Chili beans can be canned at home, but only in a pressure canner and only with a tested process. Beans are a low-acid food. So are meat, onions, and most chili vegetables. A boiling-water bath never reaches the temperature needed to destroy Clostridium botulinum spores. Those spores can grow in a sealed, room-temperature jar and produce a toxin you cannot see, smell, or taste.
The search “canning chili beans” usually means one of three products. They are not interchangeable.
| What you want | Tested path | Jar size in the official process | Typical process time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plain beans for later chili | USDA dried beans | Pints or quarts | 75 min / 90 min |
| Beans in a tomato-style sauce | USDA beans with tomato or molasses sauce | Pints or quarts | 65 min / 75 min |
| Ready-to-heat chili with meat and beans | USDA chili con carne | Pints only | 75 min |
Use the row that matches the food you actually put in the jar. Do not borrow times from a different product. Density and heat penetration change when you add meat, thickeners, or extra solids.
Why chili beans cannot go in a water-bath canner
C. botulinum spores survive boiling water. They die at about 240–250°F, which a pressure canner can reach. A water-bath canner tops out near 212°F. Tomatoes in chili do not make the mixture acidic enough to treat as a pickle or salsa. Adding vinegar “to be safe” also does not convert an untested chili recipe into a water-bath product. The pH has to be proven across the whole jar, not guessed from one acidic ingredient.
A pressure cooker is not automatically a pressure canner. CDC and extension services advise against using electric multi-cookers for canning, even when the panel has a canning button. Use a stovetop pressure canner large enough to hold jars upright on a rack, and have a dial gauge checked yearly if that is the type you own.
Choose the product before you soak a single bean
Option 1: Can plain beans, season later
This is the most flexible pantry staple. You get shelf-stable pinto, kidney, black, or other dried beans. When you open a jar, you add chili powder, cumin, onion, tomatoes, and meat if you want them.
This is also the safest answer when your family chili recipe includes flour, masa, cornstarch, rice, pasta, dairy, or a lot of fat. Those ingredients are not part of tested chili-canning processes. You can still keep the beans on the shelf and finish the pot on the stove.
Option 2: Can beans in a tomato sauce
USDA publishes a dried-bean process that packs hot beans with a heated tomato sauce or molasses sauce. Jars are filled only three-fourths full of beans, then topped with sauce to 1-inch headspace. That liquid-to-solid ratio is part of the safety of the process. Processing is 65 minutes for pints and 75 minutes for quarts, with pressure adjusted for altitude.
This is the closest official method to “chili beans” without meat. It is not the same as dumping chili seasoning mix and tomato paste into a jar of raw beans.
Option 3: Can chili con carne
The National Center for Home Food Preservation chili con carne recipe is the tested meat-and-bean chili. It uses soaked, partly cooked pinto or kidney beans, browned drained ground beef, onion, optional peppers, tomatoes, salt, pepper, and chili powder. It is packed hot into pint jars only and processed 75 minutes. There is no official quart process for this recipe. Healthy Canning and several extension reprints note the same pint-only limit.
The recipe says, verbatim: “Caution: Do not thicken.” Flour, cornmeal, masa, and similar starches slow heat movement inside the jar. That can leave the center underprocessed even when the canner gauge looks correct. An Oregon State Extension reply on thickened chili makes the same point and recommends freezing that version instead.
What you need before you start
- A pressure canner with a rack (not an Instant Pot-style multi-cooker used as a canner)
- Canning jars free of chips on the rim; new lids; bands that screw down fingertip-tight
- Dried beans that are clean and not years past their prime (very old beans stay hard)
- Canning or pickling salt if you use salt (table salt is for flavor only and can be omitted)
- Headspace tool or ruler, bubble wand, clean damp cloth for rims
- Your elevation, because pressure changes with altitude, not time
If this is your first pressure-canning session, read NCHFP’s “Using Pressure Canners” and “Principles of Home Canning” before filling a jar. Venting for a full 10 minutes, maintaining pressure without drops, and cooling the canner naturally are not optional steps.
How to can dried beans (the base method)
This is the USDA process for shelled, dried beans of all varieties.
Yield guide: About 5 pounds of dried beans fill 7 quarts; about 3¼ pounds fill 9 pints.
