Chicken-Soup Stock. Place thirty pounds chicken in ten gallons of cold water and simmer for five hours. Remove meat and bones, then strain. Add sufficient water to make ten gallons of stock. Fill glass jars or tin cans with hot stock. Partially seal glass jars. Cap and tip tin cans. This stock is used to make soup where the term "chicken-soup stock" is used. Process ninety minutes if using hot-water-bath outfit or condensed-steam outfit; seventy-five minutes if using water-seal outfit; sixty minutes if using five-pound steam-pressure outfit; forty-five minutes if using pressure-cooker outfit.
Chicken Broth With Rice. For each gallon of soup stock use twelve ounces of rice. Boil rice thirty minutes. Fill jars or tin cans two-thirds full of rice and the remainder with soup stock. Partially seal glass jars. Cap and tip tin cans. Process ninety minutes if using hot-water-bath outfit or condensed-steam outfit; seventy-five minutes if using water-seal outfit; sixty minutes if using five-pound steam-pressure outfit; forty-five minutes if using pressure-cooker outfit.
Chicken Gumbo. Cut two pounds ham into small cubes and boil thirty minutes. Mince three pounds chicken and chop half a pound of onions fine. Make a smooth paste of a half pound flour. Add above to five gallons of chicken-soup stock. Then add a half pound butter and a quarter pound salt and boil ten minutes. Next add three ounces powdered okra mixed with one pint water. Pack into glass jars or tin cans while hot. Partially seal glass jars. Cap and tip tin cans. Process ninety minutes if using hot-water-bath outfit or condensed-steam outfit; seventy-five minutes if using water-seal outfit; sixty minutes if using five-pound steam-pressure outfit; forty-five minutes if using pressure-cooker outfit.
TOMATO ACID CHECKS BACTERIA
Some women who have canned soup tell me it spoiled or tasted "sourish and smelled sourish too." This is what we call "flat sour." It may happen to any vegetable you can, as well as to the soups. "Flat sour" affects peas, beans, asparagus and corn more than other vegetables. If the vegetables have been picked for some time and the bacteria have had a chance "to work," and you are not exceedingly careful about your canning, you may develop "flat sour" in the soup. If you let one little spore of this bacteria survive all is lost. Its moist growing place is favorable to development, particularly if not much acid is present. One little spore left in a jar will multiply in twenty hours to some twenty millions of bacteria. This twenty million can stand on the point of a needle, so a can could acquire quite a large population in a short time. Bacteria do not like acids, so it is always a good idea to have tomatoes in your soup mixture, and get the tomatoes into the stone crock early in the game. The tomato acid will safeguard the other vegetables which lack acid.
If you are careless about the blanching and cold-dipping—that is, not doing these full time—if you work too slowly in getting the products into jars and then let the full jars stand in the warm atmosphere, you are pretty sure to develop "flat sour."
Place each jar in the canner as it is packed. The first jars in will not be affected by the extra cooking. Have the water just below the boiling point as you put in each jar. When you have the canner full bring the water to the boiling point as quickly as possible and begin to count cooking or sterilizing time from the moment it does boil.
Some women make the mistake at the end of the cooking period of letting the jars remain in the boiling water, standing on the false bottom of the canner until they are cool enough to handle with no danger of burning the hands. This slow method of cooling not only tends to create "flat sour," but it is apt to result in cloudy-looking jars and in mushy vegetables.
For this reason you should have in your equipment a lifter with which you can lift out the hot jars without the hands touching them. If you use a rack with wire handles this answers the same purpose.
This "flat sour," which is not at all dangerous from the standpoint of health, must not be confused with the botulinus bacteria, which is an entirely different thing.