Most Helpful Customer Reviews
43 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
I loved the Book - Beginners might not, July 25, 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
I am giving this cookbook 5 stars for originality and information, and only 3 stars for ease of use.
If you are a beginner, I recommend Ball Blue Canning Book #21400 for your first tries. While these recipes require pectin, they do not require the more extensive methods required in this book, and the information is a little less intimidating. Most of my first tries came from this book.
If you have a little experience under your belt, this is an AWESOME book.
It begins with the history of canning and preserving and a great deal of information on why it all works. This information is expanded at the beginning of the chapter on each fruit. That information is necessary, since all of these recipes are designed to avoid the use of pectin except what is naturally occurring in the fruit. As a result, most of the recipes require additional steps to ensure success.
Ms. Ziedrich is an experienced cook and incorporates many advanced techniques and equipment that the "newbie" probably does not have in his or her kitchen, including a food mill and steam juicer, however, she offers simple alternatives that you can use instead.
While the title calls this book "sweet preserves," there are a number of vegetables included: carrots, pumpkin & winter squash, and even a method for preserving zucchini. It also includes items you won't find in normal preservation books - I didn't even know bananas, kumquats, or cantaloupe COULD be canned! The recipe for Coconut Caramel Jam starts with instructions on opening a coconut!
AND this is not simply a "canning" recipe book. It includes recipes for fruit leather (you need a dehydrator for these), cherry flavored brandy, methods for preserving nuts, and many other original ideas.
Our county fair just ended (I got 3 blue ribbons this year), but I have found several recipes here that I WILL be using in next year's fair! I am grateful that I had the chance to try this through the Amazon Vine program, and I have a couple of friends I will be buying this for come Christmas.
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27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Sometimes slow food is just *too* slow (great flavors, but anti-pectin view makes many recipes time and energy hogs), October 12, 2010
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
I was really impressed with the wide range of recipes and lovely flavor combinations--based on flavors and information, I would give this book 5 stars.
But I hate it when preserve books categorically snub commercial pectin, regardless of fruit. It's as bad as going the other route and putting piles of pectin and sugar in everything. I agree that commercial pectin is overused and often unnecessary (Ball would probably get you to add it to crabapples), but the alternatives here for preserving low-pectin fruits (that aren't preserved in combination with high-pectin fruits) are to either cook forEVER or to make your own pectin using high-pectin fruits--which you might not have access to in quantity, depending on the season or location. And so making a low-pectin-fruit jam becomes, in effect, making two complete recipes that require constant attention and a good deal more heating energy than just using commercial pectin in those recipes. A 30-minute canning job with a surplus of summer fruit becomes an all-day chore that uses 10x the energy.
I appreciate slow food and understand that it's important to know how to cook in the old way--but not for every fracking thing you make. If you only make one batch of jam a year, maybe that's fine. But if you really want to put up the maximum summer bounty, you just don't have time for making every batch like your great great granny did. Your great great granny probably didn't have a day job. You have to balance the result with the energy cost and pleasure of producing it. Personally, I'd rather be outdoors picking fruit than indoors watching it stew; in other foods, the pleasure is in the production and the tradeoff in time and energy makes more sense.
If there had been commercial pectin adaptations for only the lowest-pectin recipes, I would have given this book 5 stars, because the recipes really are lovely. But adding 10x the time/fuel energy inputs simply to slavishly avoid commercial pectin just strikes me as snobbish, and makes a good chunk of the book practically inaccessible to me.
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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant low sugar recipes make preserving fun again, December 5, 2009
I've been preserving for over 15 years now and I've probably collected half a dozen preserving books; most of which feature beautifully photographed jams and jellies on every other page, because I thought I'd need pictures to inspire me. The Joy of Jams, Jellies and Other Sweet Preserves (TJJetc) proved to be inspirational with none of that. In fact, in the four months since I've gotten it, I've been preserving nonstop on the weekends (much to the exasperation of my dh, LOL, who is sick of that stockpot always cluttering up the stove). Guess what all of my friends and family will be getting for Christmas this year :D ?
The way I see it, the trouble with the same-old same-old preserving recipes is, you can find most of them already in the grocery store. Strawberry jam, raspberry jam, grape jelly, yawn!! Never fear, TJJetc does have these in case you just need a basic jam or jelly. But while you're taking the trouble of hauling out your jars, lids and rings, why not try something exotic? This Autumn, I've made:
Caramel Apple jam
Fig jam (a favorite)
Fig and Peach jam
Orange jelly
Quince jelly
Banana jam (with a naughty hint of rum)
Strawberry syrup (rave reviews on that one from my pancake lovin' family..real sugar really is better than corn syrup!)
Quince paste (a European delicacy to eat with cheese)
Pear Preserves in syrup with ginger
Cranberry preserves
Feijoa jam
There are so many more to be tried this spring, I can't wait for my peaches and plums to start ripening.
As others have mentioned, these recipes rely less on sugar than most traditional recipes. I like that. Even better, none of them call for commercial pectin. The author explains how to coax out the natural pectins in your ingredients: some, such as raspberries, will set quite nicely with little time or effort. In the introduction she provides a chart which lists which fruits are high, medium or low in pectin and acid, and how the recipes are manipulated so that you can take advantage of that for really fresh tasting jams and jellies with minimal cooking time. Brilliant!
One more thing to be aware of, is that the recipes in TJJetc are mainly small batch (between 2 half pints, up to 4 pints yield). I think this is an advantage, especially when you are trying something new. It saves money and time as well.
I recommend this book to beginners and more advanced preservers, with the caution that you will be hooked...and that your jams and jellies will suddenly be in demand!
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