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Introduction

If you’ve thought about canning and preserving your own food but haven’t tried it because you’re afraid it’s too involved, well, it’s time to set aside your hesitation. Today’s methods and procedures for home-canning, freezing, and dehydrating food are simple and easy. Many of the techniques may be similar to those your grandmother used, but you’ll find they’ve been perfected. In this book, you get all the information you need to can and preserve food safely.

About This Book

Welcome to the wonderful world of canning and preserving. Consider this book your guide to discovering simple ways to preserve all the foods your family loves, without any mystery or confusion along the way.

This book presents four preserving methods — water-bath canning, pressure canning, freezing, and dehydrating — in an easy-to-understand format and walks you step by step through each technique. You don’t need any previous canning or preserving experience in order to start, or continue, your endeavor to become a first-class food preserver.

Within these pages, you’ll find information like the following:

 What to look for to make sure you’re preserving the best, most fresh fruits and veggies.

 A list of canning supplies and equipment (complete with illustrations), as well as instructions on how to ensure your canning equipment is in good working order.

 What techniques help you preserve the best flavor in your foods and how to avoid spoilage and recognize it if it does occur.

 Illustrations of different techniques and equipment along with tips for making your canning and preserving journey fun and rewarding.

 A whole host of favorite recipes for your enjoyment.

Also, we use the following general conventions throughout the book:

 Bold text means that you’re meant to type the text just as it appears in the book. The exception is when you’re working through a steps list: Because each step is bold, the text to type is not bold.

 Web addresses and programming code appear in monofont. If you’re reading a digital version of this book on a device connected to the Internet, note that you can click the web address to visit that website, like this: www.dummies.com.

 Whenever we introduce a word or phrase that may not be familiar to you, we put that word in italics. You can rest assured a definition or explanation is nearby.

The recipes in this book follow helpful conventions of their own. For example, most every recipe includes a preparation time, cooking time, processing time, and the yield you should expect from your efforts. Here are some details that apply to all of the recipes but aren’t repeated each time:

 Use a vinegar with 5 percent acidity.

 Use pure salt with no additives. (Canning or pickling salt is best.)

 Cook all food in heavy-bottomed pots and pans.

 Use nonreactive equipment and utensils (items made from glass, stainless steel, or enamel-coated steel or iron).

 Use glass jars and two-piece caps approved for home-canning.

 Always use new lids for canning unless you purchase reusable lids, which can be used for multiple canning seasons.

 Start counting your water-bath processing time when the water reaches a full, rolling boil.

 Begin counting your pressure-canner processing time after releasing air in the canner and achieving the required pressure.

 All temperatures are Fahrenheit.

Note: All recipes and processing times are developed for altitudes at sea level to 1,000 feet above sea level. (For higher altitudes, refer to the altitude adjustment charts for water-bath canning in Chapter 4 and for pressure canning in Chapter 9.)

Finally, to make the content more accessible, we divided it into 6 parts:

 Part 1, Getting Started

 Part 2, Water-Bath Canning

 Part 3, Pressure Canning

 Part 4, Freezing

 Part 5, Dehydrating and Storing

 Part 6, The Part of Tens

Foolish Assumptions

In writing this book, we made some assumptions about you:

 You know your way around a kitchen. You’re familiar with basic cooking techniques and food preparation methods.

 You’ve never canned or preserved food before or have relatively little experience with food preservation methods and want basic, easy-to-understand-and-follow instructions.

 If you have canned and preserved food before, it was long enough ago that you want to find out more about the newer, safer, and easier techniques that are recommended today.

 Perhaps most importantly, you want to stock your kitchen with more natural, healthier, homemade alternatives to standard supermarket fare.

Icons Used in This Book

The following four icons appear throughout this book and point out specific points or remind you of items you’ll want to be sure not to miss.

This icon directs you to tips or shortcuts we’ve picked up over the years. The information here makes your work easier and more hassle free.

This icon means, “Okay, you’ve heard this stuff before, but the information is important and bears repeating.”

When you see this icon, pay special attention. The information tells you about a potential problem and how to overcome or avoid it.

These bits of technical information are interesting, but you can skip them if you want to. Of course, the info contained in these paragraphs makes you seem like you’ve been canning and preserving since you’ve been walking.

Beyond the Book

In addition to the abundance of information and guidance related to canning and preserving food that we provide in this book, you get access to even more help and information online at Dummies.com. Check out this book’s online Cheat Sheet. Just go to www.dummies.com and search for “Canning & Preserving For Dummies Cheat Sheet.”

Where to Go from Here

Although you can start in any portion of this book, don’t skip Chapter 3. It describes safe processing methods and tells you how to identify spoiled food. If you have any doubts about canning and preserving safety, this chapter puts your fears at ease.

If you want to know about a particular food-preservation method, go to the part devoted to that method. Each one begins with a chapter that explains the technique. Review these initial chapters before selecting a recipe to make sure you have a decent idea what that particular food preservation method requires. If you still can’t decide where to start, review the recipes and start with one that sounds good to you! Then just back-track to the general techniques chapter as you need to. If you’d like to make the Pickled Dilly Beans recipe in Chapter 8, for example, check out Chapter 4 for the basics on water-bath canning. If you want to dehydrate strawberries (you find the recipe in Chapter 17), check out Chapter 16 for general dehydrating information.

And if you want to jump right in? Go to the Recipes at a Glance page to find a recipe that sparks your interest.