Author of The Blackout Book and the online course Bloom Where You’re Planted
[Editorial note: As inflation wrecks the American economy and articles on homelessness become relevant, it is worth taking the time to review this piece from 2021 on food preservation during harvest time.]
As supplies become more expensive, and in many cases, more difficult to come by, it’s time to up your preparedness game. If 2020 has made anything clear, it’s that you can’t simply rely on regular shopping for your food. If you haven’t already done so, it’s time to begin preserving your own.
These new skills will pay off even if things somewhat do go back to “normal” and you’re able to find everything you want at a reasonable price at the grocery store, any time you want it.
So without further ado, here are the food preservation books that every prepper needs.
The 10 food preservation books you need in your survival and preparedness library
- The Prepper’s Canning Guide – Shameless self-promotion alert: This is my book. In it, you’ll find all the basic instructions you need for water bath and pressure canning food safely, as well as detailed recipes for everything from single ingredients to full meals.
- Prepper’s Dehydrating Handbook – You don’t need one of those super-expensive Cadillac dehydrators to use this book. A less expensive one will do just fine. I’ll note that the font in this book is a little bit light. As a writer myself, I realize this is through no fault of the author, but of the printer. It does not lessen the incredible value of this book – it’s a standby for me while I’m living in a place with more produce than I can possibly eat before it goes bad.
- Fermented Vegetables – This is a guide to preserving all sorts of veggies using the ancient art of fermentation with recipes from around the world. Make krauts, kimchis, chutneys, and relishes. Fermentation is a method of preservation that actually adds nutritional benefits.
- Pickled Pantry: From Apples to Zucchini – This book is a really fun read and it walks you through the art of pickling, making relishes and chutneys, and preserving foods that would normally require pressure canning safely in a water bath.
- Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits and Vegetables – This is a guide to an incredibly important method of food preservation – simply storing produce properly in a cool, dark environment. You can greatly extend the availability of certain items of garden-fresh produce by properly storing it.
- The Complete Guide to Smoking and Salt Curing – Are you looking for a way to preserve meat besides canning it? Check out this guide to smoking and curing and learn to preserve meat, fish, and game. This book is loaded with photographs and simple instructions.
- Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing – If you’re looking for a slightly more upscale bunch of meat preservation recipes, this is your book. It’s got some really delicious recipes for things like pancetta, prosciutto, salami, and sausages.
- The Jerky Bible – If you like jerky, this is the book for you. With recipes for beef, venison, fish, poultry, and more, learn how to safely preserve your meat in the form of flavorful jerky.
- Preserving Food without Freezing or Canning: Traditional Techniques Using Salt, Oil, Sugar, Alcohol, Vinegar, Drying, Cold Storage, and Lactic Fermentation – I love, love, love this book because the methods are so different. It describes traditional French food preservation methods that don’t rely on kitchen gadgets.
- Food Storage: Preserving Meat, Dairy, and Eggs – The thing that makes this book so unusual is the subject matter. It is divided up by food category and provides the reader with all sorts of alternatives for preserving these items that can be a little trickier to put back safely.
(If you’re looking on more reading material on food preservation, check out our free QUICKSTART Guide to home canning.)
Bonus: Here are some books about food storage and using the foods you’ve stashed away
Of course, many of us are still shopping at grocery stores and adding to our pantries that way as well. Here are some suggestions to help you build your pantries and how to use shelf-stable food in everyday cooking.
Prepper’s Pantry – I know, more shameless self-promotion. In the first edition of this book, I wrote about starting a pantry from scratch after moving from one country to another and not being able to bring my stockpile. In this updated version, I went into much greater detail about how I built my pantry on a budget, included healthful and unprocessed foods, and the methods I used for storing them.
A Year Without the Grocery Store – This incredible guide has a step by step plan for building a pantry that will keep a large family fed for a year. Author Karen Morris will help you get organized and stocked up in no time at all with this fantastic book. (There’s even a companion workbook you can get to go with it.)
A Cabin Full of Food – This book focuses on taking the food that you grow, then preserving it and cooking with it. It takes the reader from garden to pantry to table and is written in a friendly, approachable style. It’s jam-packed with delicious traditional Mennonite recipes to use your garden goodies.
The Prepper’s Cookbook – Wondering how to use all those shelf-stable foods in meals that your family will enjoy? This is the book for you. The Prepper’s Cookbook has more than 300 recipes that are all based on the ingredients that preppers store.
The Seasonal Kitchen Companion – This is a PDF filled with the way I use and preserve fresh food for my family, using such methods as cooking, canning, dehydrating, and freezing.
What are your favorite food preservation books?
Do you have some books that you swear by for food preservation? Please share them in the comments! (Be sure to include the author’s name so we can find them more easily.) I’ll add a reader’s choice section to this article if we get enough suggestions.
