This Year’s Soup Recalls, and Why I Started Canning My Own
Soup is supposed to be the easy, safe thing. It’s what gets made when someone’s sick, when it’s cold out, when nobody has the energy to cook anything complicated. So it stung a little to realize how many recalls have hit soup specifically this year — and how much longer the ingredient list on a lot of packaged soup actually is compared to what most of us assume.
Here’s what I found when I looked into it, and why I’ve started canning three simple soups of my own instead.
What Actually Happened
In August 2026, Kettle Cuisine recalled about 3,240 Marketside Tomato Bisque Soup Kits sold exclusively at Walmart, after routine company testing came back presumptive positive for Listeria monocytogenes. The kits had been distributed to select stores across 29 states between June 30 and July 7, with a use-by date of August 22 — meaning some were very likely still sitting in refrigerators when the recall was announced. No illnesses had been confirmed at the time of the notice.
A few weeks earlier, Amy’s Kitchen recalled a single lot of its Organic Lentil Soup — Light in Sodium, covering roughly 184,200 cans across 28 states, after the FDA classified it as a Class II recall tied to a manufacturing defect in the can’s easy-open tab that created a potential for spoilage. The company described it as a voluntary, single-lot recall, and there’s a solid rundown of the details from Food Network here — the FDA’s own record of it lives in their enforcement report database rather than a standalone public notice page, so this is one case where I’m pointing you to careful secondary reporting rather than a direct government link.
And then there’s an older one worth knowing about even though it predates this year: back in April 2025, FSIS issued a public health alert for a whole lineup of soup and bowl products — sold under the Campbell’s, Verve, Health Request, Life Cuisine, Molly’s Kitchen, and Crafted Market names — after wood fragments turned up in a recalled cilantro ingredient used across all of them. One ingredient, from one supplier, ended up touching products sold under six different brand names. Worth noting: Campbell’s stated publicly that the affected items were foodservice/institutional products, not their canned retail soup line.
What’s Actually in a Lot of Processed Soup
None of this means canned or packaged soup is dangerous — a recall happening is the system catching a problem, not failing to catch one. But it’s worth pairing with a separate, unrelated fact: a lot of processed soup carries more in it than most of us assume. The American Heart Association recommends staying under 2,300 milligrams of sodium a day total, and a single cup of some canned soups can run 800 milligrams or more on its own — before you count anything else you eat that day. Preservatives and added sugar show up too, often under names that don’t read as either.
That’s not a reason to panic. It’s a reason to actually read the label on something most of us grab without thinking twice.
Why Homemade Soup Solves This the Simple Way
You know every ingredient in homemade soup because you put it there yourself. There’s also something almost old-fashioned about the whole category — soup has been the thing people make for someone who’s sick, grieving, tired, or just cold for about as long as there’s been a stove. It’s nourishing in a way that’s genuinely hard to put a number on.
How I’m Canning Mine
In this week’s video, I raw pack quart jars — three of a chicken and vegetable base, two of a beef stew base — and pressure can them for 90 minutes at 10 pounds weighted or 11 pounds dial gauge, 0 to 1,000 feet elevation. These are shelf-stable bases only: no dairy, flour, cornstarch, rice, or pasta goes in before processing. Canning dairy at home isn’t safe at any stage — the fat content prevents safe heat penetration — so cream, a roux, noodles, and seasoning all get added fresh, after a jar is opened and heated.
That one rule is also what makes the same base so flexible. Stir in egg noodles for a few minutes and the chicken and vegetable base becomes chicken noodle soup. Stir in cream or a quick butter-and-flour roux and it becomes a creamy chicken and vegetable soup. The beef stew gets a thickener and a few extra ingredients the same way, once the jar’s open.
The Recipes
Full step-by-step video instructions for making each of these — the base and all three finished soups — are in the video embedded in this post. Below are the ingredients and measurements to follow along with.
