About Us

The National Center for Home Food Preservation is your source for current research-based recommendations for most methods of home food preservation. The Center was established with funding from the Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture (CSREES-USDA) to address food safety concerns for those who practice and teach home food preservation and processing methods. Read More

We offer you free lesson plans for teaching youth how to preserve at home in Put it Up! We’ve updated the curriculum with new illustrations and other minor improvements, which are now available to download and print from the Put It Up! curriculum page. There you can also access the new teaching tools: legal-size “posters” with step-by-step checklists.

What's New

Preserve It & Serve It: A Children's Guide to Canning, Freezing, Drying, Pickling and Preparing Snacks with preserved Foods.

This 47-page book teaches the basics of preserving with boiling water canning, freezing, refrigerating, quick pickling and drying. Step-by-step methods are illustrated and several child-friendly recipes are provided for using each of the preserved foods. Activities are intended to be carried out with adult supervision and help. Preserved foods include canned applesauce, canned strawberry jam, refrigerator or canned pickles, frozen berries, and dried fruit, tomato slices and applesauce rolled leather. Available for sale at the UGA Extension Publication Store.

Seasonal Hot Topics

Freezing is a great way to preserve the freshness of summertime produce. Using the right packaging materials and methods makes a difference in the quality of your frozen foods.

Pickled products are very popular meal and snack additions. You can pickle vegetables as well as fruits, and make relishes and salsas that fall into this category. Be sure if you canning any of these, you use tested recipes to be safe with the process method and times recommended.

There are many different methods available for canning tomatoes and tomato products. The processes are meant to be used with the preparation procedures described with each one. There is not just one process for canning all tomato products.

Recorded Webinar Available

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So Easy To Preserve

The University of Georgia Cooperative Extension has now published a 6th edition of its popular book, So Easy To Preserve. The book is new as of September 2014. Chapters include Preserving Food, Canning, Pickled Products, Sweet Spreads and Syrups, Freezing and Drying. Ordering information is available on the So Easy to Preserve website.

Our self-paced, online course for those wanting to learn more about home canning and preservation is temporarily unavailable while it is converted to another platform. This may take several months; we are sorry for the inconvenience. The same information can be learned by reading through Guides 1 through 4 of the USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning, or this section of our website: How Do I.... Can

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