Janet Chadwick - The Beginners Guide to Preserving Food at Home

Janet Chadwick

The mission of Storey Publishing is to serve our customers by
publishing practical information that encourages
personal independence in harmony with the environment.

Edited by Margaret Sutherland and Cindy Littlefield
Art direction and book design by Mary Winkelman Velgos
Cover design by Alethea Morrison
Text production by Liseann Karandisecky

Cover and interior decorative illustrations by Kate Quinby, Croak & Hum
How-to illustrations by Elayne Sears

Expert reader: Elizabeth L. Andress, Extension Food Safety Specialist Director, National
Center for Home Food Preservation Department of Foods and Nutrition
Indexed by Christine R. Lindemer, Boston Road Communications

2009 by Janet Chadwick

Recipe on page 140 was previously published in Keeping the Harvest, by Nancy Chioffi and
Gretchen Mead (Storey Publishing).
Recipe on page 157 was previously published in Weekend!, by Edith Stovel and Pamela
Wakefield (Storey Publishing).

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Printed in the United States by Versa Press
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Chadwick, Janet, 1933
The beginners guide to preserving food at home / by Janet Bachand Chadwick.

p. cm.

Previous ed. published under title: Busy persons guide to preserving food, 1995.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-60342-145-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. FoodPreservation. I. Chadwick, Janet, 1933

Busy persons guide to preserving food. II. Title.

TX601.C43 2009
641.4dc22
2009006688

I would like to thank Louellan Wasson, home economist, for her technical editing and moral support throughout the writing of this book. Many others deserve thanks, too: Andrea Chesman, my editor, who had the original idea for this book; Mary Clark of Garden Way, for obtaining many new items of food processing equipment for me to test; Moulinex and General Electric companies, in particular Mr. Ted Miller of General Electric Co., for making available to me food processors for testing; Lynn Liberty of Garden Way Living Center, for her never-failing support; Win Way, University of Vermont Extension Agronomist, for his educated palate; and Elayne Sears for her descriptive illustrations.

Last but not least, Id like to thank my family, especially my husband, Raymond, for taking on extra gardening chores to help make this book possible, and to my daughter, Kim, for her all-around help.

For this revised edition, the publishers thank Elizabeth L. Andress, Ph.D., Professor and Extension Food Safety Specialist Director at the National Center for Home Food Preservation at the University of Georgia. Her thorough review of the book was invaluable. And thanks, also, to Cindy Littlefield, who incorporated the updates without changing the appealing simplicity of the original text.

YOU HAVE THREE CHILDREN UNDER FIVE, the baby cried all night, and your mother-in-law is coming for supper. What are you going to do with that bushel of green beans? Or, its Thursday, and you just arrived home after a hard day at the office. You know that if you wait until Saturday to make dill pickles, the cucumbers will be too large; but if you pick them now, they will be punky by Saturday... but you dont feel like pickling until midnight. What are you going to do? Well, take a deep breath and relax. This book is for you.

Vegetable gardening is rapidly becoming the number one American pastime. Escalating food costs, inferior quality products, and aversions to chemical additives have convinced many of us that the best way to provide our families with good food at reasonable costs is to raise it ourselves.

When calculating the savings of a garden and home food processing, many people (always nongardeners) will remark, Yes, but how much is your time worth? To answer that question you have to be honest with yourself. Would you really be holding down an extra job during those hours that would net you more cash in the bank? Can you put a price tag on the physical, emotional, and spiritual satisfactions that you derive from working the soil and producing the foods that nourish your family? Is the kind of food you feed your family important to you? Is there any way you can buy the feeling of pride you have at the sight of the full freezer; the rows of canned vegetables, fruits, pickles, jams, and jellies; or the root cellar shelves filled to the ceiling? If these things are not important to you, then maybe you should not be gardening or preserving food, because there is a lot of work involved but the work should be a joy and a challenge to your ability to be more self-reliant.

Ive written this book for those of you who garden and hold down outside jobs or are busy with kids and other outside activities. I know that it is hard enough to cope with the normal routine of family, home, and job, along with raising a small garden for fresh summer vegetables, without trying to squeeze in long hours of food preservation at the end of a busy day. But much food can be preserved for storage in the small blocks of time you have available on a daily or weekly basis. This book can be used as a primer if you are new to the art of food preservation, and its likely to provide new and exciting ideas to those of you who have been preserving food for years.

FREEZING IS THE MOST POPULAR METHOD of food preservation. Its a great time-saving method, and it produces the best finished product; and so this book will focus strongly on freezing techniques, including some new methods that are even more efficient and produce an even better finished product.

Drying is an ancient method of preserving food, one that is gaining in popularity as people discover how much they enjoy having an inexpensive supply of gourmet Italian dried tomatoes and kid-pleasing fruit leathers. Also, as more and more people grow their own herbs, they find drying a convenient way of preserving that harvest. So I will offer plenty of advice for drying fruits, vegetables, and herbs.

I will also discuss the equipment that is absolutely necessary for food preservation and provide information on other equipment that, while not absolutely required, will make food preservation faster, easier, and in general, result in a better finished product.