Chicken and Vegetable Soup Base
(per quart jar, raw pack)
• Chicken or turkey, cubed — 1 cup (about 6 oz)
• Celery, chopped — 1/4 cup
• Carrots, sliced — 1/2 cup
• Green beans, cut into 1-inch pieces — 1/2 cup
• Onion, diced — 1/4 cup
• Garlic — 1 whole clove, peeled
• Chicken bouillon cube — 1 cube
• Dried parsley — 1/2 teaspoon (or 1 tablespoon fresh, chopped)
• Water — to cover, leaving 1 inch headspace (roughly 1 1/2–2 cups)
Pressure can quart jars, raw pack, 90 minutes.
Chicken Noodle Soup
(finishing 1 jar of base — ready in 10 minutes)
• 1 quart jar chicken and vegetable soup base
• Water — 1 to 1 1/2 cups, to thin to your preferred consistency
• Chicken seasoning — 1 teaspoon, or to taste
• Onion powder — 1/2 teaspoon
• Garlic powder — 1/2 teaspoon
• Salt — to taste
• Dried parsley flakes — 1/2 teaspoon
• Ground black pepper — 1/4 teaspoon
• Egg noodles or pasta stars — 1 cup dry
• Optional: 1 jar canned carrots (or other vegetable), to bulk it up
Creamy Chicken & Vegetable Soup
(finishing 1 jar of base — ready in 10 minutes)
• 1 quart jar chicken and vegetable soup base
• Water — 1 cup
• Onion powder — 1/2 teaspoon
• Garlic powder — 1/2 teaspoon
• Salt — to taste
• Dried parsley flakes — 1/2 teaspoon
• Ground black pepper — 1/4 teaspoon
• Optional: 1 jar canned vegetables
• Butter — 2 tablespoons
• Flour — 2 tablespoons, whisked into 1/4 cup cold water to form a slurry
• Fresh garlic — 1–2 cloves, minced
• Parmesan cheese — 1/4 cup, grated
• Heavy cream — 1/2 cup
Beef Stew Base
(per quart jar, raw pack)
• Beef, cubed — 1 to 1 1/4 cups (about 8 oz)
• Potato, cubed — 1/2 cup
• Carrots, sliced — 1/2 cup
• Onion, diced — 1/4 cup
• Garlic — 1 whole clove, peeled
• Beef bouillon cube — 1 cube
• Fresh rosemary — 1 small sprig (or 1/4 teaspoon dried)
• Parsley — 1/2 teaspoon dried (or 1 tablespoon fresh, chopped)
• Water — to cover, leaving 1 inch headspace
Pressure can quart jars, raw pack, 90 minutes.
Beef Stew
(finishing 1 jar of base — ready in 10 minutes)
• 1 quart jar beef stew base
• Optional: red wine — 1/4 cup
• Fresh rosemary — 1 sprig, chopped (or 1/4 teaspoon dried)
• Salt — to taste
• Garlic powder — 1/2 teaspoon
• Onion powder — 1/2 teaspoon
• Cracked black pepper — 1/4 teaspoon
• Optional: 1 extra jar canned meat or vegetables
• Butter — 2 tablespoons
• Fresh garlic — 1–2 cloves, minced
• Flour — 2 tablespoons, whisked into 1/4 cup cold water to form a slurry
• Water or reserved jar liquid — as needed to reach your preferred consistency
What’s Next
This is part of a full home canning series. Next up, I’m going back a step further — I’ll show you how to make your own homemade broth from scratch, so every soup after this one starts with something built from nothing instead of poured out of a box.
Watch the Full Video
[Embed video here]
If you’re just joining, Canning 101 Basics covers where this series started. Subscribe so you don’t miss what’s coming next.
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References
• Food Network — Amy’s Kitchen Recalls Its Lentil Soup (secondary reporting on an FDA enforcement report; no standalone FDA public notice page exists for this recall)
• USDA FSIS — Public Health Alert for Various Soup & Bowl Products Due to Possible Extraneous Material Contamination (dated April 11, 2025)
• American Heart Association — How Much Sodium Should I Eat Per Day?
• National Center for Home Food Preservation — nchfp.uga.edu
