Put 'em Up!

I love to can. I love to perserve food. The author Sherri Brooks Vinton is a regular home cook with recipes and easy to follow directions for old timers to first timers. There is an in-depth section called PART ONE Techniques that should not be glanced over but read like a novel. If you don't read, you don't succeed. She talks about proper weight of food vs the acid. So if your one that thinks, "One extra half-pound of cukes won't make a difference", then you already have set yourself up for failure. When a recipe is written its written to be followed. You can alter a soup recipe but you wouldn't add an extra stick of butter to a cake mix would you? Well same goes with pickling, perserving and canning.The black and white drawings are huge help. I am a visual learner and just having a picture really cuts down on confusion for me in the technique chapters. I want to try brining my own pickles this year and the pictures defintely helped there too.I so appriciate the chapter called, "Things that look Bad but aren't Dangerous". I have never canned tomatoes but this is the year for me. If I had never read her comments about mineral deposit on the lids of canned tomatoes, I probably would have thrown them out just like she did until she knew better.I haven't tried a recipe yet. I will do an update on this when I try a few out.I have had horrible luck with Ball pectin so I was thrilled to read and discover Pomona's pectin. It's about three dollars a box but one box works for 16 cups of fruit. So it's about the same as four boxes of Ball pectin.. and I usually have to use two boxes of Ball pectin because my strawberries are just so ripe. (Thats Florida heat for you) Being Diabetic, I love the idea to be able to use LESS sugar and still get a gel. I found my Pomona's pectin here on Amazon. The box comes with pectin and calcium. You mix the calcium with water and store it in a jar in your refrigerator for a year or more. I understand the pectin is good for many years.There is a few standard recipes like Blueberry Jam and Apple Butter. However there are some not so standard ones that I think I will enjoy the most. I love the idea of trying my hand at:Chili Tomato Jam, Preserved Lemons, Fennel and Onion Jam, Homemade Applesauce, Garlic Puree, Pickled Mushrooms, Sweet and Sour pickled onions, Chinese Plum Sauce. I can't wait for the groves to open up to U-Pick 'em.

Update now that we've tried many more recipes. I believe the yield is incorrect for the Pear Chutney and Apple Chutney, we made both several weeks apart with the same result - instead of five pints we got five HALF pints. Annoying from the perspective of making the chutney to give as gifts and preparing pint jars, we only got two of each instead of the five we expected. Still love this book!Hubby and I joined a community garden this year and had a bumper crop of tomatoes in July so we decided to "put up" tomatoes. First, we canned raw tomatoes just to have them available during the winter months here in the mid-atlantic when grocery store tomatoes are pulpy and tasteless. I ordered this book for more ideas and we have become addicted to canning. We've spent the last three weekends putting up peaches, tomatoes, pears, cucumbers and onions. We're trying all methods of preservation for a particular fruit or vegetable. The Sweet and Sour Pickled Onions and Bread and Butter pickles are amazing. This book is excellent for a beginner. It explains how and why to do everything and the author has a great sense of humor and useful tips as well as great recipes. We can't wait to put up the rest of the pears from a co-workers tree. So far we've done Pear Butter and Pear Chutney, tomorrow we tackle Pears in Syrup. Next year we plan to have our own garden so we can preserver more foods. I do plan to do carrots and beans this year too. This book only provides information for boiling-water method canning. We tried pressure canning once and though we will try again, the boiling-water method is much easier. Another recommendation to beginners from the author and me, get the canning kit that contains the jar lifter, lid magnet and funnel - without them we would be lost. Happy canning.

I bought the 2nd book, Put 'em Up Fruit, first. Then I bought this one. I like the additional recipes, lemon curd that can be canned for example, plus more. I did make the pickled sweet peppers yesterday, but immediately noticed that the amt of peppers (4 lbs) was way too much for the small amt of brine called for. I think the ratio of peppers to brine is wrong, I changed my book to read 2 lbs, not 4 lbs, of peppers, and that worked fine. I only knew this bc I had some experience canning, albeit only 1 1/2 yrs of it, but it did help me to figure this out in advance. If just starting out with canning, I am sure it would have been a disappointing outcome for someone out there, and more brine would have to whipped up. I like the way the recipes are presented, easy to read and follow. Just wanted to let readers know of this one misprint and the importance of reading all recipes carefully all the way through before starting! There are simple recipes...a "Jardiniere" and "Olive Salad" recipes I am looking to make soon.Update summer 2016: After some time since the above review, I have added more canning books to my 'library.' I still go back to this one and revisit the recipes. I had made a Giardiniera from another book and then noticed another simpler one in this book, using 3 veggies but the directions helpfully suggest you can swap out any veggies as long as you keep the amt true to the original formula to be sure there's enough brine. I like helpful hints like this. It gives you options. I have a salsa recipe in this book that has become my fave, Charred Chili Salsa. Better than any store bought. Just sayin'.

Cannot exactly say why, but I found this book hard to read as it seemed in a bit of a muddle to me. It was hard to look up timings and temperatures for specific items.Not quite like a straight forward recipe book, but not a non fiction 'history of canning' either. However, I have made up some of the recipes and used the main boiling up canning method. I showed it to an american friend of mine who thought there was nothing wrong with the book layout, so maybe I am just being picky or too British! About time to get it out again to make some strawberry jam!

For me, this is a must-have to a good canning cookbooks collection. In my triad, there are  Canning for a New Generation: Bold, Fresh Flavors for the Modern Pantry , Put 'em Up! Fruit: A Preserving Guide & Cookbook: Creative Ways to Put 'em Up, Tasty Ways to Use 'em Up  and this one. I have to add too the incredible  Preservation Society Home Preserves: 100 Modern Recipes  written by an amazing Montreal pastry chef. Refocus: Put 'em Up is divided by the main ingredient. I think it makes it so easy to use: if I went crazy at the farmers' market, I directly dive into Sherri Brooks Vinton's book. I would recommend it for anybody. For a beginner, it's a must. The techniques section is perfect, perfect, perfect. Step-by-step and full of drawings, I didn't find yet a better comprehensive explanation for the boiling method, the gel point testing nor all the preservation methods (fermented pickles, fruit leathers, ristras, name it!) For an expert, it's a must too. Recipes are so good! My favourite are the Pickled Chili Peppers (p.164), the Spicy Carrots (p.148), the Curried Cauliflowers (p.151), the Pickled Spring Ramps (p.246), the Rhubard Chutney with Cloves (p.250) and the Bread-and-Butter Chips (p.184). I'm really, really happy with the book! Canning for a New Generation: Bold, Fresh Flavors for the Modern PantryPut 'em Up! Fruit: A Preserving Guide & Cookbook: Creative Ways to Put 'em Up, Tasty Ways to Use 'em UpPreservation Society Home Preserves: 100 Modern Recipes

Great resource for various methods of food preservation.

Most excellent. She has a great mind and sense of humor putting this together.

Good for folks like me who are just getting started. A variety of recipes and methods. Looking forward to getting started.