Can I vacuum seal my homemade bone broth in a Ball jar?

Question

It appears you can purchase bone broth in cardboard containers that have a shelf-stable life for three or more months. If this is because of the absence of air in the container, for those broths that contain no preservatives, then I should be able to vacuum seal my homemade broth in Ball jars? I want to make larger batches and put it on the shelf without having to pressure can it. Obviously the bone broth in cardboard boxes is not canned.

Answer 1

It is not a question of the lack of air. In order to be shelf stable, they need to kill everything that might be living in the broth while creating a seal that will prevent anything else from getting in. At home this is done with high temperature (hence the need for pressure canning to exceed 100c for a prolonged period to kill those nasty little extremophiles).

Unfortunately, the only way to safely store bone broth at home would be to either pressure can it or freeze it.

There is no way to reliably mimic the low-heat methods used for shelf stable broths you see in cardboard containers at home.

For reference on the scale of the equipment needed, this is what Tetra Pak's smallest filling machine looks like.