- Sort and rinse. Discard stones, shriveled beans, and discolored seeds.
- Soak. Overnight method: cover with water by 2–3 inches and soak 12–18 hours in a cool place, then drain. Quick method: cover with water, boil 2 minutes, take off the heat, soak 1 hour, drain.
- Cover the soaked beans with fresh water. Bring to a boil and simmer 30 minutes. The beans will not be fully soft. They finish in the canner.
- Optional salt: ½ teaspoon per pint or 1 teaspoon per quart, added to the jar.
- Hot pack only. Fill jars with hot beans and cooking liquid, leaving 1-inch headspace. Do not pack dry beans into jars and cover them with water. That method has not been tested and changes how heat moves through the jar.
- Remove air bubbles, adjust liquid if needed, wipe rims, apply lids, and band fingertip-tight.
- Process in a pressure canner:
| Jar size | Process time | Dial gauge, 0–2,000 ft | Weighted gauge, 0–1,000 ft |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pints | 75 minutes | 11 lb | 10 lb |
| Quarts | 90 minutes | 11 lb | 10 lb |
Above those elevations, raise pressure (not time): dial gauge typically +1 lb per 2,000-foot band; weighted gauge uses 15 lb above 1,000 feet. Confirm the chart for your canner type.
If pressure drops below the target at any point, bring the canner back up and restart the full process time. Partial time does not count.
How to can USDA chili con carne
Yield: 9 pints.
Ingredients (NCHFP):
- 3 cups dried pinto or red kidney beans
- 5½ cups water
- 5 teaspoons salt, divided
- 3 pounds ground beef
- 1½ cups chopped onion
- 1 cup chopped peppers, optional
- 1 teaspoon black pepper
- 3 to 6 tablespoons chili powder
- 2 quarts crushed or whole tomatoes
Procedure:
- Wash beans. Soak 12–18 hours in water 2–3 inches above the beans. Drain.
- Combine beans with 5½ cups fresh water and 2 teaspoons salt. Bring to a boil, then simmer 30 minutes. Drain again.
- Brown the beef with onion and peppers. Drain the fat. Excess fat can interfere with sealing and with heat transfer.
- Add 3 teaspoons salt, black pepper, chili powder, tomatoes, and the drained beans. Simmer 5 minutes. Do not thicken.
- Ladle hot chili into hot pint jars, 1-inch headspace. Debubble, wipe rims, lid, and band.
- Process pints 75 minutes:
| Canner | 0–1,000 ft (weighted) / 0–2,000 ft (dial) | Higher elevation |
|---|---|---|
| Weighted gauge | 10 lb | 15 lb above 1,000 ft |
| Dial gauge | 11 lb | 12 / 13 / 14 lb as elevation rises |
Do not scale this into quarts. Do not add extra beans to “make it heartier,” extra meat beyond the tested ratio, or fillers. Dried bean types listed in the recipe (pinto or red kidney) are the ones the process was written around; many canners treat other common dried beans as interchangeable in plain bean canning, but chili con carne is a specific formula. If you want black-bean chili with no meat, can plain black beans or use the tomato-sauce bean process and finish the seasoning when you open the jar.
Rules that keep chili beans safe
Do not thicken before canning. Starch swells during processing, can break seals, and slows heating. Thicken in the saucepan after you open the jar.
Do not skip the soak and 30-minute boil for dried beans. Processing times assume hydrated, hot-packed beans. Putting raw dry beans in a jar (“dry pack” or “raw dry canning”) is not a researched method.
Drain fat from browned meat. Follow the tested meat amount. High-fat chili is a sealing and heating problem, not just a calorie problem.
Leave 1-inch headspace. Too little headspace causes siphoning. Too much can prevent a strong vacuum. Siphoning after a correct process does not automatically mean the food is unsafe if the lid sealed, but use those jars first and keep the rim clean.
Vent the canner 10 minutes before weighting or closing the petcock. Trapped air lowers the temperature at a given pressure.
Cool the canner naturally. Do not run cold water over the lid to speed depressurization. Rapid cooling can siphon liquid and weaken seals.
Do not use a water-bath canner, oven, dishwasher, or open kettle for beans or chili.
