This book is all about traditional skills, heritage recipes, and food preparation techniques passed down from generations before us. It aims to help readers transition away from processed foods and towards healthier, homemade options through easy-to-follow recipes and traditional cooking skills. From sourdough bread and homemade butter to chicken pot pie and bone broth, this cookbook provides a variety of recipes to inspire self-reliant cooking in your kitchen. Get ready to replace store bought items with delicious from-scratch dishes one recipe at a time!

I have been following a few homesteaders on social media and have begun to adopt a simple and clean lifestyle. This change is not only to benefit the planet but also to promote a healthier family. I am particularly drawn to the delicious recipes they share, especially those involving sourdough. I have always wanted to try making sourdough bread, and the recipes in this book have inspired me to experiment further - sourdough donuts and pizza dough sound amazing!

The book is incredibly informative and well-written. I am excited to take on the challenge of creating my first sourdough starter once I gather all the necessary ingredients. I am eager to dive into the world of sourdough baking with the help of this book, and the eye-catching photos only add to my anticipation.

Thank you NetGalley and Skyhorse Publishing for my digital ARC copy. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

This book is amazing! I love how it starts with what to have in your pantry and which kitchen tools you’ll need. The recipes are all easy to follow and I like the pictures. I definitely found a lot I want to try to make myself!

First let me say there is much information in the text although it is very wordy and sometimes I struggled to keep interested. I think there were better ways to approach some of the topics, for example, what she keeps in her pantry and tools she uses. She has some inconsistencies in some of the recipes in terms of measurements which can lead to confusion by the reader. While I agree that people need to get back to the basics and eat a diet with less preservatives I don't find this book to be the go to source, there are some good information but it is not a fully comprehensible book nor does it check all the marks for this reader. Thanks to Netgalley, the author and publisher for the opportunity.

The Self-Reliant Kitchen is a well written tutorial collection with recipes for increasing food security and self-reliance by Michelle Mullennix. Due out 1st Oct 2024 from Skyhorse, it's 224 pages and will be available in hardcover and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout.

This is a colorful, appealing collection with very well styled appetizing recipes for homestyle simple American dishes. The emphasis is on garden-to-table, fresh ingredients, simplicity, and increasing food security and abundance. These are everyday family meal type recipes.

They're arranged thematically: sourdough & yeast breads, dairy, breakfast, dinner, sides, snacks, and quick breads & sweets. Recipe ingredients are variable in weight and/or volume measures. Units are imperial (American); there are some general substitutions and conversion included in a chart in the back of the book.

Oddly, many of the recipes use canned and other convenience foods. Ingredients will be widely available from most well stocked grocery stores in North America. There are some small issues with disclaimers. The author recommends raw whole (unpasteurized) dairy products in the recipes. There is one disclaimer (in a footnote) which explains that raw milk can contain harmful bacteria and readers are cautioned to use their discretion.

The author's tutorial for sourdough starter seems to differ from most of the ones commonly available online (but sourdough is generally *not* screw-uppable as everyone discovered to their delight during the pandemic).

The DIY snacks are varied and fun, including homemade gummy candy, hummus, fruit leathers, soft pretzels, applesauce, and a few more.

Four stars. Great ideas, moderately good execution. It would be a good choice for public library acquisition, home use, or potentially gift giving. Most self-sufficiency folks, smallholders, and farmers will have more detailed cookbooks/preserving tutorials available.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

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Self reliant kitchen

Good ideas abound in this book! Sourdough fried chicken? That was an original idea I had never thought of.

My favorite chapter was Sides. So many scratch recipes for things I use everyday. Grape juice gummies is one I plan on trying first. I have seen recipes for fruit leather before, but the one in this book made me make plans to dig out my dehydrator.

I really enjoyed this recipe book. I recommend that you don't go into it thinking there will be no processed foods in the ingredients at all because these days it would be very difficult to have recipes with 0 processed ingredients but it was still nice to see recipes that are mostly natural ingredients or locally sourced ingredients. The author even says "as local as possible", there is no preaching or pressure it's just whatever you can manage and tips on how to do that which I appreciated.

