Angela Pierce

This book purports to provide an introduction to food preservation for people who are interested but who don’t know how to get started. It begins with some thinking about why one would want to preserve food, then provides some recipes one can try.

My major complains about this book is that it doesn’t actually teach the reader how to preserve food. For that, it recommends the reader turn to other resources, including YouTube: “You can research online or you can also attend canning and preserving training or even watch tutorial videos.” Since I would read a book with the title CANNING AND PRESERVING FOR BEGINNERS with the expectation that it would teach me, step by step, how to preserve food, this was a genuine stopper. For this reason, I would not recommend the book to others.… (more)

Angela Pierce has some interesting canning recipes included in this book, wine jelly, jalapeno jelly, blueberry sauce, and apple butter to list a few. Pierce has tried to outline canning essentials for a reader who is just getting interested in canning and has a brief section on what canning is, reasons why you should do it, and tips to canning. All of these are great, for as far as they go. Unfortunately there are a few gaps in the instructions, for a new 'canner'. For instance although Pierce discusses sterilization she doesn't tell how long you need to boil equipment for in order to clean jars, lids, tongs, etc. The author tells the reader that when purchasing new equipment some brands are better than others, but fails to give some suggestions of brands to either use or avoid. In the recipe section, it is hit or miss if she details how long various foods need to be processed for in order to ensure food safety. I was also a little disappointed that her tomato sauce recipe says salt and dried herbs are optional; salt really isn't optional for the tomato sauce. Also I would have liked to know which herbs and at which amounts I could try for this recipe. A definition of 'head space' would have been nice and use of tsp and tbsp for teaspoon and tablespoon, respectively would have been preferred. Although 't' and 'T' are occasionally used as teaspoon and tablespoon abbreviations they are not really common and often lead to mistakes when cooking or canning.
The recipes provided by Angela Pierce are nice and I am planning on trying her Apple Butter recipe, but I am an experienced canner and I know how long I will need to further process the product after putting the apple butter in jars. Ultimately, I think experienced canners will be able to adjust Pierce's recipes but newer, inexperienced canners may have difficulty with some of the recipes. I think it all depends on what each person's comfort level is.… (more)