What the finished jars should look like — and when to throw them out
After 12–24 hours of undisturbed cooling, remove bands, wash jars, and check seals. The lid should not flex. Store sealed jars without bands in a cool, dark, dry place. Best quality is usually within 12 months; many households use home-canned beans within a year.
Discard without tasting if:
- The lid is unsealed, bulging, or leaking
- The contents spurts, foams, or smells off when opened
- You know the batch was water-bath processed, underprocessed, or made from an untested thickened recipe
USDA guidance for questionable low-acid home-canned food is to treat it as a botulism risk. Do not taste it. If you need to dispose of suspect jars, follow current extension detox instructions rather than pouring the contents down a sink where pets or other people could contact them.
Even correctly processed low-acid food that was not canned by a current tested method should be boiled before eating: 10 minutes below 1,000 feet, plus 1 minute per additional 1,000 feet. That boiling can destroy preformed toxin; it does not fix a jar that should never have been stored at room temperature.
How to use a jar of canned chili beans
Plain canned beans: drain or keep the liquid, then build chili on the stove with tomatoes, aromatics, spices, and meat or extra vegetables.
Tomato-sauce beans: heat and adjust salt, chili powder, cumin, and heat level. Add browned meat if you want a full chili.
Chili con carne: empty the pint into a pan and heat to a simmer. This is when you thicken, add a splash of broth, stir in fresh cilantro, or stretch the pot with extra beans you canned separately.
If the chili looks thin in the jar, that is expected. Thickness belongs at serving time, not in the canner.
Common mistakes
Using a family chili recipe as a canning recipe. Favorite stove recipes often include thickeners, more solids than liquid, extra fat, or ingredients with no canning process. Freeze that version, or can the tested base and finish it when you serve it.
Canning chili con carne in quarts. There is no USDA time for quarts of that product.
Adding rice, pasta, flour, or dairy. These change density and heating. They also degrade in quality during a long pressure process.
Guessing altitude. Time stays the same; pressure rises with elevation. Using sea-level pressure at 4,000 feet underprocesses the food.
Trusting “we’ve always water-bathed beans.” Home-canned vegetables remain a documented source of foodborne botulism when they are not pressure canned. Absence of illness in one household is not a process validation.
Frequently asked questions
Can I can vegetarian chili beans? There is no USDA “vegetarian chili” recipe that mirrors chili con carne with the meat simply removed. Use the dried-bean process or the beans-with-tomato-sauce process, then add the chili seasoning when you heat the jar. Do not invent a thick, stew-like vegetarian chili and apply the meat-chili process time to it.
Can I put dry chili powder in a jar of beans? Small amounts of dried spices do not replace a tested chili recipe. They also do not make an untested pack safe. If you want a seasoned bean, the documented sauce-pack method is the better official option. Many people can plain beans and control the spice level at the table, which avoids the question entirely.
Can I use canned beans instead of dried beans in chili con carne? The official recipe starts with dried beans that are soaked and simmered 30 minutes. Substituting already canned beans changes solids, salt, and how the mixture heats. Stay with the written prep.
Can I use ground turkey or venison instead of beef? Ground beef is the meat in the NCHFP chili con carne formula. Some extension materials discuss lean ground meats in other meat-canning processes, but swapping proteins in a mixed recipe is not something to assume is equivalent. If you want wild game chili on the shelf, look for a tested game or ground-meat process and keep beans as a separate canned ingredient, or freeze the finished chili.
How much liquid should be in the jar? Beans and chili need covering liquid and correct headspace. A jar that loses a lot of liquid during processing can still be safe if it sealed and was processed correctly, but the top beans may darken. Use those jars sooner.
Is store-bought canned chili the same process? Commercial canneries use equipment and scheduled processes that home kitchens cannot copy. Do not shorten home process times because a supermarket can of chili exists.
Canning chili beans is a pantry project with a narrow safe path: pressure canner, hydrated hot-packed beans or a tested chili formula, no thickeners, correct jar size, and altitude-adjusted pressure. If the batch only works as your usual Sunday chili — thick, loaded, and customized — freeze it. Save the canner for the recipes that were actually measured for the inside of a jar.