How to Can Broth Safely at Home | garden vive florida

Broth is a low-acid food. That single fact decides the method: pressure canning only. A boiling-water bath never reaches the temperature needed to destroy Clostridium botulinum spores, no matter how long the jars sit in bubbling water.

The tested process for meat and poultry stock is short compared with most pressure-canned foods: 20 minutes for pints and 25 minutes for quarts, at the pressure that matches your canner type and altitude. The work that actually determines whether jars seal and stay safe happens before the canner lid goes on: strain the liquid, skim the fat, leave 1 inch of headspace, and keep solids out of the jar.

This guide covers chicken, turkey, and beef broth using USDA/NCHFP directions, what to do with vegetable broth when there is no USDA process, how broth differs from soup in the jar, and the mistakes that cause failed seals or unsafe food.

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Why Broth Cannot Go in a Water Bath Canner

Broth sits well above pH 4.6. In a sealed jar, that low-acid, oxygen-free environment is exactly where botulism spores can germinate if they are not killed first. Boiling water maxes out at 212°F (100°C) at sea level. A pressure canner raises the temperature to about 240–250°F, which is the range used in tested processes to destroy those spores.

Adding vinegar, lemon juice, or wine does not convert broth into a water-bath product. A splash of acid used while simmering bones for flavor is not the same as a tested acidified recipe. Do not water-bath broth. Do not process it in an Instant Pot or other electric multicooker marketed as a “canner.” Those appliances are not the same as a stovetop pressure canner with a tested venting and pressure schedule.

If you do not own a pressure canner, freeze the broth.

Broth, Stock, and Bone Broth Are Not the Same Job in a Jar

In the kitchen those words overlap. In a canner they do not.

Strained meat or poultry stock/broth is the product USDA tested: hot liquid, almost no solids, fat removed. Process 20 minutes (pints) or 25 minutes (quarts).
Soup is broth plus meat pieces, vegetables, beans, or other solids. Heat moves through a packed jar more slowly. USDA soup times jump to 60 minutes for pints and 75 minutes for quarts (longer if seafood is in the jar). Do not use broth times on a jar that is half full of chicken and carrots.
Long-simmered “bone broth” that gels when cold is still canned as strained meat stock if it is a thin liquid after straining and defatting. Do not can a reduced concentrate, paste, or gelled block as if it were broth. NCHFP has separately warned that concentrates, bouillon cubes, powders, and pastes often contain starch or gelatin that has not been tested for how they change heat penetration when used as canning ingredients.

Tiny shreds of meat that cling to bones after simmering may be returned to the liquid in the USDA meat-stock procedure. Chunks of meat, a layer of vegetables, noodles, rice, flour, cream, or puree turn the jar into soup—or into an untested product.

What You Need Before You Start

Equipment

A dial-gauge or weighted-gauge pressure canner (not a pressure cooker used as a shortcut)
Pint or quart canning jars, new lids, and bands
Jar lifter, funnel, bubble tool or thin spatula, clean cloths
Fine-mesh strainer and, for clearer broth, cheesecloth or a flour-sack towel
A second pot to reheat strained broth

Have the dial gauge checked yearly if that is the canner you use. A gauge that reads low under-processes food.

Know your altitude. Processing time for broth stays the same as elevation rises. Pressure increases. Look up your town’s elevation before the first batch; guessing is how jars get underprocessed.

How USDA Makes Meat and Poultry Stock for Canning

These are the official preparation steps, not a flavor recipe. Vegetables and herbs are common in home pots, but the tested process is written around bones, water, simmering, skimming, and a hot pack. Keep the finished liquid thin and strained.

Beef stock

Use freshly trimmed beef bones with most of the meat removed. Saw or crack large bones so more flavor extracts.
Rinse the bones, cover them with water in a stockpot, cover the pot, and simmer 3 to 4 hours.
Lift out the bones. Cool the broth, skim off the fat, and discard the fat.
If you want, pick off tiny meat bits still on the bones and return those to the broth.
Reheat the broth to a full boil before filling jars.

Chicken or turkey stock

Put large carcass bones (meat already removed) in a stockpot and cover with water.
Cover and simmer 30 to 45 minutes, or until remaining meat shreds fall off easily.
Remove bones, cool the broth, skim fat, and return tiny meat tidbits if you want them.
Reheat to boiling and fill jars.

Home cooks often simmer poultry much longer for a gelled bone broth. That is a flavor choice. For canning, the liquid still has to be strained and defatted, then packed hot. Do not can cloudy, fatty, or slurry-thick liquid.

