The Joy of Pickling: 250 Flavor-Packed Recipes for Vegetables and More from Garden or Market (Revised Edition)

I first got this authors new Jams & Jellies book, which I love. I've made a lot of homemade jams and I appreciated the organization of the book (by ingredient) and and recipes.

This book just didn't live up to the same. Perhaps it is different, because I've never pickled before I was far more careful reading this one's introduction section. But I found it less useful.

I have two main gripes.

At the beginning when explaining the types of pickles she fails miserably at actually explaining the difference. She says "there are two kinds of pickles, ones preserved with vinegar, and ones preserved with salt. But the salt ones contain vinegar sometimes and the vinegar ones usually still have salt. " I'm paraphrasing of course but that is about it.

Well, I was confused, and I continued reading, and I continued being confused. Then, Alton Brown's Good Eats had an episode about pickles and he answered it in about 10 seconds what she couldn't do in an entire chapter "Pickles are preserved with acid, with vinegar pickles you add the acid in the form of vinegar, with fermented pickles lactic acid produced during fermentation provides the acid."

Far more useful, far more informative. I get the feeling the author either had the wrong information, or was just trying to be clever with her phrasing and the accuracy suffered. It wasn't vinegar or salt, it was vinegar or lactic acid. Salt isn't an acid.

My second gripe is that she talks about pickled brussel sprouts a few times in the opening chapters, and this excited me because I had a bounty of sprouts from my garden at that time, and then, not a single recipe. Anything you mention in the introduction chapters should have a recipe in the back.

First of all I can't gripe about a book that costs $13.00 and has 250 recipes.
This is is a recipe book and not a narrative novel and at many points the directions get buried inside the author's prose. As an example, the author describes three kinds of canning and spends paragraphs talking about "how your grandmother did it" but don't do it that way! The directions are wordy, convoluted and rambling when the actual execution is pretty darn simple. The next edition would be much more user friendly if the author would provide bullet point directions to canning (and other projects) for those who want to get to work cooking rather than read a book.
Again, worth the coin, but worthy of a content editor to tighten things up.

I like this book generally. Someone bellyached because too many recipes were oddball. Those are just the ones I am interested in; I LIKE pickled turnips, and I fully intend to try the pickled cantaloupe recipe. The problem I have with the book is that the amounts that the recipe is supposed to result in don't always match up with my results, and I don't think it's me, because I don't have this problem with the recipes in other books. For instance, Pickled Plums with Red Wine gave me not 3-1/2 to 4 quarts but 5 PINTS--and that was using an extra pound of plums. Pickled Pears was supposed to make 3-4 quarts; I got 4 PINTS. Pink Pickled Turnips was supposed to give me 2 quarts; I got 2 pints. One thing I learned from all these errors was that one pound of veggie generally gives one pint of pickle. But it has made me distrust the stated results of the recipes of this book and I wondered just how many of these recipes the author has actually made.

I like my cookbooks to be full of colourful pictures--not just for inspiration, but also so that I know what to expect. How small is "chopped"? What colour will the pickled onions turn out? Which of the recipes in this book catch my eye and make me want to try them?

Otherwise, I can search the internet for individual recipes when I know what I want to make.

Disappointed...

The only photograph is on the cover. The ingredients are listed in a pale orange print, whose lack of contrast with the muddy paper makes it tricky to read in less-than brilliant light.

(I purchased three recipe books from Amazon which all arrived together--and they are all the same quality, so don't be surprised if you see almost-identical reviews for each.)

As an avid pressure canner, I was very disappointed in the author's comments regarding pressure canning. She calls it "frightening". She states: "The equipment required for canning pickles demands much less expense and attention than that required for canning low-acid vegetables. ...Steaming and rattling like some sort of bomb on the stove, it can be frightening to operate, even for someone who has been using one for years."

I'm not sure who she has spoken to who has pressure canned for years and is still frightened of it, but I have to say that pressure canning is the simpliest method of all. Want to can chicken? Simply place chicken in the jars, don't even add water. Screw on the lid, and pressure can for the time required. Pressure canning is exacting, to be sure, but easy.

I hope that Linda Ziedrich will consider trying pressure canning herself one day. As a person who has been "using it for years", I have to say it's wonderful to do. :)

Other than that, her book is informative.

I bought this book because I needed to preserve some eggplant and I saw some references to this volume on a few different blogs. At twelve bucks, I find this an absolute steal.

