Ball Canning Back to Basics: A Foolproof Guide to Canning Jams, Jellies, Pickles, and More

I'm learning canning, too, so this is a great book for me. I trust Ball and I'm sure their recipes and methods are good. I'm waiting to dive in until after my Agrilife extension class, but I can't wait!

The Ball Canning book is a good resource for canning, with recipes for sauces, jelly, and jams, a list of supplies you need for canning, tools, and much more information. It is a good source for beginners and more experienced canners. That want new recipes.

Love all the different safe canning recipes. Easy to read and instructions. Perfect for 1st time canner

Ball Back To Basics is definitely that. The book covers the basic items you will need to get started in water bath canning. The recipes are very simple and seldom give you any options for substitutions. In the fruit butters section it does give you a variety of options for ingredients you might want to use. For instance you use a sweetener when making butters. So it gives you the option to use different sweeteners like sugar, honey, brown sugar, Et cetera. However for the most part the Ball company is using the book to sell their products, like companies who put out pamphlets or books usually do. For instance making dill pickles it doesn't give you any real options for spices. Instead it says to use (pickling spice). Since in the recipe it says to use Ball salt and Ball pickle crisp, I'm amazed it didn't say to use Ball pickle spice also. There are a lot of different spices that can be used in making dill pickles but the book doesn't provide that information. It would be nice if the recipe actually had the spices needed written down, rather than saying use pickle spice. The book also says make sure you follow the ingredients exactly, otherwise you risk your canning going bad or rancid. But in all honesty you can add different spices without affecting the PH of your recipe. Unless one of the spices is actually a acid neutralize. So that's why it would be nice if they gave more information in the recipes and using actual spices rather than a mix sold by Ball. For instance instead of using pickle crisp which is a chemical found naturally but still finds uses in ice melt for roads and pool shock for swimming pools. They could have given the option that's natural such as grape leaves. Using a few grape leaves in pickles will give the same affect so I've heard. Here's the real question. Is this book worth getting? It really depends on you. Even though I would recommend this book for actual beginners. Just remember the recipes are pointing you toward buying Ball canning products. But let's face it there's not a whole lot of good canning companies out there to choose from. So we would buy their products any ways. Also you can go to the Ball site and look up pretty much any recipe for canning you would want. Again they would point you in the direction of their products. So if you're wanting a book that tells you the basics the real basics, this is a good book. But the recipes can be a little confusing the way they word things. Also remember the cooking times in the book are usually for any jar size they recommend you use. For instance one recipe calls for pint jars or quart jars but the boiling time is the same for both jars, it just doesn't say it out right. It would be nice if they gave other options for smaller jars. Sometimes you only want a 4oz jar or 8oz jar. However so far I have not seen the recipes give more than 2 jar options within the recipe. Overall it's a decent book with a lot of recipes and enough information to get you started especially if you don't like reading a lot.

Makes canning easy! I love all the clear, easy to follow directions. This is the perfect book for someone starting. I also enjoy that every recipe is for water bath canning. Made the peach rosemary jam from the book. It is delicious.

I am not new to canning, but I bought this book as a gift for someone who is. I ended up liking the book so much, I bought one for myself. This book is by far the most comprehensive and easy canning book I've ever gotten. Good for beginners and people who are more advanced.

Did not know where to begin but the bool was very informative on what to do and how to do it.

The title says it all. No drama canning. If you like to work smart, not hard, this book is yours. Lots of visuals. Some of the tried and true recipes, some different ones. I made the recipe using fresh cranberries in syrup. It's best not to overcrowd the jar with solids, lots of pectin in cranberries, so you want it to be loose, not tight. ( I found out by doing it twice). I have canned up whole cherries, peaches, strawberries, blueberries, etc...but never saw one for whole fresh cranberries. Perfect for fall/winter gift giving that won't break the bank, great to pour on top of ice cream, pound cake, yogurt. There's a simple BBQ sauce using ketchup, not tomatoes as most BBQ canning recipes need, making it very "basic" and easy and fast. I had at least three very large containers of ketchup from the big box store, so I was glad to have a way to use some of it up! I made it and used it w/o canning it to decide if I wanted to can up more of it, and i will next time now that I've sampled it. In fact, you can also use the cranberry recipe right away too w/o canning it, so it's very flexible for now or for storage to eat later on. You can take the BBQ sauce and use "as is" like we did by coating chicken wings and ribs in the smoker. Next time I will gussy it up by adding to it other flavors before using it from the jar, maybe adding some chipotle in adobo. I like lemon anything, there's a lemon jelly in here, easy peasy too. Like I said, back to basics.

Nice recepies. Only recepies for waterbath canning.

A lot of the recipes are in the blue book and a lot aren't. It's Ball! Nice recipes.

Me gusto mucho, fue a un muy buen precio y está perfecto para su quien no sabe nada pero también sirve por si tienes conocimiento y algunas dudas. Me gustaría que también vendieran los productos que están mencionados en el libro

Well written and laid out. Easy to follow and lots of good advice. I like the book and enjoyed reading it. Good value

Parfait pour les débutants, les recettes sont super simples, bien expliquées et délicieuses pour celles que j'ai testées. Les trucs et astuces garantissent un succès à chaque fois.