Best Books on Food Storage and Preservation for Preppers (2026)
Storing food well means more than buying buckets of rice. These books cover canning, drying, fermenting, curing, root cellaring, and planning a pantry you actually eat from. Several methods need no electricity at all.
10 books, ranked. Affiliate links.
#1
Putting Food By
Janet C. Greene, Janet Greene, Ruth Hertzberg
A long-trusted home preservation reference covering canning, freezing, drying, curing, and root cellaring. Beginner level, 464 pages, 2010 edition.
beginner
#2
Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving
Judi Kingry, Lauren Devine
Hundreds of tested recipes for canning, pickling, and preserving. The bigger companion to the Ball Blue Book. Beginner level, 448 pages, 2006 edition.
beginner
#3
Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving
Ball Corporation
The long-running home canning guide from Ball, with tested recipes and processing times. Inexpensive and widely trusted. Beginner level, 216 pages, 38th edition (2024).
beginner
#4
Complete Guide to Home Canning
U.S. Department of Agriculture
The USDA's research-based canning guide, the source many other books draw on. Free from the National Center for Home Food Preservation; print copies are cheap too. Beginner level, 2021 edition. USDA guide, free from the National Center for Home Food Preservation.
beginnerFree legal PDF
#5
Making the Best of Basics
James Talmage Stevens
A long-running guide to building and using a home food storage program. Strong on what to store and how to rotate it. Beginner level, 240 pages, 10 edition (1997).
beginner
#6
Preserving Food without Freezing or Canning
The Gardeners and Farmers of Centre Terre Vivante
Traditional French methods for keeping food without electricity or canners: drying, salting, oil, vinegar, and cellaring. Beginner level, 197 pages, 2007 edition.
beginner
#7
Root Cellaring
Mike Bubel
How to store fruits and vegetables through winter with no electricity. Covers building simple cellars and which crops keep longest. Beginner level, 297 pages, 2nd ed. (1991).
beginner
#8
The Dehydrator Bible
Jennifer MacKenzie
Covers drying fruits, vegetables, meats, and complete meals, with recipes for using them. Dried food is light and keeps well. Beginner level, 381 pages, 2009 edition.
beginner
#9
Wild Fermentation
Sandor Ellix Katz, Nora Steinbrun
An approachable guide to sauerkraut, yogurt, sourdough, and other fermented foods. Fermentation preserves food without power or canning lids. Beginner level, 297 pages, Updated and revised edition. (2016).
beginner#10
So Easy to Preserve
University of Georgia Cooperative Extension
University of Georgia Extension's preserving guide, based on USDA testing. Covers canning, freezing, drying, and pickling. Beginner level.
beginnerSpiral / lay-flat
This list shows our top 10 of 17. See every food preservation & storage book in the directory.
How we picked
Every book here is a print reference you could actually use during an emergency, and every edition, ISBN, and page count was checked against Open Library or the publisher. If we couldn't verify a detail, we left it out. The order is our editorial judgment: books a beginner can use come first, then specialist references. Free legal copies are flagged, and we never link to pirated PDFs. Affiliate commissions don't decide what gets listed or where it ranks.
Comparisons
- Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving vs So Easy to Preserve
- Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving vs Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving
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