Not only did my pickled eggplant turn out delish, I've also pickled bell peppers and am planning some sweet pumpkin, cantaloupe, and orange pickles this weekend. I never dreamed of being able to pickle these things and am overjoyed at the prospect of trying something new.

There are very detailed directions on every recipe, save instructions for headspaces which are completely missing. But, if you have any canning experience at all, you can figure these out. I also like that not every recipe has to be canned. Nice to be able to just stick something on the counter to ferment or in the freezer/refrigerator. Though, I do find myself selecting recipes that allow for water bath canning so that they will be shelf stable and I can make them as gifts.

The book is laid out well, and I love the bits of knowledge and trivia she writes in the introduction to each recipe. Overall, even if I weren't going to get in the kitchen and make a zillion of these newfound ways to make pickles, I would be reading this just for the entertainment factor and the fact that it would teach me how to make sauerkraut, dill pickles, eggplant pickles, and pickled pumpkin, to name just a few of the favorites I've found.

Highly recommend. For reals.

Update: After using the recipes in this book to preserve and pickle several different vegetables and fruits, I take it down to a 3 star rating. Though there are detailed instructions, a lot of the time the outcomes are not very tasty. I've had to throw out entire canned batches of pickles because the recipe called for too strong of a flavored vinegar. Most of mine have been problems with apple cider vinegar. Whatever I pickle with it just turns out tasting like apple cider vinegar, despite the spices and/or brines used to preserve the foods. I've found that most of these recipes still work if you use regular distilled white vinegar. I would raise my hand and say it was my palate if I thought that was what was flawed. I have a more developed palate than most and enjoy new flavor combinations and unexpected ones as well, so I don't think it's just me.

I have been making refrigerator pickles and vinegar pickles for a couple of years now. Then a chef said to me, "Have you ever had pickled eggplant?" No actually I had not but I wanted to. So I started my search. First I want to say thank you to any and all reviewers out there who take the time to rate and write about a purchased product. I read all reviews before deciding to make a purchase. This book got rave reviews but I still thank those of you who were confused and gave a three or four star. That is honest and I need honest to make an informed choice for myself. I love this book. I think the research Linda Ziedrich did on the food and perserving food was extensive and informational. I like the bit of history she writes. My family did not pickle anything. We were jam makers, so I am sure I will be purchasing Linda's book on jams and jellies too.
I never knew you could use cherry or grape leaves in making pickles to perserve crunchiness
I never knew you could pickle apples.
I am now going to make Italian pickled Raw Eggplant and Pickled Eggplant cubes thanks to this book. I can't wait to give these as gifts for Christmas and house warming gifts. This book will get extensive use every spring and summer and year after year. I hope my daughter learns to love pickles like I do.

UPDATE: 1/18/13 I gave the pickled eggplant and pickled mushrooms as gifts for christmas. Huge rave reviews. I think the best surprise was the different mushroom flavors from fresh to dried mushrooms and how long they keep in the refrigerator. I still have the Zydeco Green Beans in my refrigerator. They are fantastic snack. I would like to try the pickles again, my first batch went bad. I believe it was error on my part and not the recipe. Like I said before, the recipe has to be followed, and I think I had my weights incorrect. THis book will be with me a long long time

This book covers just about everything a home preserver would want to about pickling. It covers fruit vegetables and meats. It covers freezing to hot canning. It covers Asian, European and American. I have pickled cucumbers, turnips, beets and green beans. using this book and I plan to try many more recipes.

The two items I have made from this so far, the pickled turnips and preserved lemons, are absolutely fantastic! However, I spent an awful lot of time struggling with the narrative format of the cookbook. I prefer my cookbooks be laid out in a more "technical manual" type format; this book attempts to tell a story with food that I really don't care about.

The strong side of the book is that if contains a lot of recipes and it seems that the autor has tried them all, but I didn't try any of them so far so I can't judge on that.
The weak point is that the general section of the book is a bit weak and not really great for those who never pickled. Especially in this section I missed some pictures. How does all the stuff look like I need? There are some descriptions of more exotic pickling vessels, wouldn't a picture explain more?
The second thing I don't like about this book is that a lot of recipes ask for refrigeration. The whole point of pickling is to preserve a glut of garden produce without freezing them you would need a double door fridge because you start pickling!
I give the book still 3 stars because there are a lot of recipes which are not in grandmothers recipe book like kimche.