Turkey stock made from a carcass can be canned for the pantry, but only in a pressure canner. The National Center for Home Food Preservation (NCHFP) process is a hot pack of strained, defatted stock: 20 minutes for pints and 25 minutes for quarts, at a pressure set by canner type and altitude. A boiling-water canner never gets hot enough to make this low-acid food shelf-stable.
That short processing time is the safety step. How long you simmer the bones is a separate choice about flavor and body. A holiday carcass, a roasted frame, or a bag of saved bones can all become stock under the same canning rules, as long as the jars hold hot, bone-free liquid and the canner holds the correct pressure for the full time.
Why turkey stock has to be pressure canned
Turkey stock is a low-acid food. Clostridium botulinum spores can survive boiling water, and in a sealed jar they can produce botulinum toxin without obvious smell or taste. Pressure canning is what raises the temperature high enough, long enough, to destroy those spores.
A water-bath canner, steam canner, oven, or dishwasher is not a substitute. Electric multi-cookers, including Instant Pot models with a canning button, are also not a stand-in for this process. USDA canning times were developed for pressure canners, and the NCHFP does not support using those times in electric multi-cookers.
Use a stovetop pressure canner with an accurate dial gauge or a weighted gauge, and follow the manufacturer’s venting instructions. Dial gauges should be tested for accuracy about once a year; many county extension offices still offer that check.
What the tested recipe actually covers
The NCHFP chicken or turkey stock directions are narrow, which is why they are reliable.
Place large carcass bones, with most of the meat already removed, in a stockpot. Cover them with water. Cover the pot and simmer 30 to 45 minutes, or until any remaining bits of meat fall easily from the bone. Remove the bones, cool the broth, and discard excess fat. Tiny meat trimmings may go back into the broth. Reheat the broth to boiling, fill jars, and leave 1 inch of headspace.
The product in the jar is stock, not soup. Bones stay out. Noodles, rice, flour, starch, cream, and milk stay out. Those additions change heat penetration, and there is no tested process for thickened turkey stock.
Vegetables are the common gray area. The published recipe is bones and water. Onion, carrot, celery, garlic, and bay leaf are often simmered with the carcass for flavor, then strained out completely. If you do that, only clear stock goes into the jars, and you still use the stock process. If vegetable pieces or meat chunks stay in the jar, you are canning soup and need a tested soup process instead.
Salt is optional. It seasons the stock; it does not preserve it. If you add it, canning salt is less likely to cloud the liquid than table salt with anti-caking agents. A common kitchen amount is up to 1 teaspoon per quart, added to the jar or the pot. Leaving it unsalted keeps the stock flexible for later recipes.
Making stock from the carcass
Pull off the good leftover meat and refrigerate or freeze it for soup, pot pie, or casseroles. The frame, wings, neck, and any saved bones are what go into the pot. A roasted carcass gives a deeper color than a raw one. Roasting a raw frame at a moderate oven temperature before simmering is a flavor step, not a safety step.
Break the carcass so it fits the pot and sits under the water. Cover the bones with cold water. Bring the pot to a simmer and skim the foam that rises in the first half hour.
The official extraction time is 30 to 45 minutes. That is long enough for the tested stock recipe, and it is all the process requires. Many cooks who want bone-broth body simmer longer, often several hours at a bare simmer, or use a pressure cooker as a cooking tool before canning. Longer cooking pulls more collagen from cartilage and joints, so the chilled stock is more likely to gel. It does not change the canning time. Once the bones are out and the liquid is strained and defatted, pints are still 20 minutes and quarts are still 25 minutes.
Keep the pot at a simmer rather than a hard boil if you want a clearer stock. A rolling boil breaks proteins and fat into particles that stay suspended. Those particles are not a safety problem, but they make the jars look cloudy.
Strain through a fine mesh sieve. A second pass through cheesecloth catches more sediment. Discard the bones. Do not put them in the jars.
Wild turkey can follow the same poultry-stock process. An Oregon State University Extension response has said the pressure-canning times for meat and poultry stock are appropriate for wild poultry as well as for lamb or deer stock.
Cooling and removing fat
Fat is the main reason jars of turkey stock fail to seal. During processing, liquid can siphon out of the jar. If that liquid is oily, it can coat the rim and keep the lid from sealing. Excess fat can also shorten the quality of the sealed jar.
The NCHFP instruction is to cool the broth and discard excess fat, then reheat it to boiling before filling. The reliable way to do that is to chill the strained stock until the fat firms on top, then lift the cap off. Overnight in the refrigerator is enough for most batches. If the pot is large, cool it in a shallow container so it passes through the temperature danger zone faster, and refrigerate promptly.
A thin film left after skimming is common and usually not a sealing problem if the rims are wiped clean. A thick cap is worth removing. Poultry fat from some commercial birds can stay soft if the bird was injected with oil; give the stock enough refrigerator time, and skim what does firm up.
After defatting, bring the stock back to a full boil for packing. This is a hot pack. Cold stock in the jars is not the tested method.
Filling jars and running the canner
Use standard mason jars sized for the process: half-pint and smaller jars are not given a separate time, so use pints or quarts. Inspect rims for chips. Wash jars. Keep them hot so they do not crack when the boiling stock goes in. New flat lids do not need preheating unless the manufacturer says otherwise. Rings should be clean and not bent.
- Reheat the defatted stock to boiling.
