How to Pressure Can Chicken in Canada (Bernardin Method)

Pressure-canned chicken is the most useful low-acid preserve in a Canadian pantry. A jar opens like a head-start meal — pre-cooked, shelf-stable, ready to drop into soup, casserole, salad, or rice in 5 minutes. Hunters, homesteaders, and meal-preppers all converge on this technique.

This is a pressure-canning recipe. Pressure canning is the only safe home method for chicken and all low-acid foods. Water-bath canning will not destroy botulism spores. There is no exception, no shortcut, no Instant Pot workaround.

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Some links on this site are affiliate links — they cost you nothing extra and help keep the site free. We do not test products; we report what Bernardin and Canadian health authorities publish. Affiliate disclosure.

Corrected 19 September 2026: this page told you to wash any surface a bulging jar touched with hot soapy water followed by a 10-minute bleach soak. That soak is the exact instruction three other pages on this site already carry dated notices retiring — one of them says the bleach ratio and soak time traced to no source we could find — and it had survived here. HealthLink BC’s disposal steps name no disinfectant: hands with warm soapy water, then wash every utensil and surface. Their file is unreachable from our tooling today (HTTP 000), so this follows the wording this site already carries on forty other pages from an earlier read of it. The page now gives their five steps in full, which it did not carry at all before. Discard, do not taste and do not open are unchanged.

Before you start — the safety rules

1. Use a genuine pressure canner. Presto 23-quart, All American 921, or another tested model. See our pressure canner guide. Pressure cookers and Instant Pots are NOT pressure canners.

2. 10 PSI minimum at altitudes up to 1000 ft (305 m). Higher PSI at altitude — see the altitude section below.

3. Bernardin publishes four times, not one. The variables are jar size and whether the meat is bone-in:

   	500 mL jars	1 L jars
   Deboned	75 minutes	90 minutes
   Bone-in	65 minutes	75 minutes

   Raw pack and hot pack use the same times as each other. These figures are for a weighted-gauge canner at altitudes up to 305 m — with a dial gauge, or higher up, adjust the pressure per the altitude table below.

   These are Bernardin’s own published figures, linked in the sources. Pressure canning is still the one place worth cross-checking anyway: verify them against your Bernardin edition before you start.

4. Vent the canner 10 full minutes before applying the regulator. Skip it and trapped air raises the gauge without raising the temperature, so the jar never reaches the heat the processing time assumes.

5. Cool the canner naturally — never force-cool with cold water.

If any of these rules feel like overkill, stop and read the pressure canning pillar before going further. This is the recipe where botulism is the real risk.

What you need

• 2-3 kg fresh chicken — yields 4-6 × 1 L jars or 8-12 × 500 mL jars
• Optional: pickling salt (non-iodized) — 1 tsp per 1 L jar, ½ tsp per 500 mL
• Hot chicken broth or water — Bernardin adds it to the raw pack as well as the hot pack
• Bernardin 1 L or 500 mL wide-mouth jars — wide-mouth is much easier for packing meat
• Fresh SNAP lids and bands
• Pressure canner (Presto, All American, or equivalent)
• Standard canning kit — jar lifter, headspace tool, funnel, large pot for hot-pack option, sharp knife, cutting board

Method (raw pack — simpler and standard)

Step 1: Prep the chicken

1. Trim chicken. Remove skin (skin tends to detach during processing and float on top), large fat deposits, and any bone fragments. Leave smaller bones in for flavour if doing bone-in.
2. Cut into 2-3 cm chunks. Smaller pieces pack denser and process more evenly than large pieces or whole breasts.
3. Keep cold. Don’t let chicken sit at room temperature longer than 30 minutes total during prep.

Step 2: Prepare jars and canner

1. Wash jars in hot soapy water. Rinse. Keep hot in the dishwasher or in a pot of simmering water until packing.
2. Add 7-8 cm of water to the pressure canner with the rack inside. Heat to a gentle simmer.
3. Have fresh SNAP lids ready.

