Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning

Traditional Techniques Using Salt, Oil, Sugar, Alcohol, Vinegar, Drying, Cold Storage, and Lactic Fermentation

Typical books about preserving garden produce nearly always assume that modern kitchen gardeners will boil or freeze their vegetables and fruits. Yet here is a book that goes back to the future—celebrating traditional but little-known French techniques for storing and preserving edibles in ways that maximize flavor and nutrition.

Translated into English, and with a new foreword by Deborah Madison, this book deliberately ignores freezing and high-temperature canning in favor of methods that are superior because they are more nutritious and energy efficient. As Eliot Coleman says, “Food preservation techniques can be divided into two categories: the modern scientific methods that remove the life from food, and the natural ‘poetic’ methods that maintain or enhance the life in food. The poetic techniques produce . . . foods that have been celebrated for centuries and are considered gourmet delights today.”

Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning (originally published as Keeping Food Fresh) offers more than 250 easy and enjoyable recipes featuring locally grown and minimally refined ingredients. It is an essential guide for those who seek healthy food for a healthy world.

"Preserving Food without Freezing or Canning is a wonderful resource for anyone interested in experimenting with food preservation techniques. Its fascinating assortment of recipes, coming from many different authors, emphasizes the wide range of creative possibilities for keeping food fresh, healthful, and flavorful. As a commercial producer of lacto-fermented vegetables, I am especially pleased to find in this book a very solid section on lactic fermentation, an important topic rarely discussed in contemporary writing."

—Dan Rosenberg, Owner of Real Pickles

About the Authors

Centre Terre Vivante is an ecological research and education center located in Mens, Domaine de Raud, a region of southeastern France.

Deborah Madison is author of best-selling cookbooks including The Greens Cookbook and Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from America’s Farmers’ Markets.

Eliot Coleman is a farmer and author of two best-selling gardening books, The New Organic Grower and Four-Season Harvest.