The Beginner's Guide to Preserving Food at Home: Easy Instructions for Canning, Freezing, Drying, Brining, and Root Cellaring Your Favorite Fruits, Herbs and Vegetables

by Janet Chadwick

Freeze, dry, can, root cellar, and brine your favorite produce right at home. For those with a bounty of fresh produce but short on time, Janet Chadwick’s introduction to the world of preserving provides step-by-step instructions and inspiring easy-to-follow recipes. Preserving tips, hints, and shortcuts, along with guidance on essential time-saving equipment and methods for keeping vegetables, fruits, and herbs at peak freshness until you’re ready to work with them give busy home cooks greater flexibility in making the harvest last. Discover the best and quickest techniques for root cellaring, freezing, canning, and drying everything from asparagus to winter squash, from apples to strawberries. Then dip into recipes for pickles, relishes, sauerkraut, sauces, jams, marmalades, and more. A troubleshooting chapter answers frequently asked questions and a selection of recipes for quick harvest dishes serves up stress-free, healthy mealtime inspiration that makes the most of the fresh foods you’re already processing. So pick up a crate of inexpensive, less-than-perfect tomatoes at the farmers’ market and turn them into jars of spicy salsa or buy a few extra peaches and can a delicious batch of jam to serve with breakfast. You’ll extend the summer harvest and find yourself serving up delicious, locally grown food all year long.

Genres: Cookbooks, Food, Cooking, Nonfiction, Food Preservation, Reference

240 pages, Paperback

First published May 27, 2009

Reviews

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the clearest guide to preserving food that I've read so far this year, and I must have requested at least two dozen canning/preserving books from the library. I like that this one takes into account the fact that most of us don't have tons of time to process foods. It has left me yearning for a large freezer, though...

[Toby · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some good sections about specific fruits and veggies, and some good step by step stuff missing from other guides. But it seems like maybe this is a subject where photos are worthwhile, and there are few recipes compared to some books.

[Fiona · Rating 4 out of 5]

A concise intro to food preservations, I would recommend, it's just that a lot of the information you could find here you can also definitely find online.

[Jada Roche · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grabbed this to review before we get into season, as I want to start canning/preserving more. It appears to be helpful and I will be going back to this once we start having an excess of produce. It's comprehensive in terms of covering all the bases (what you need, how to prep your space, other considerations re: meals during high volume preserving, etc) but I felt like I was missing something...that something might just be the fact that I'm not currently up to my ears in tomatoes. :p I will be returning to this in spring/summer and hopefully trying her chutney recipe.

[Courtney · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book had a lot of good tips for beginners (like me.) The author wrote "recipes" for each vegetable and fruit, beginning with harvest from the garden up to the actual preserving, which I thought was helpful. I loved the recipes it had for making your own herbal vinegars. There are also charts for blanching and freezing. I think its a book worth owning if you keep lots of produce on hand, or if you have a garden.

[Deborah Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read! There's more emphasis on freezing food and less on canning than I would have preferred. I also didn't like the use of the oven for long term cooking---I would never make fruit butters that way. But for folks looking for a very general introduction to food preservation (especially freezing) this is a very readable, easy to understand introduction.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great reference book, includes canning, freezing (plus drying, brining, etc. if applicable) for nearly every fruit, veggie and herb. Includes detailed instructions, charts and drawings. My go to book.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best overall book on preserving foods that I have come across. Not a lot of recipes, but loads of good ideas.

[Susan Gast · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good info. on freezing and making jams and jellies!

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I cannot wait to try these ideas and recipes out!