Step 3: Pack the jars (raw)

1. Add 1 tsp pickling salt to each 1 L jar (½ tsp for 500 mL) — optional, for flavour only.
2. Pack raw chicken chunks tightly into hot jars, leaving 2.5 cm (1 inch) headspace — Bernardin’s figure for canned poultry. This is much more headspace than water-bath canning; do not reduce it.
3. Pour hot chicken broth or water over the chicken to cover, keeping the 2.5 cm headspace. Bernardin adds liquid to the raw pack as well as the hot pack, and their tested times assume it is there.
4. Wipe rims with a clean damp cloth.
5. Apply fresh SNAP lids fingertip-tight.

Step 4: Process (the critical step)

1. Load jars into the canner. Water level should be 7-8 cm — NOT covering jars. Pressure canning uses steam, not boiling water.
2. Lock the lid. Heat on high.
3. Vent for 10 full minutes. Steam must flow continuously through the open vent. This expels air from the canner so true steam (not air) builds pressure. Don’t skip this — without it the gauge reads a pressure the contents never reach.
4. Apply the regulator (weight or close the petcock).
5. Bring to 10 PSI at altitudes up to 1000 ft (305 m) (higher at altitude — see below). The canner will hiss steadily; weighted gauges will jiggle 2-3 times per minute at proper pressure.
6. Start the timer when 10 PSI is reached:
   • Deboned — 500 mL jars 75 minutes, 1 L jars 90 minutes
   • Bone-in — 500 mL jars 65 minutes, 1 L jars 75 minutes
7. Adjust heat to maintain pressure. If pressure drops below 10 PSI even briefly, you must restart the timer when it returns. Watch the canner — don’t walk away for your recipe’s full processing time.

Step 5: Cool and check

1. When the timer ends, turn off heat. Don’t move the canner. Don’t open it.
2. Let pressure drop to zero naturally — about 45-60 minutes. Never force-cool with cold water.
3. Once at zero pressure, remove the weight, wait 2 minutes, then remove the cover — tilting it away from your face. Two minutes is Bernardin’s figure.
4. Lift jars with the jar lifter. Place on a towel, undisturbed, for 24 hours.
5. Check seals — lid concave and immovable when pressed.
6. Label with date. Store.

If a jar doesn’t seal: refrigerate that jar and eat within 2-3 days, or reprocess immediately. Full rule here. Note that low-acid foods have a much shorter “refrigerate and eat” window than acidic foods.

Method variation (hot pack)

If you prefer cleaner jars and a slightly faster cool-down:

1. Pre-cook chicken — simmer chunks in chicken broth or salted water for 5-10 minutes. Don’t fully cook; just partially.
2. Pack hot chicken into hot jars to 2.5 cm headspace.
3. Pour hot broth or cooking water over chicken to cover, maintaining the 2.5 cm headspace.
4. Process as for raw pack — the times are identical between packs; read them off the bone-in / deboned table above.

Hot pack yields jars with chicken submerged in clear broth (visually nicer). Raw pack yields jars where the chicken’s own juices cook out into the broth (more flavour-dense). Both are equally safe.

Altitude adjustments

PSI matters, not time. All four times above stay the same; the pressure changes:

Altitude	Weighted gauge	Dial gauge
0 – 305 m	10 PSI	11 PSI
306 – 609 m	15 PSI	11 PSI
610 – 1,219 m	15 PSI	12 PSI
1,220 – 1,828 m	15 PSI	13 PSI
1,829 – 2,438 m	15 PSI	14 PSI
2,439 – 3,048 m	15 PSI	15 PSI

Calgary (1,084 m), Edmonton (723 m), Regina (577 m), Saskatoon (503 m) all need adjustment. See our altitude adjustments article for the full Canadian-city list.

Storage

• Cool, dark, dry place at room temperature
• Best quality 12 months — Bernardin’s guidance is to use home-canned food within one year. That is a quality window, not an expiry: the jar is as safe as the process made it. Colour, flavour and texture fade.
• After opening: refrigerate, use within 3-4 days
• Inspect every jar before opening — bulging lid, off smell, foam, or leakage means discard the entire jar without tasting
• A bit of brown discolouration on the meat near the top of the jar is oxidation — safe. A foul smell is not — discard.

