It is stunning to me how much the world of information around canning, preserving and DIY food arts has expanded in the last couple of years. When I first started this blog in early 2009, it was so easy to be familiar with the canon of books on the topic. I had them all and they took up about 18 inches of space on the bookshelf.
Then suddenly, a new wave of books started to flow onto the market. One of the best of this first round was Karen Solomon’s Jam It, Pickle It, Cure It. It offered instruction on canning, easy home dairy items and a variety of other projects that were universally welcomed by home cooks who wanted slightly more control over their food.
Karen recently published a follow-up volume called Can It, Bottle It, Smoke It that is just as delightful as her first book. It includes a handful traditional preserves, as well as instructions for homemade cereals (cornflakes! puffed rice!), miso, rice milk, smoked nuts and so much more.
For those of you who were intrigued but overwhelmed by Charcutepalooza and its many meaty challenges, you’re going to want to take a peek at the Hunt It section of the book. Karen has included a series of accessible, easy to follow recipes for corned beef, pastrami and hot dogs (as well as instructions for how to transform those hot dogs into corn dogs.
Every time I sit down with this book for more than a few minutes, I start to itch for the kitchen. The urge to cook become irresistible. My apartment has seen her Sesame Rosemary Granola, the Basic Barbecue Sauce and the Pickled Grapes (so good).
Last fall when I was in San Francisco, I got to meet Karen. We were both judges at the Good Food Awards and during a break in the tasting, she bought me a cup of coffee and we shared tales of obsessive preserving and cookbook writing. Somehow, that led to a request that I write a blurb for the book’s back cover. Entirely flattered, I was thrilled to do it.
All that said, here’s the point I really want to make. Even if I’d never known the first book, never met Karen and never spent hours pouring over a xeroxed galley copy trying to concisely say why I thought it was so good, I would still like this book. The recipes are super solid. The head notes are full of personality. And the pictures are pretty. It’s definitely a buy it, use it, love it book.
I really want this book. It’s right up my allwy. I recently made gravlax, which was amazing. I’d like to make corned beef and pastrami and sausage.
I am trying to find a good bread recipe that I can use everyday for sandwiches and such. I have only tried a few recipes as it is too hot to bake as much as I’d like right now.
I am waiting patiently on my garden, I regularly make homemade pizza and spaghetti. I really would like to can my own sauces! Also, putting up the vegetables from the garden for the winter! There are just so many things I would LOVE to do/know how to do!! I would love to be completely self sufficient one day. Thanks for the chance to be a part of this giveaway.
I want to make something with fresh apricots.
Gearing up for my holiday gift canning. My pickled peppers are a given, everyone’s fav. I always come up with a jam to give alongside. Last year was bourbon peach, a huge hit. What to make this year? The possibilities are endless!
I want to make something with fresh apricots that now are in season.
Believe it or not, CANNING! We recently bought the Ball, complete book of HOME PRESERVING, and can’t wait to get our other needed supplies to begin!
I need to whip up some fig jam once the season is upon us!
Fantastic giveaway. I LOVE her first book. I’m actually hoping to make a few things from her book in the next few weeks. I really want to try her crackers
I’m starting to drown in homegrown tomatoes. I’m eating fresh at every meal and have enough of your Tomato Jam to last for a year. (Love, love, love it.) So my big project to to can plain tomato sause and crushed tomatoes.
I want to can Tuna this year!! I have some friends that gave us some of theirs and the taste was amazing!
I would like to try fruit in a syrup. I haven’t tried it yet because I am not sure what I would do with the fruit and it just seems strange to me. I chickened out and made cherry bounce instead of putting the cherries in a syrup. I am going to try fruit leather soon:) I can’t wait for your book to come out. I have had great luck with all of your blog recipes-thanks for sharing.
I am new to all of this, so i am looking forward to canning my own food, especially jams and pickles!
I’ve wanted to make my own roasted red peppers and can them. I’m the only one in the house who likes them, so why not have them made just the way I like? Perhaps next week…
PS. I have her first book and LOVE it. The Peanut-Butter Cups are divine.
I’ve been dying to make homemade hard cider. I even bought the cider last year, then didn’t get to it before my husband drank it. This year I’m expecting during apple season, so there will be no hard cider for me. But… someday!
I try to make everything at home, but cereal is one of those things that I still buy in the package. I’d love to make this at home also!
My goal this year is to overcome my fear of pressure canning! I can still remember green beans raining from the kitchen ceiling.
My next kitchen project is to make/can my own hot beer mustard! I’m super new to canning/preserving, so I’ve got an ever-growing list of stuff to tackle!
I love seeing creative things. I especially look for recipes that use ingredients that I like but a lot of folks don’ts….so different recipes aren’t so easy to find i.e pickled okra! Figs! And I experience other places with books….visual too…love to look at food pictures etc. This book looks interesting!
I want to can oodles of tomato-based things this year…but my tomato plants look so very sad, so I need to be on the prowl for decently priced tomatoes.
I have soo many make my own mayo, ketchup, mustard and other condiments. Finish cleaning out the top cabinet so I can put other dishes we don’t use as much. Hose down the highchair-give a really good wash/scrub. Clean and mop the floor. Throw out old spices and replace with new whole seeds-get a spice grinder. Make some homemade applesauce one batch cinnamon the other unsweetened regular.
