The Joy of Keeping a Root Cellar: Canning, Freezing, Drying, Smoking and Preserving the Harvest

by Jennifer Megyesi, Geoff Hansen (Photographer)

The winning team behind The Joy of Keeping Chickens returns, this time with a complete guide to building and maintaining a root cellar—even if it’s just a dark and cool closet. This cheap, easy, energy-saving way will keep the harvest fresh all year long. Here, readers will Root cellaring isn’t just for off-the-grid types or farmers with large gardens. Storing food makes good sense, both financially and environmentally. And root cellars can easily fit anywhere. In this intelligent, convincing book, authors Megyesi and Hansen show how to make them part of every reader’s life.

Genres: Nonfiction, Gardening, Food, Cookbooks, Cooking, How To

288 pages, Paperback

First published August 10, 2010

Reviews

[Jon Wallace]

great for beginners to food preservation, but those with experience won't find this book too useful

[Meredith]

Rather than a straight how-to manual, The Joy of Keeping a Root Cellar is a conversational, photograph ladden work. Part one, chapter one provides a list of fruits, vegetables, and herbs that can be stored in a root cellar with all possible methods of preservation indicated. Part one, chapter two has a handy chart explaining seed types, planting time, harvest time, best storage temperature, preferred humidty, and average storage time.

All standard methods of preservation (fermenting, canning, drying, pickling, freezing, juicing, storing in oil, salting, smoking, turning into preserves with suguar, and storing in root cellars) are touched upon, but nothing is in depth.

[Sher]

Book 23 2012 Reading Challenge. Pure delight. Need to have an interest in the subject, but from there this book goes beyond expectations of basic description of root cellaring to stunning and poignant photos of farm life, to detail s for creating a root cellar, when to harvest, what works well in a root cellar. What produce works best canned, dried, frozen, or stored. A history of different types of food preservation- plus a variety of well written personal essays about present and childhood life on the farm. So, a joy to read and beautiful to browse through plus a book I will return to for information.

[Dayna]

This is a well written, beautifully illustrated introduction to keeping a root cellar and putting up your own food. But I wouldn't rely on this book alone if I were to start soon. It's not a comprehensive guide. You definitely need a book - or books - with more detailed instructions, or an actual teacher to guide you. I wouldn't feel confident with only the information given here. The Joy of Keeping a Root Cellar is more for inspiration, to wet your appetite, and give you enough basic information to help you decide if this is something you really want to pursue.

[Marie]

This book is beautiful, I love the energy going into all the various jobs and trials on their and their friends local farms. While the climate is the complete opposite of where I live I have really learned a lot! especially the losses of lard as an act of ultimate recycling in the kitchen. The explosion of vege oils post world war II was really interesting, and what else have we had since, a massive obesity explosion. Hmmmmm. How wholesome and healthy all the people on the farm looked! I loved it thankyou thankyou :)

[Marjanne]

She should have called this the joy of food preservation. The author discusses food preservation thoroughly, and a variety of measures. I enjoyed reading it, but I did skip a little of the food specific information. I think that this would be a good starter reference book for those interested in extending and preserving their harvest. I was a little disappointed that the author did not go more into what makes a good root cellar, how to construct one, etc.

[Stacy]

I have a recent, inexplicable fascination with self-sufficiency. I think I can trace it back to reading Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, but I am not certain.

Anyway, while I will probably never use any of the information I learned from this book, it was quite interesting and informative. Not to mention, just an overall aesthetically pleasing book. Who knows? Maybe one day I will get really ambitious and can a couple tomatoes or something.

[Anne Brockhoff]

I was looking for details about root cellars and found much, much more in Megyesi's book. She does write about root cellars, but also covers canning, freezing and drying all manner of fruits and vegetables, as well as meat, poultry and dairy. As a result, most of the information is pretty general—more wide than deep. Still, a wonderful book with vibrant photos. Lots of inspiration here and enough guidance to get started. Buy or borrow? Buy.

[Josh]

I enjoyed the look at the history and practical application of different methods for preserving your harvested foods - but large sections at a time discussed temperatures, methods, techniques etc. for specific foods and I kind of got lost in the similarities and subtle differences between different foods an the appropriate times / techniques for each.

[Courtney (Pirogoeth)]

I need to buy this book. This is a great resource for anyone who wants to preserve fresh food. I can't wait to have the space and the equipment to do the canning. For now I'm going to have to stick freezing things, maybe trying out drying too. But mainly freezing for now.

[Gwen the Librarian]

What I like about this book is all of the ideas it gives for what to do with your produce. What I don't like is how little direction it actually gives for creating your root cellar.

[Trish]

Non-Fiction; Cooking/Preserving
4 stars

Great information about when to choose produce for storing and what preservation methods work best.