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About Daisy
Daisy Luther is a coffee-swigging, adventure-seeking, globe-trotting blogger. She is the founder and publisher of three websites. 1) The Organic Prepper, which is about current events, preparedness, self-reliance, and the pursuit of liberty; 2) The Frugalite, a website with thrifty tips and solutions to help people get a handle on their personal finances without feeling deprived; and 3) PreppersDailyNews.com, an aggregate site where you can find links to all the most important news for those who wish to be prepared. Her work is widely republished across alternative media and she has appeared in many interviews.
Daisy is the best-selling author of 5 traditionally published books, 12 self-published books, and runs a small digital publishing company with PDF guides, printables, and courses at SelfRelianceand Survival.com You can find her on Facebook, Pinterest, Gab, MeWe, Parler, Instagram, and Twitter.
The Complete Vacuum Sealer Guide, Kindle Edition (only),
by Roger Seher, 76 pages, 2011, $7.97, excellent reviews
https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Vacuum-Sealer-Guide-ebook/dp/B004VF6BHQ/ref=sr_1_1?crid=5WX853I14OJ2&dchild=1&keywords=vacuum+sealer+book&qid=1609859797&s=books&sprefix=vacuum+sealer+%2Caps%2C198&sr=1-1
AND
https://www.dehydrate2store.com/ (Tammy Gangloff)
–Lewis
I can speak to Number 7: Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing.
It is my go to book. With it, I have cured pounds and pounds of bacon, salmon, salted cod, brined various cuts, smoked meats and cheeses.
Another good one is Dry-Curing Pork. What I like about this book is the author (Hector Kent) has a section after the basics called What This Recipe Teaches.
I need to look into that. I know what was said by grandma but I have no personal experience with that.
I love Putting Food By, by Ruth Hertzberg, Beatrice Vaughn, and Janet Greene. My mom got it in the early 80s and passed it on to me. It goes into a lot of detail about how and why canning works the way it does. It’s got a lot of recipes, instructions for cutting up animals you process, root-cellaring, it’s got all kinds of things. As well as corrections for altitude, which some of us really need.
For beginners, The Ball Blue Book of Preserving gives a great overview of what’s needed and how it’s done, along with several recipes. It covers canning, freezing, and dehydrating. It covers making jams & jellies, meat, tomatoes, pickles, lots of common vegetables.
The Ball Blue Book has been my family’s only food preservation book for many decades.
Hey Daisy, have been using your book all summer and fall to can everything in sight! It has been a god send! I saw many ideas I would have never thought, of especially trying to use 35 chickens that were culled as too old to lay eggs and make room for my new group of hens. Thanks to you absolutely nothing is going to waste this year. I also love Tess Penningtons book. My mothers old hand written cook book gave me 6 sweet and sour pickle recipes including 9 day and 11 day pickles! they are delicious but not quite as easy as it sound to just do one thing each day for 11 days. Canning cole slaw was one of my favorites from your book. Who would have thought?
The Preppers Pantry is my favorite book for cooking with stored food. It has so many suggestions for using basics like rice, beans, potatoes, ramen, that I never would have thought of.
This is one area I need to improve, learn more. Very timely, excellent article. Will try and get some of these books for sure.
Is there anywhere to buy your book besides Amazon. I do not want to use them
ebay.
The Encyclopedia Of Country Living by Carla Emery, Plus she gives many of her references. If you can’t find it there….. You Know…
Ditto. This has been my go to book since 1985. Covers most everything.
“Store this not that” is an excellent book for learning what foods store better, taste better, how long they will last, and price comparisons between different options
1. Great Sausage Recipes and Meat Curing by Rytek Kutas
2. The Art of Making Fermented Sausages by the Marianski brothers
3.Meat Smoking and Smokhouse Design also by the Marianski brothers
These three books are considered by most serious students of meat science and meat preservation aficionados absolutely mandatory due to their thoroughness in research and personal experience and the message of food safety during the processing of raw food for long term preservation.
Wow…lots of good info here between Daisy’s column and the comments….I need to do some reading. I used to know how to do some of these things when I was growing up and used to help out my mother and grandmother…..believe it or not, my grandmother had two huge (and I mean huge) wood burning stoves in the kitchen (which also heated the house at night in the winter). My nephew has a dehydrator he doesn’t use much, so it’s making the rounds with all the family members as we all use it from time to time.
Recently my wife (who is an excellent cook) and I were talking about canning/preserving food….it’s something she never learned how to do…..and she’s more than happy for me to blaze a trail…..
Forgot to mention I’m really good at growing things…..thank goodness I remembered everything my grandparents taught me when it comes to that. If you don’t already grow your own vegetables, jump in with both feet – you’ll be surprised at how successful you can be.
Jackie Clay of Backwoods Home Magazine not only writes articles, but entire books on all things homesteading. She’s been homesteading for decades.
She has several books on canning and also other food storage methods.
Just go to Backwoods Home website.
Any advice on how to make sure the lids are good when the seal lids DON’T seal (only realized 2 weeks after & it stunk up my storage area)?? A whole bunch of carrot, wasted.