The newest additions to my growing list of new projects include trying to make soft cheeses and finding a pressure canner in order to learn how to pressure can soups for the wintertime. In the mean time, I’m waiting for my tomatoes to ripen so I can make salsa and sauce to can for the first time. I’m trying to create a pantry stocked with as many fruits and veggies I can figure out how to preserve so that I can not buy them all winter.
This book might be able to help me with my latest pipedream. You’ve heard of, and love, sun-dried tomatoes. How about smoked-dried tomatoes! You know you wanna!
I was inspired by your post about the roasted tomatoes, and a conveniently timed sale on tomatoes. I’m pretty excited to get started once I clean up breakfast today!
For a project, I’ve been wanting to paint our kitchen since we moved into our house 6 years ago. As far as cooking, I’ve got tons of berries in the freezer waiting to be made into jam.
What a delicious-looking book! My most neglected kitchen project is that I need to organize and find a better place for my herbs and spices. Right now they live on the counter, in no particular order. I’ve also need to get back to baking pie – last summer I was on a mission to learn to make pie, and I got better, but I still haven’t perfected it.
Oh, our CSA farmer says we’ll be getting many pounds of tomatoes this week. I’m looking forward to making my first sauce of the year!
I do a lot of pulled pork and ribs with my homemade Peach Chipotle BBQ Sauce. Whenever I do competitions with these items, people tell me how much they like my sauce and ask where they can buy it. Well, they can’t, because it is homemade in small batches as of now.
However, I’ve been officially unemployed for 2 years, and my unemployment, and retirement, has run out. It seems like canning and selling the sauce, makes sense.
I have never been a canner, so I have a lot to learn. But I’m smart, and motivated, so this book would be useful.
I’d also love to learn the material in the “Hunt It” secion you mentioned. I’m sure doing my own basic charcuterie would at least save me money, and could be profitable.
I’d love to win this book.
Thanks,
Brian
I’ve been dying to make house-cured pancetta!
I really need to reorganize my cabinets. And make blackberry jam for all the teachers this year.
I am planning on peach preserves, sliced peaches in light syrup, and peach fruit leather tomorrow! 🙂 I can’t WAIT until the first apples of the season come out – then I’ll be putting up applesauce, apple pie filling, dried apple rings, and apple fruit leather. I’ve got four quarts of my grandmother’s pickle recipe done already, and I am thinking I may do a plum jam at some point too 🙂 Oh! And roasted heirloom roma tomatoes! I need to find time and money to put up at LEAST 10 – 12 quarts of those…
My project plans involve installing some pull-out trays in my lower cupboards so I can better organize my supplies. Once that is done and items get consolidated, I can stop exiling my beautiful jars of pickles and jams and bring them into the kitchen where I’ll remember to use them on a more regular basis.
This summer I did finally make some sundried tomatoes and I’m proud of getting that accomplished. I currently have an abundance of yellow squash and will tackle relish this weekend. Yummy …
My next project is stocking my pantry so we will have something for in the “lean” times. I am looking forward to making apple butter this fall!
I find that my TRUE love in the kitchen is experimenting with new and unusual recipes. I may not be the best cook but I can follow directions! I haven’t had much luck with making crispy pickles so I would like to try some pickling recipes as well as anything meaty or saucey that I can “can”. It seems that I have way too many EMPTY jars floating around. Time to fill ’em up!
My kitchen projects are a little challenging right now as we just bought our first house this summer and my kitchen is still a bit torn up. However, I am still trying to put up as much as possible this year, at least tomatoes and tomato products. I bought a bushel of tomatoes for $15 dollars last summer. The amount of food and the number of meals I made with them in the past year was amazing. I just can’t go without them this year. This is only my second year canning so I’d really like to do more stuff and a wider variety of items this time around.
a kitchen project I’ve been wanting to tackle? I’d love to make some strawberry lemonade concentrate (just saw the recipe in the Ball canning book & I know my friends would love it as a gift).
It is almost time to start the flavored vinegars for Christmas give aways. I would love to tackle a hot sauce for the non-salad eaters among our friends too. And my shelf absolutely needs this new cookbook.
I freeze and dehydrate a lot of stuff from our garden but I’ve been wanting to learn how to preserve by canning! I have yet to take the time to figure it out and I know it’s probably pretty easy.
I’m new to canning, but I’d love to make some different kinds of pickles, one of my favorite snacks
I’m dying to make some good confit d’onion…I’m a huge onion fan and have been wanting to do that for a while. yumm
I would love to win this book, my 5 year old and I are learning how to can. I think this book would be a great help to us, & to share our lovly “makings” with our family. <3
Home-made pastrami??? I would *love* to take that project on!
I am suddenly longing for fall kitchen projects, like making gallons of applesauce like I do each year. Also, I should REALLY tile the top of the island so that it’s no longer covered by a thin, grubby piece of plywood!
I am dying to tackle a salsa canning project this summer. I have never canned tomatoes and am excited to try…. if only the tomatoes would ripen in this cold NW summer…
My project I need to tackle is green beans! I’m getting ready to can a 5 gallon bucket full.
My daughter has about a acre of blackberries so im looking to make whatever i can with them ,blackberry cobbler ant then jams and whatever else i can find to do with them
I would love to try her recipes!
This book looks inspiring! I have never made pasta, but this fall I want to pick up a pasta maker and learn the craft.
Well, that pressure canner has been giving me the evil eye – soon I shall have to take it off the shelf, ignore my fears, and go for it!
I did try the dehydrated watermelon the other day. Oh. My. Goodness. So good!!!