New Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving

You know you are a food preservation fanatic when you get all excited over the opportunity to review the brand new Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving.

Seriously–it was like Christmas when the package came.  I tore it open and immediately settled down to peruse it!

So what’s the big deal?  The Blue Book is the book when it comes to home food preservation. Of course it covers canning (both boiling water bath and pressure), but that’s not all.  The Blue Book also has detailed directions for freezing (and who doesn’t free things?) and dehydrating (which is another passion of mine). If you can do it safely at home, Ball can tell you how to do it with the most current, up to date information and fully tested/ approved recipes that you can count on.  In this newest edition over 500 of them!  That’s right, 500 recipes–that’s 75 more than the last edition.

Ever since I started canning I have had the Ball Blue Book on my shelf.  I actually taught myself how to can using the 2001 Ball Blue Book. When the 2012 update came out, I immediately got a copy.  Now I have the 2015!  That seems like a lot of books–but when you consider there have been 37 editions reaching all the way back to 1909. . . well, it’s just a tiny fraction.

Nowadays I’m a certified Master Food Preserver, and one of the first things I tell my students is that if they want to preserve food at home the first thing they should do is spend the $14 and pick themselves up a copy of Ball Blue Book Guide To Preserving.

What’s new in this edition?  Besides 75 new recipes, this book is 56% larger than the last version. Here is a summary of the big changes and new features I noticed:

1.  There are two new information emblems being used “You Choose” and “Our Tip“.  The You Choose gives proven and tasty recipe variations–for example in the tomato juice recipe it gives several fresh herbs you could cook in with the juice and remove before canning .  The Our Tip gives tips and techniques to simplify preparation or suggestions for use–like in the Fig Preserves recipe where the tip is a mini recipe/serving suggestion involving mascarpone cheese and puff pastry shell.

2.  All the recipes are broken down into four sections:  prep, cook, fill and process.  I find this easier to read than the solid paragraph form where you had to scan and pull out the relevant information.

3.  Tomatoes are broken out from “fruits” into it’s own chapter in the high acid section.  They also include 3 different “Spice blends” (Cajun, Italian and Mexican) with directions on how much of each blend can be added to a pint jar after the citric acid but before adding the tomatoes, tomato sauce or tomato juice.  Nice eh?

4.  The old “Something Extra” section has been expanded and now includes Sweet & savory spreads, salsas, sauces, syrups, vinegars, “flavorful sampler” and pickles & condiments.

5.  There is a new chapter titled “Meal Creations” –recipes that show you how to use some of the things you’ve made.  Apple Butter Pancakes made with home canned apple butter.  Mixed Vegetable quiche using dehydrated vegetables.  Several salads using various pickles.  Meat with glazes made out of marmalade or preserves. . . you get the idea.

6.  Summer squash has made a qualified reappearance.  One of the biggest changes between my ’01 book and my ’12 book was that pumpkin and summer squash disappeared from the book.  Testing had shown that both items were so soft & thick when cooked that the heat couldn’t consistently be transferred through the entire jar and ensure a safe food product.  So although plenty of folks had made the recipes in the past, the testing didn’t get consistent results and therefore they were no longer approved recipes.  Far, far better to be safe than sorry when it comes to food preservation–mistakes can literally kill someone.  Anyway–in the brand new Ball Blue Book while there is not a straight up canning recipe for summer squash or pumpkin/winter squash (plenty in the freezing and dehydrating section) I did notice a few recipes with them included.  There is a pickled Butternut squash recipe that appears quite interesting.  The canned “mixed vegetable” recipe includes zucchini diced into 1/2 inch cubes as a little less than 1/4 of the vegetable mix.  Finally, there is a recipe for “Zucchini in Pineapple Juice” which seems to be a sort of mock pineapple.  That one is used later in the Meal Creations section to make donuts. Mmmm.

Of course they kept all the old “good” stuff, both recipes, the preservation “problem solver”, the food preservation planning guide (how much produce is required for how much yield in jars etc), a table of equivalents and the “step by step” canning guide which now is done with nice high quality color photos instead of illustrations:

To finish this review up, I have a treat for all of you!  The kind folks at Ball have agreed to give away a copy of the Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving for one lucky reader (US only–sorry to my international friends).

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Disclosure: This is a sponsored post. I’ve received product samples for my time and efforts in creating this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own.