Yes! Once the jars have cooled overnight (or 24 hours) take the rings off. Then carefully pick up the jar by the rim with your fingers also on the flat lid. If it isn’t sealed, it will come off in your hand and you should eat that food immediately (or freeze it.)
Thank you!
Many of us long-time canners have been losing product because of seals failing in 23-24. It seems to be only Ball lids and many have let them know. I have some boxes of their older lids, and when you compare with new, the metal and the seals are thinner now. ForJars and Superb brands are very good. The failures come after the day of waiting. You remove the ring, wash your jars, they are sealed nicely. Take them to your storage area. A week or 2 later, you put others away and see or smell a problem. I lost 2 quarts of peaches and a pint of pickles this year after thinking I must be luckier than others. I belong to canning groups on Facebook and it’s been a hot topic all year. I just put 5 quarts of beef bone broth away and tapped every lid on my shelves… forever paranoid now! I’ve bought boxes of these other 2 brands, which I will use first, especially canning my meat and meal jars, which are my most valued. I did so many pickles, losing that didn’t hurt. Only 7 jars of peaches, so 2 really hurt me. I froze many bags of peaches for smoothies, glad now I chose to do that!
If you are using Ball and canning meat, use a cloth with white vinegar to wipe the rim in case you got some there. But they say vinegar will interact with the rubber seal, so go over it again with a water dampened cloth. I trust what others have experienced, won’t take chances!
start with good quality lids–like superb, denali, ball/kerr. be sure you are filling to the level the canning recipe calls for. over- and under-fill affect seal. let jars sit at least overnite. make sure the “dimple” in the middle is down and stays down. then remove screw on bands and pick up the jar with your finger tips along the lid. if it isn’t sealed right, it will come apart. i then wash and dry the jars to remove anything that might attract insects or critters and store in my cool, dark pantry..
Haven’t used salting or smoking a lot but I grew up sun drying, canning, pickleing, and fermenting as my family had always a done. Blessed to have a grandma born in 1877 who lived till 1970. I was 23 when she passed away. She’d taught me how she had preserved fruits, vegetables, meats, and eggs. She told me about grandpas smokehouse and salting barrels of beef and pork each fall. She’d hand built a stone spring house to use the cold water as refrigeration for fresh milk and egg storage. On the dry side it was cool and she stored the salted meats and water glasses eggs there. They owned a large apple farm, that shipped apples by rail to small stores all over an area from Pennsylvania, to upstate New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, and family sales points in Rhode Island and more. They were in Bucks county, PA. My mom and her sister grew up on that family farm. All mom actually changed was to buy a pressure canner in 1950. Before that everything was water bathed. I was three years old so I grew up with that well used pressure canner. But I saw fruits oven canned in half gallon jars and some things waterbathed but most things were pressure canned. In fact the pressure canner with a juggler on top is still being used. I just gave it to my younger son 5 years ago when he decided he was serious about learning to can. He loved it so much he hunted for another one about 30 years younger than my moms old canner. He appreciates the heavier structure of the old canners. He’s replaced the little rubber pressure plugs and inner rings.
Grandma dried things on clean bed sheets laid out in the sun or apple rings and split greenbeans on clothes lines. I’ve done that plus build wood and glass contraptions to capture heat and circulate hot air through whatever I’m drying. All using heat alone to move it about. Food was dried directly on framed metal screens that slid into the drying cabinets. I have the pink salt for salt curing. Guess I should use it and see how I like it. I’ve frozen a lot in my lifetime but I’ve also out lived several freezers and canned up the contents over the few days everything was safely cold. So I refuse to depend on freezing. But it’s still handy when you have a whole animal to preserve immediately. And I do like frozen corn best. But I’ve cut and canned tons of corn in my lifetime.
I started splitting and taking out the seeds to can fruits in 1951. I was four years old. So teach your kids and grandkids. Schools aren’t teaching homemaking, cooking, food preservation, sewing, balancing a bank account, what is compound interest, and more that was once considered critical information for our young adults.
I have The Prepper’s Canning Guide and it is excellent! I have canned many of the recipes Daisy has in it and still doing some. I’m very pleased with the easy instructions for beginners, it was very helpful to me and put me at ease being it was my first time using a pressure canner. I highly recommend this book!
Any suggestions for apartment dwellers. Not a lot of space or natural light. I’ve seen hanging bags that you are supposed to grow strawberries in? Going to start small in the spring. Maybe pepper or cucumber plants.
I just watched a Mike Adams Brighteon video about prepping for nuclear attack and fallout. Saving seeds was mentioned as a necessity. Well, grow your own and seeds are important for many or most prepper scenarios. And seeds get old. What do you do with last year’s seeds or 5 year old seeds?
Germination rates are greatly boosted for old seeds with Sonic Bloom (TM). Go to the website http://www.originalsonicbloom.com and get a kit. If you do any growing, the kit will pay for itself in increased productivity and boosted nutrients. I just realized that this kit is an essential prepper item that should be high on your list if you garden, and nobody is talking about it on prepper sites.