- Ladle it into hot jars, leaving 1 inch of headspace.
- Slide a bubble tool or clean chopstick around the inside of the jar. Add stock if the level drops.
- Wipe each rim with a damp, clean paper towel. A dry wipe after that removes any remaining film.
- Center the lid and apply the ring fingertip-tight: snug, then a small additional turn. Over-tight rings trap air and can cause buckling or seal failure.
- Set the jars on the rack in the canner. Follow the canner manual for water level, often 2 to 3 inches.
- Lock the lid, heat on high, and vent a steady stream of steam for 10 minutes before placing the weight or closing the petcock. Skipping the vent leaves air in the canner, and the gauge then overstates the temperature inside.
- Bring the canner to the pressure in the table below. Start the timer only when that pressure is reached.
- Hold pressure steady for the full time. If pressure drops below the target, bring it back up and start the timer over.
- Turn off the heat and let the canner depressurize on its own. Do not rush it with cold water. Open the lid away from your face, wait a few minutes, and lift jars straight up onto a towel. Leave them undisturbed for 12 to 24 hours.
After cooling, remove the rings, check that each lid is concave and does not flex when pressed, wash the jars, label them, and store without rings. A jar that did not seal can be refrigerated and used within a few days, or reheated and reprocessed with a new lid within 24 hours for the full original time.
Pressure and time by jar size and altitude
Process time does not change with altitude. Pressure does. These figures are the NCHFP meat-stock tables used for chicken or turkey stock.
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 |
Above 8,000 feet, published dial-gauge pressures stop. A weighted gauge at 15 pounds is the usual alternative if your canner supports it. Confirm your elevation before you start; a phone GPS reading or a local extension lookup is more reliable than guessing.
What the jars look like after processing
Cloudy stock is usually from boiling the bones hard, from fine protein particles, or from seasoning. It is a quality issue, not evidence the process failed. A darker ring or a few specks near the top often come from residual fat or sediment. If the jar sealed and was processed correctly, those marks are not a reason to discard it.
Gelling is a good sign of extracted collagen. Bone broth that is solid in the refrigerator will often set again in the jar after canning. It liquefies when heated. Stock that stays thin was simply simmered less, diluted more, or made from fewer joints. Both are usable.
Liquid loss of an inch or so can happen if the canner pressure swung, the jars were overfilled, or the rings were too loose. As long as the seal is sound and at least half the jar remains full, the food is generally considered safe. Heavy siphoning that uncovers a large share of the jar, or a seal that never formed, means that jar should be refrigerated or reprocessed.
Storage and how to use it
Store sealed jars in a cool, dark, dry place. Extension guidance for home-canned food is to use it within a year for best quality. A sealed jar can remain safe longer, but flavor and color fade, and lids can rust in damp storage.
Before opening, check for a bulging lid, leakage, broken seal, spurting liquid, mold, or an off odor. Do not taste food you suspect is spoiled. Discard it where pets and wildlife cannot reach it. Botulinum toxin is destroyed by a full rolling boil, but the correct defense is a tested process, not boiling a jar that was canned wrong.
Canned turkey stock is a base, not a finished soup. Salt and herbs were either left out or kept light, so season when you cook. Add noodles, rice, cream, and leftover turkey meat at serving time. A quart replaces a carton of commercial broth in gravy, stuffing moistening, bean pots, and rice.
Freezing is the other sound option if you do not own a pressure canner. Leave headspace in freezer containers, chill first, and plan to use it within a few months for best texture. Freezing avoids the fat-and-seal issues of canning, at the cost of freezer space.
Mistakes that affect safety, and mistakes that only affect the jar
These change safety:
- Water-bath canning, oven canning, or using an electric multi-cooker as the canner.
- Shortening the time, or failing to restart the clock after a pressure drop.
- Using sea-level pressure at a higher altitude.
- Canning bones, noodles, flour-thickened gravy, or cream soup under the stock timetable.
- Ignoring an unvented canner.
These affect quality or seals, not the destruction of spores if the process was otherwise correct:
- A long simmer instead of 30 to 45 minutes.
- Cloudy broth from a hard boil.
- A gelled jar.
- A thin fat film after a careful skim and a clean rim.
- Optional salt, or no salt.
Yield depends on the bird and how much water you add. A large holiday carcass often produces several quarts. There is no benefit to reducing the stock to a paste before canning; can it at a usable strength and reduce it later in the pan if a recipe needs it concentrated.
Questions that come up after the first batch
Can the same carcass be simmered a second time? A second, weaker extraction is fine to cook and can on its own. Do not mix untested solids back in. Label it so you know it is lighter.
Do I have to peel vegetables if I simmer them for flavor? No, because they are strained out. Onion skin darkens the stock. Anything left in the jar takes the batch out of the stock recipe.
Why did the fat never form a hard cap? The stock may not have been cold all the way through, the fat may have emulsified during a hard boil, or injected oil in the bird may stay softer than ordinary poultry fat. Chill longer, then skim what separates.
Can I can pint-and-a-half jars? Use only sizes listed in the process. Pints and quarts are the tested jar sizes for this stock.
Is home-canned stock the same as store-bought bone broth? It is the same kind of product only in the broad sense: an extraction from bones. Commercial bone broths vary in simmer time, concentration, and added salt. Yours will taste like the bird you cooked, especially if the carcass was roasted.