Salt, vinegar, and aromatics

Salt is optional. It seasons; it does not make the process safe.

A spoonful of vinegar in the simmer pot is a common kitchen trick to help minerals leave the bones. It does not replace pressure canning and should not be used as an excuse to change the method.

Dried herbs and peppercorns can go in the pot and be strained out. Do not thicken the broth. Do not add dairy, flour, cornstarch, rice, pasta, or puree.

How to Pressure Can the Broth

This is a hot pack. Cold liquid in cold jars is not the tested style for meat stock.

Wash jars. Keep them hot until filling. Prepare new lids according to the manufacturer.
Put the canner rack in place and add the amount of water your manual specifies (often 2–3 inches). Begin heating so the canner is hot when jars go in.
Reheat strained, defatted broth to a boil.
Ladle hot broth into hot jars, leaving 1 inch of headspace.
Remove air bubbles, recheck headspace, and wipe rims thoroughly. Fat on the rim is a leading cause of failed seals.
Apply lids and bands fingertip-tight.
Load the canner, lock the lid, and vent a steady stream of steam for 10 minutes before adding the weight or closing the petcock. Skipping the vent leaves air in the canner and drops the temperature below what the process assumes.
Bring the canner to the pressure in the tables below. Start the timer only when that pressure is reached and held.
When time is up, turn off the heat. Let pressure fall to zero on its own. Do not run cold water over the canner or jiggle the weight off early.
Wait the manufacturer’s extra minutes after zero, remove the weight, wait a few more minutes, then take the lid off away from your face.
Lift jars onto a towel. Leave them undisturbed 12–24 hours. Then remove bands, check seals, wash jars, label, and store.

Unsealed jars go in the refrigerator and should be used promptly, or the contents can be reheated and recanned with a new lid within 24 hours if the food still looks and smells normal.

Processing times and pressures for meat and poultry broth

Hot pack only. 1-inch headspace. Times do not change with altitude; pressure does.

Dial-gauge pressure canner

Jar size	Time	0–2,000 ft	2,001–4,000 ft	4,001–6,000 ft	6,001–8,000 ft
Pints	20 min	11 lb	12 lb	13 lb	14 lb
Quarts	25 min	11 lb	12 lb	13 lb	14 lb

Weighted-gauge pressure canner

Jar size	Time	0–1,000 ft	Above 1,000 ft
Pints	20 min	10 lb	15 lb
Quarts	25 min	10 lb	15 lb

If pressure drops below the target during the timed period, bring it back up and restart the full processing time.

Vegetable Broth Is a Separate Decision

USDA publishes a meat-stock process. It does not publish a matching tested process for vegetable-only stock. Oregon State Extension states outright that it does not have recommended processing times for vegetable, fish, or other seafood-based broth and that those products freeze well.

Ball and Bernardin do publish pressure-canning times for strained vegetable stock: commonly 30 minutes for pints and 35 minutes for quarts, with the same style of altitude pressure adjustments used for other pressure-canned foods. Those times are longer than meat stock on purpose. Vegetable pots vary more—onion skins, tomato, mushroom, starch from potatoes or squash—and density changes how heat moves.

Practical rules if you use a current Ball/Bernardin vegetable-stock process:

Strain until the liquid is thin, with no puree and no floating pieces.
Skip starchy vegetables (potato, winter squash) in a broth you plan to can; they thicken the liquid.
Do not water-bath it.
If you want a USDA-only path, freeze vegetable broth.

Do not mix “a little extra vegetables” into meat stock and then guess which clock to use. Once the jar is no longer plain strained meat stock, you are outside the short 20/25-minute process.

Fat Is a Seal Problem, Not a Flavor Bonus

Fat does two unhelpful things in a canning jar: it climbs the sides and contaminates the sealing surface, and it can interfere with a clean vacuum. USDA meat-stock directions say to cool the broth, skim off excess fat, and discard it before reheating and filling.

The reliable home method is:

Strain the hot broth.
Chill it until the fat solidifies on top.
Lift off the cap.
Bring the defatted broth back to a boil and pack.

Wiping rims with a cloth dampened in hot water or a little vinegar helps remove the last film of grease.

A jar that gels in the pantry after it cools is normal for collagen-rich stock. Gel is not the same as a layer of liquid fat sitting under the lid.

Broth in the Jar Versus Broth Used as an Ingredient

Two different questions get mixed together online.

Canning homemade broth as the food in the jar follows the meat-stock tables above.

