The companion to Ball that covers everything else.

The Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving is the authoritative reference for water-bath and pressure canning — tested recipes, current safety standards, the book the USDA points you to. Putting Food By is its long-standing companion: the single volume that covers every other preservation method alongside canning, in one place.

Root cellaring, drying, smoking, freezing, pickling, fermentation, and salting all get full treatment here — not just chapters, but the depth of reference that lets you plan a whole-pantry approach to food storage. Ruth Hertzberg, Janet Greene, and Beatrice Vaughan first published the book in 1973, and its five editions represent fifty years of updates that have tracked the science as our understanding of home food safety has evolved. The fifth edition, published in 2010 by Plume/Penguin Random House, is the current standard.

Together, Ball and Putting Food By represent the full picture of what a household can do to build its own food reserve — Ball for the science-critical canning work, Putting Food By for everything from the freezer to the root cellar. We recommend both. If you're working through our Food & Preservation guides, these are the two books that sit behind everything on those pages.

Level

Skill builder — keep, don't cram

Best for

Full-spectrum food preservation

Format

464 pages · 5th ed 2010 · Plume/PRH

A book in print since 1973

What still holds up — and what to double-check.

What still holds up

The full-spectrum scope — no single book covers more preservation methods under one cover
Freezing, drying, smoking, pickling, and root cellaring guidance: these methods are relatively stable, and the fundamentals here remain sound
Food storage planning: the approach to building a complete pantry reserve is exactly what households need
The fifth edition (2010) already incorporated post-1994 USDA updates for most methods
The voice: plainly written, practical, and respect-the-reader

What to double-check

Canning processing times: for any water-bath or pressure canning recipe, cross-check against NCHFP.uga.edu before putting up food. The Ball Complete Book carries current tested times for canning specifically.
Low-acid vegetable canning: some older recommendations have been revised; the NCHFP is the authoritative source for anything in this category.
Equipment specifications: pressure canner dial-gauge accuracy standards and freezer temperature guidance have been updated since the 2010 edition.

What people are saying

Fifty years of consistent praise.

The gist — summarized

Across a thousand or more reader reviews spanning five decades, the verdict on Putting Food By is unusually stable: readers treat it as the essential companion to Ball, the book that covers everything Ball doesn't — freezing, drying, smoking, root cellaring, and fermentation alongside canning. Reviewers consistently praise its breadth and its practical, no-nonsense writing. The combination of Ball for canning safety and Putting Food By for everything else is a pairing home preservers have repeated for fifty years.

The most common criticism is one of timing: the fifth edition is from 2010, and some readers wish for a sixth edition that fully reflects the current NCHFP guidance. Most treat it as a fundamentals reference and cross-check canning processing times against current authoritative sources — exactly the approach we recommend.

An AI-assisted summary of published reviews and reader feedback, written for orientation — not a substitute for reading them. Last reviewed May 2026.

“The bible of home canning, preserving, freezing, and drying.”

The New York Times

“The one-stop source for everything the home cook needs to know about preserving.”

Penguin Random House · Publisher description

“For more than thirty years, the go-to resource for preserving foods.”

Publisher · Fifth edition description

Reader reviews

We're building a space for New World Survival readers to weigh in on the books on this shelf — real reviews from people building the same skills you are. It's coming soon. In the meantime, borrow this one and see for yourself.

Putting Food By

The companion to Ball that covers everything else.

What still holds up — and what to double-check.

Fifty years of consistent praise.

Reader reviews

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