Hartfelt, I can answer your question with some questions. Ist. How many people do you cook for? 2nd. Do you enjoy making soup?

More answers from my experience. I cook primarily for my wife and myself so I can mostly in pints. If I have company I open two jars. When I canned some soup for a friend with a husband twin daughters and a new baby I canned chicken soup in quarts. Today I am canning 6 jars of beef stock with chopped meat for vegatable beef soup in the future. Those are in 24 ounce jars used first by Classico brand pasta sauce. That is enough meat and stock for a nice pot of soup. For many years I used an eight quart canner and a couple of years ago I bought a twelve quart. A twelve quart canner filled with jars and water is a good load for a strong person.

The people here can or have canned just about everything you can imagine so if you have questions be sure to ask. Just one more thing. This web site is the gold standard for everything about food: http://nchfp.uga.edu/index.html

I tend to do small batch canning and find the smaller size canners convenient . I think I would rather have two 12 quart canners than one 22 quart canner.

Judy, That would be the best. My largest cooking pot is only ten quart so my needs are rather limited. I don't keep a big enough garden to do more than supply seasonal use. Most of my meats are frozen. I can a little for convenience. Canned chicken is great for cold salads and all meats are wonderful on a cold day out on the boat.

My chicken soup base in there. It is just any poultry based stock with the meat picked from the carcase and onions, carrots and celery. One third meat one third veggies in the jar and fill with stock.  Season when you prepare the soup with some noodles or leftover rice and leftover veggies add a little water if you need it. For my red meat stock I just cook the meat from the bones and chop that with a knife. Fill as many jars as is appropriate for the amount you have  one ladle for each jar , round and round and finish with hot water to fill the jars. Should have about the same amount of meat in each jar.

To use for my 24 ounce jars of red meat, it is one potato, that same amount of carrot, an onion, some celery, a handful of cabbage and some forozen mixed veggies. season with a bay leaf, some rosemary, sometimes a pinch of crushed red peppers, salt and pepper. Garlic if you like.

A few words about the jar capacity of canners. You can fit more regular pints than wide mouth pints. Can't get as many quarts as pints into the canner but you can get the same amount of food into the jars. That is a canner full of quarts equals a canner full of regular pints. It all hinges on how much you need to open for a meal. 

Sparrow, I usually fill the canner with water at the kitchen sink. Jars and water to about 2 inches and bring the whole business up to heat. Then I have hot jars to fill with hot food. I dump the water from the jars into the canner until it is filled with enough water, and then the rest goes into the dish pan.

I NEVER move a hot canner.