Using broth inside another canning recipe (stew, soup, vegetables) is only appropriate when that tested recipe lists broth or stock as an allowed liquid. Do not swap broth for water or juice in a boiling-water-canned product. NCHFP’s June 2025 update also says broth and stock may be used interchangeably in up-to-date pressure-canning recipes from reliable sources, but concentrates must be fully reconstituted first, and you should not drop an undissolved cube into a jar.

Store-bought cartons sometimes contain yeast extract, starch, or other extras. If a recipe calls for liquid broth, a plain commercial liquid broth that matches the flavor is the conservative choice—not a paste or “bone broth concentrate.”

After the Jars Cool

Check the seal. The lid should be concave and should not flex. If it flexes, refrigerate or recan.

Store sealed jars without bands, in a cool, dark, dry place. Quality is best within a year. A longer-stored jar with an intact seal is not automatically unsafe, but flavor and color fade.

Before you eat home-canned low-acid food, USDA still advises boiling it for 10 minutes at elevations below 1,000 feet, plus 1 minute per additional 1,000 feet, as a last safety step if there is any doubt about the process. Do not taste from a jar that is bulging, leaking, spurting, or off-smelling. Discard those jars where they cannot be sampled by people or pets.

Use canned broth as you would carton broth: soup base, cooking liquid for grains and beans, pan sauces, or a heated mug. Add noodles, rice, cream, and fresh vegetables when you open the jar—not before it goes into the canner.

Mistakes That Make Broth Canning Unsafe or Frustrating

Water-bath or steam-canner processing. Temperature is too low.
Treating an electric multicooker as a canner. It is not a substitute for a pressure canner used with USDA times.
Leaving a thick fat cap in the jar. Seals fail; rims stay greasy.
Canning unstrained pot liquor with bones, skin, or a sludge of vegetables. That is not the meat-stock process.
Using broth times on soup. Solids need 60/75 minutes.
Adding rice, pasta, flour, cream, milk, or puree. No tested process for those in broth.
Skipping the 10-minute vent. Trapped air lowers canner temperature.
Starting the timer before the canner is at pressure, or ignoring a pressure drop.
Forcing a fast cooldown. Liquid siphons out; seals fail; underprocessing risk rises.
Ignoring altitude. Weighted-gauge canners jump from 10 lb to 15 lb above 1,000 feet.
Trying to “acidify” broth for a water bath. That is not a tested method for this food.

When Freezing Is the Better Option

Freeze instead of can when:

You do not have a pressure canner.
The broth is vegetable-only and you do not want to rely on a non-USDA process.
The liquid is a reduced demi-glace, concentrate, or heavily gelled paste.
You want to keep a lot of meat and vegetables in the liquid (freeze soup, or can soup with the longer tested soup process and no thickeners).
You made fish or seafood stock. Extension sources do not give a broth-only process for those; freeze them.

Cool broth quickly, leave headspace in freezer containers, and use wide-mouth straight-sided jars if you freeze in glass so expansion does not break the jar.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I can broth in pint-and-a-half or half-pint jars? USDA meat-stock tables list pints and quarts. Do not invent a time for an unlisted jar size. Use pint or quart jars.

Do I have to use new lids every time? Yes for the sealing lid. Bands can be reused if they are not rusty or bent.

Why did my broth turn cloudy? Hard rolling boils, unstrained sediment, and minerals in water all cloud stock. Cloudiness alone is not a spoilage sign. Spoilage signs are unsealed lids, spurting, off odor, mold, or fizzing.

Can I can leftover broth from a Sunday roast the next day? Yes if it was refrigerated promptly, still smells normal, is strained and defatted, and is brought back to a boil for a hot pack. Do not can broth that sat out for hours.

Is gelled broth in the pantry safe? A firm gel after cooling is expected in collagen-rich stock. Combined with a good seal and a normal smell when opened, that is a quality feature, not a defect.

Can I add garlic, onion, and celery to the simmer pot? Many home recipes do, then strain them out. The USDA process text itself is bones and water. The more the liquid stops being a thin, strained meat stock—especially if solids stay in the jar—the less that 20/25-minute schedule applies.

How is this different from canning chicken meat? Canned chicken meat (with or without bones) processes far longer—on the order of 65–90 minutes depending on pack and jar size. Broth times are short because the jar is filled with liquid, which heats faster than packed muscle. Do not use broth times for jars of meat.

Canning broth is one of the shorter pressure-canning projects, but it is not a casual one. Use a real pressure canner, match pressure to altitude, skim the fat, and keep the jar to strained liquid. That is the difference between a pantry of usable stock and a low-acid jar that never reached a safe temperature.