Preserving Everything: Can, Culture, Pickle, Freeze, Ferment, Dehydrate, Salt, Smoke, and Store Fruits, Vegetables, Meat, Milk, and More

by Leda Meredith

The ultimate guide to putting up food. How many ways can you preserve a strawberry? You can freeze it, dry it, pickle it, or can it. Milk gets cultured, or fermented, and is preserved as cheese or yogurt. Fish can be smoked, salted, dehydrated, and preserved in oil. Pork becomes jerky. Cucumbers become pickles. There is no end to the magic of food preservation, and in Preserving Everything, Leda Meredith leads readers―both newbies and old hands―in every sort of preservation technique imaginable.

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

272 pages, Paperback

First published June 2, 2014

Reviews

[Jamie Crosby · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book cover to cover. At first I thought it would be impossible to include every way to preserve in one book. I was amazingly surprised .
The Author divides the ways to preserve one for each way, from dehydrating to canning to yogurts & cheese and everything in between. Each chapter includes guidelines that must be met insure food safety. It is these guidelines that the author makes the reader aware and comfortable to process anything as long as follow the guidelines. The author also includes recipes that pertain to the chapter giving the reader even more confidence to tackle preserving on their own.
I have found, being very close to harvest seasons, that I have been using this as my preserving bible, as a reference as it may, for all my preserving needs.

[Jessica Worthington · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is really made for the beginner, rather than someone who has been preserving for a while. I am not a beginner, but I'm not an expert either, and I did find some good recipes in this book that I plan on trying.

This book discusses each type of preserving and only has a few recipes per preserving method. I would have liked to see more recipes and a few more pictures. It would have been nice if she would have explained how to incorporate these recipes with meals (she did it with some, but not all).

I would recommend this book to beginners, because it goes in depth about the different preserving methods, and explains what keeps them safe and what to look out for if they have gone bad. There is also a troubleshooting chapter that I thought was a great add to the book.

[Katia · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can, dehydrate, make bread, make cheese, lacto ferment, and preserve with salt; perhaps this book really isn't for someone like me. I was hoping to glean some new pearls of wisdom but was disappointed especially when the one recipe that I really wanted to make didn't have the amount of apples needed to make it. Great book for those new to food preservation, but if you are already doing this on a regular basis, don't waste your money.

[Dilly Dalley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I borrowed this book from the ACT library as part of the deep dive into preserving and bottling. I really liked it and ordered a copy from Amazon.

The design and format of the book is appealing with attractive pictures and easy to follow step-by-step processes. It is a great introductory text to a whole way of thinking about food, which is to preserve abundant local food when in season, and, while you’re at it, after you’ve peeled those apples for apple sauce, why not use the peels for making jelly, vinegar or pectin. I was impressed with this totally modern New York take on ‘waste not want not’. It conveyed simple, peaceful love of food and the thoughtful process of taking something in abundance and storing it for the depths of winter.

The range of processes and products is impressive – the title is apt. I quickly jotted down the things I wanted to try: rumtopf, fermenting swiss chard stems (I have dozens of plants in my garden), smoked trout (my husband has a little trout aquaponics hobby), limoncello, ways to use chutney, making applesauce, pear butter, candied grapefruit peel, ratatouille, kale chips, drying herbs, making rosemary oil, yoghurt, paneer, pemmican (for my trip to the south pole with my team of huskies), roasting hot pack tomatoes, making quince paste, canning peaches, brandied peaches, herb butters and lemon curd.

Preserving Everything is full of recipes, instructions, techniques, and has a good set of references for sites and books to follow up and extend your knowledge.

So far, I've purchased my fermentation crock, made applesauce and then started my apple peel vinegar (takes 1-4 weeks and I'm in week 2 and I've made a nice, apple vinegar but will let it mature in the crock for another week or two). I'm going to look into buying a pH tester so I can understand this whole vinegar/pH/preserving technique with greater depth. Loving this book.

Highly recommend.

[Joyce · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was helping in the garden and with "putting up" as Mom and Grandma referred to it before I was 10. So this was an interesting read and I found a couple of recipes to try. I have several books I use when I can so I don't need more but this is a great one if you are just starting out. She has good into on the latest equipment and how to use it all. She is thorough with instructions and warns against some of the short cut techniques you may hear. I have a friend who makes jams and never has water bath canned them. While her family (and unsuspecting friends who she gives them to) never have gotten ill, I have always canned mine. I was taught that way and it is the recommendation I have always seen in county agent handouts for decades. I like that she goes into fermentation, yogurt making, and dehydration. As smoked foods are linked to cancer, I avoid them (except for small amounts of nitrate free bacon) but she has a chapter on that as well. She even has some recipes for preserving in alcohol and in fats. I didn't really learn anything new but like I said, great for someone new to preserving from their garden or the Farmer's Market.

[The Flipped Page (Susan K) · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an exhaustive and very comprehensive book on preserving foods. Beautiful photographs, various methods, risks, best practices thoroughly discussed. Nice tables, freezing, canning, pressure canning, dehydrating, fermenting, cheese and yogurt making, etc... Very well done, and some nice unique items discussed as well (violet flower syrup, rosemary olive oil, pectin making, etc.)

Would highly recommend to anyone who is looking at starting to learn this process, or an experienced preserver/cook.

[Dawn Crist · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️ Interesting and cool information on a breadth of varying preservation methods but not a ton of great recipes, and some of the ones I thought were interesting required weird ingredients. Informative first step but would need to go deeper with other more targeted books to proceed confidently in certain methods.

[Vannessa Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Preserving Everything provided me with the instructions needed to know about canning, fermentation, pickling, salting, smoking and how to store those foods including the tools needed to complete the recipe.

Preserving Everything was thorough so thorough, in fact, it’s intimidating not because of the tools needed but the cost of buying them.

[Renee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very informative book. I like how it includes dehydrating recipes as I just bought a dehydrator. This book covers every type of preservation of foods. I’ll definitely refer back to this book for recipes.

[Derek · Rating 5 out of 5]

Knowing extremely little about preservation technique, this book BLEW MY GODDAMN MIND. I am super stoked to begin working these processes into my future gardening plans, especially the sections on lacto-fermentation and alcohol preservation.

[Victoria · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must have for every serious cook. The most comprehensive guide.
Do you want to can, salt cure, smoke, pickle, preserve in vinegar or alcohol, freeze or dehydrate? It’s all covered. Wow!

[Annette McIntyre · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many techniques for food preservation are covered in this book.

[Serena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice overview of various preservation methods. Nothing too exciting and a bit of the science/wording seemed iffy but it’s a decent reference book.

[Ericka Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. I reference it constantly when preserving food.

[Kylaslittlelibrary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very detailed instructions for safely lacto- fermenting food and several other forms of preserving as well. It seems limited in canning recipes but has plenty of others to keep you busy.

[Katy Lovejoy · Rating 4 out of 5]

my mom used to can so I know the importance of it

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a bit confused as to what rating to give this.

It's a good-looking book, with some great scrap-user-upper recipes, and some othre decent stuff besides, and lots of good information...

...Which is all available word-for-word on about.com. Literally. For free.

[Esme]

This book has recipes for everything! Things I'd never even considered making myself, like pancetta. Unfortunately it was due back at the library before I'd tried any of the recipes, though I did use its tips while making a vegan yogurt (the vegan recipe was from a different cookbook).

[Tamara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Canned the applesauce recipe. Plan to try sundried tomatoes next year.

[Lucky · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best!! We are making several items from this book.