens while I am cooking/ pressure canning.