How to use canned chicken

• Chicken salad — drain, shred or chop, mix with mayo, celery, grapes, walnuts
• Chicken soup — open jar into hot broth with noodles or rice
• Chicken pot pie filling — drain, mix with frozen vegetables and a quick roux
• Tacos / quesadillas / enchiladas — shred and warm with taco seasoning
• Chicken stroganoff — over rice or noodles
• Curry — chicken is already cooked; add to curry sauce in the last 5 minutes
• Casseroles — replaces the “cook 1 chicken breast” step in most recipes
• Sandwiches — drained shredded chicken on toasted bread with mayo
• Pasta — toss with sauce and grated cheese
• Quick-prep meals for people who don’t always have time to handle raw chicken

Common problems

• Foam in the jars. Normal for raw pack. Doesn’t affect safety. Tastes the same.
• Liquid level dropped (siphoning). Common in pressure canning. Siphoning is not what decides whether the food is safe — the processing is; see why jars lose liquid. Use the low jars first, since chicken above the liquid line declines faster.
• Chicken turned dark. Iron in your water can react with the meat. Use bottled or filtered water for the canner. Cosmetic only.
• Skin floated to top. Always happens when skin is left on. Trim skin off before packing next batch.
• Jar didn’t seal. The 24-hour rule. Note: low-acid food has a much shorter refrigerator window if not reprocessed.
• Bulging lid weeks later. Discard the entire jar immediately. Do not taste. Do not open. This is the most critical safety check — bulging in pressure-canned meat is a clear botulism warning sign. Wrap the jar in newspaper and dispose. Then follow HealthLink BC’s steps: put the contents in a waterproof container, put that in the garbage, do not feed it to pets or other animals, wash your hands well with warm soapy water, and wash every utensil and surface the food, the container, or your hands may have touched. They name no disinfectant and no soak time.

Yield expectations

• 2-3 kg fresh chicken → 4-6 × 1 L jars OR 8-12 × 500 mL jars (depending on bone-in vs boneless and density of pack)
• A full canner batch is typically 6-7 × 1 L jars or 14-16 × 500 mL jars

A typical Canadian home-preserving household runs 1-2 chicken-canning sessions per year, putting up 12-24 × 1 L jars. That’s a year’s supply of quick-prep chicken protein.

Why pressure-canned chicken is worth it

• Shelf-stable cooked protein — no freezer space, no thawing, no power-dependent storage
• Costs less than buying canned chicken — 1 kg of chicken thighs from a Canadian grocer is ~$8-12; that’s about 2-3 × 1 L jars at ~$3-5 per jar in ingredient cost
• Use up sale chicken — when grocery chicken is marked down, can it before it expires
• Hunter / homesteader essential — Canadian hunters often pressure-can wild meat (venison, moose, elk) with the same technique
• Quicker than re-thawing frozen chicken — open jar, done

Other meats — the technique carries over, the times do not

The equipment, the 10-minute vent, the 2.5 cm headspace and the natural cool-down are the same for any pressure-canned meat. The processing time is not. A time is calculated for one food at one density in one jar size, so the figures above belong to poultry and to nothing else.

• Beef, pork and game. Bernardin’s catalogue has no general red-meat page the way it has a general poultry page — searches for meat and ground beef return specific dishes instead. Pressure-canned ground beef sets out why we will not supply a number for plain red meat, and beef stew with vegetables is a tested recipe you can follow instead.
• Fish. Bernardin’s salmon recipe is 100 minutes for 250 mL and 500 mL jars alike, and their page says outright not to home can fish in 1 L jars. See pressure-canned salmon.

Use a Bernardin-tested recipe for the meat in front of you, and take its time from that recipe.

Next steps

• Best pressure canner in Canada — Presto vs All American — equipment guide
• Pressure canning pillar — the broader method context
• Canning altitude adjustments — required reading for PSI
• How to tell if canned food has gone bad — botulism awareness
• SNAP lid reuse rules — fresh lids every batch
• Pressure-canned beef stew and pressure-canned beans from dry.