MacCharles Joel - Batch : over 200 recipes, tips and techniques for a well-preserved kitchen

I wish I could preserve. I cant because

Ive often heard those words. In fact, I said them for more than fifteen years.

People give many reasons for why they dont preserve food. Time, money, skill, and safety are the most common. Those were my reasons for not preserving foodI didnt know where to start.

Yet I grew up in a house where we preserved food all the time. My parents made strawberry jam, mustard pickles, pickled beets, wine (albeit from a home-brew store), tomato sauce, and more. They had a system for freezing food in a chest freezer, and routinely kept onions and carrots fresh by storing them in our garage, which was naturally cool.

After years of good intentions, I finally asked my parents to teach me how to make jam. My partner, Dana, and I made our first jam with them and were shocked to see how quick and easy it was to preserve. Within six months we preserved more than 300 jars of food and were excited to learn more.

When people think of preserving, they often remember the stories of past generations who spent long days in the heat of the kitchen, working to near exhaustion. The work is hard to justify when the imagined results are limited to condiments such as jam, jelly, or pickles. By limiting our understanding of preserving to canningthe way most of these preserves are madewe limit ourselves to a tiny portion of the nearly endless possibilities, many of which can be done in minutes.

As we began this process, we discovered at least seven different ways to preserve food. Each has its own set of advantages and weaknesses. Preserving can be easy, fast, and cheap. It doesnt necessarily require a lot of equipment and it can be done by people of all cooking abilities. The results range from staple ingredients that help you cook a meal in minutes to fully prepared meals.