How To Avoid Exploding Your Mason Jars While Prepping Soups This Fall

The wait is over, fall fanatics. Autumn has finally arrived, and with it, all of the season's apple-infused bourbon cocktails, retail pumpkin spice ubiquity, and, of course, its soothing soups. Some folks wait all year to set aside sad desk salads in favor of warming broths and creamy purées, but you can't just start ladling out molten ramen, minestrone, and chowder into Mason jars without brushing up on your precautions. First and foremost, you should adjust your temperatures before packaging all that bisque and other wonderfully sippable foodstuffs.

Lest the last several months of rosé all day have clouded your memory, soup is hot, gazpacho aside. And while you probably recall that you can neither pour nor prep it in something like a plastic takeout container that'll melt like the Wicked Witch of the West upon moistening, it's easier to forget that you have to be careful with Mason jars, too. Sure, Mason jars are typically tops for plenty of meal prep applications, but introduce a soup's scorching base, and the darn thing might actually explode. Warming up your meal prep vessel to prepare it for higher temperature food is your best path to keeping it intact.

Whether you're using your Mason jar as a handy carrier, or you're actually building the soup right in the glass, you want to warm it up a bit first. If it's too cold, the jar could crack or shatter from thermal shock when the considerably hotter liquid is introduced. So if you're spooning in a finished recipe, let the soup cool to a palatable degree, rather than transferring it straight from the stovetop. You should also get the glass up to room temperature by rinsing it under hot tap water, which obviously can't get anywhere near the peak capacity of your range's burners.

If you're building the soup in the Mason jar, meaning that you plan to pack in your ingredients and fill it with hot water at a later time or even location, you can still run it under a kitchen faucet. Just make sure that the lid is screwed on tight to prevent any errant drops from entering too early. Safety first, but you should also be sure to layer Mason jar soup for optimal taste and freshness so that you actually enjoy it, as well.