The Complete Book of Year-Round Small-Batch Preserving: Over 300 Delicious Recipes (Paperback)

~ (Author), Margaret Howard (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In The Complete Book of Year-Round Small-Batch Preserving: Over 300 Delicious Recipes, Ellie Topp (Feasts for Families) and Margaret Howard (coauthor, All Fired Up!), both home economists, explain the canning process for jellies, jams, marmalades, conserves, relishes, salsas, chutneys, pickles, dessert sauces, fruit butter, vinegars, mincemeats and curds and then reel off uses for them. Many of the delicacies this book proposes are surprisingly sophisticated (Jalape¤o Mint Jelly, Pink Peppercorn Vinegar) while others are more tongue-in-cheek: Hellfire Chutney and Mixed Japanese Pickle Sticks.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

With the fall publishing season comes a torrent of new cookbooks to take advantage of the harvest season's bumper crops. Not everyone has a root cellar or capacious larder to store large numbers of bulky canning jars. Nevertheless, even the most confined cook finds it worthwhile to put up a few cans of summer's peak fruits and vegetables. Avoiding recipes that call for quantities on the scale of pecks and bushels, Ellie Topp and Margaret Howard offer The Complete Book of Year-Round Small-Batch Preserving. Their more than 300 different recipes yield three or four jars of jams, chutneys, conserves, and pickles. Recipes for the freezer, for candied fruit, and for low-sugar preserves round out this useful comprehensive guide sensitive to contemporary eating habits. Food fashions come and go, but interest in vegetarianism continues to attract people for a host of reasons nutritional, religious, and moral. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 351 pages
• Publisher: Firefly Books (April 7, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1552094898
• ISBN-13: 978-1552094891
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 6.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #526,643 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

55 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, but maybe not for a beginner, March 10, 2003

By	L. Allen "laraclucru" (Odenton, MD United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is an outstanding source of recipes for people who want to experiment with preserving and making their own condiments. I disagree that it's not a true "preserving" cookbook, but I will say this: if you are looking for a book with 500+ "canning" recipes this may not be your book. Also, I would caution those without a lot of preserving (or canning, for that matter) experience; the recipes work, but the cook needs to be comfortable with processing, etc. becasue the authors don't provide a lot of detailled instruction on it. It's very intimidating to work with hot jam, glass, boiling water, etc. if you've never done it before. This book provides the user with a good overview on how to process, but nothing too detailed. Also, they don't stress enough that users shouldn't alter recipes. If a recipe calls, for example, for whole strawberries, and the user slices them in half, the user will end up with more liquid than what the amount of pectin specified in the recipe will gel. So, you end up with a really good ice cream topping instead of jam! Oh well, try again!

54 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not 300 recipes for "preserving"!, August 2, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Complete Book of Year-Round Small-Batch Preserving: Over 300 Delicious Recipes (Hardcover)

I was disappointed to find that many recipes in this book are not for preserving at all -- one whole chapter was for items that must be stored in the refrigerator and used within a few weeks (some a lot less, such as 1 day! How is that preserving??). They might be good recipes, but that's not what I was looking for in purchasing the book. The recipes that really are for canning (or other means of preservation) look fine, but not much different than you find in other books. This would probably make more sense as a regular cookbook with a few chapters devoted to preserving. If you're looking for a lot of recipes for preserving, buy something else.

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, but could use a little work., November 4, 2002

By	"chef_kelara" (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews

I have made several recipes from this book, and so far, all of them have turned out very nicely (the brandied cranberry conserve is excellent). I do agree with the above reviewer that many of the recipes in the book are meant to be kept in the refrigerator, and are not really "preserving". When I preserve something, it's so I can get it OUT of my fridge or freezer. I love the unusual combinations and the variety of recipes, though some of them could be written a bit more clearly. For example, one recipe says to use one orange, while another calls for one orange, peeled and seeded, and another call for an orange, unpeeled. So, is the orange in the first recipe meant to be used with the peel or not? I also wish that the recipes all made at least two jarfuls (so I can have one jar to eat and one to save or give away), and that the instructions for processing matched up with the amount made (the roasted vegetable pasta sauce makes 3 1/2 cups and has instructions for processing quart jars).