I love the aesthetic and the pictures, the introduction says this book was a labor of love and I think you really get that feel throughout. I loved the list of staples for your pantry because I've always wanted to do something like that.

The recipes are detailed but easy to follow and I like how certain ingredients come with a note such as the raw milk. Raw dairy is a preference for the author but she does include that even though it's very beneficial it can also have dangerous bacteria and you should do what YOU feel is best.

There is a great selection of recipes, from the basics to some more advanced recipes that I can't wait to try!

2.5⭐️
I am thankful to have gotten the eARC for free from Netgalley and Skyhorse publishing so I can leave my voluntary and honest review.

This book was really hard to rate. I loved that it had a bunch of common items that people usually buy from the store that can be easily made from scratch! But as a reviewer I also was looking at it a bit more critically in addition to having more knowledge than average on the subject as well as a passion for scratch cooking and baking.

One thing that I liked was that the recipes started off written in weight with the volume equivalent. However, it’s not consistent throughout the book. There are many recipes with only the volume written. Then I realized that the recipes that did have the weight written it was probably just conversions which are just as inaccurate as using volume in baking to begin with.

After talking about what items to have on hand for the self reliant kitchen she starts with Sourdough bread which of course starts with how to make a starter. I love that she teaches to use only small amount of flour unlike make recipes that have such needless waste. Now while I don’t agree with the whole recipe (like you don’t need to keep changing the container it’s in) it’s a perfectly good recipe. The issue comes in with the commentary notes and a few incorrect statements. She doesn’t go into what is actually happening in the process of why early activity is present which leads to misinformation about whole wheat flour becoming active more quickly and this your time line gets sped up… that’s not accurate.
Also, she talks about your starter being ready when it doubles within 12 hours which is not the sign at all! It should be doubling in 4-6 hours. And if it’s brand new, it should be doing that consistently before you use it. The final time depends on many things but it’s usually in the 13-15 day range but it can go up to 21 days. With so much free information online about sourdough it’s hard to see advice that can steer people wrong.

Secondly, the author is a user of raw milk which is fine. However she gives assertions that just aren’t factual. It’s fine to have an opinion but putting health information out there is really risky when it’s not backed by the accepted scientific guidelines. Also in most places where she writes “I prefer raw” in the recipe it also has an * and then a note warning about the dangers of possible bacteria in raw milk. However, the first recipe she mentions using raw milk or rather raw cream the * is not there and it doesn’t say “preferred”. The recipe calls for raw milk and then she has a (see notes) after it. it’s where she mentions the “positives” of raw dairy and rights them as fact instead of opinion. It gives a very confusing message.

One thing she talks about in the book is about “the old way” and such. So personally I also equate that to authentic recipes that originated outside of the United States. Now that is my personal opinions so that may not be at the fault of the author but it frustrates me to see a recipe such as Alfredo sauce made inauthentically with cream. There is NO CREAM in Alfredo Sauce. (Sorry it’s a pet peeve)

Next, it’s about homesteading and living off the land, cooking from scratch etc.. I mean it’s called “The Self Reliant Kitchen” yet you have ingredients used in some recipes are using highly processed items. For instance using canned beans and tomatoes in a Chili recipe. Now that’s 100% fine!! But if your book is preaching “Farm to Table” meals, using processed canned food seems a bit inconsistent with the books message.

So she also gives a recipe for making pasta. She doesn’t use weight at all and gives a strange recipe of 2 cups of flour and 6 “eggs”. In general for long pasta the ratio is 100 grams of flour to 1 US large egg. A cup of flour varies in weight between 125-145 grams. Earlier in the book she uses 125 grams to equal 1 cup of flour. So 6 eggs is a really wet pasta dough depending on the eggs used as she doesn’t tell you what size to use. Assuming you’re using large eggs it’s double the amount. That creates a sloppy mess of a dough that would gum up your machine. Then she has you resting the dough in the fridge which is a huge pasta making no-no but to each their own.

On a good note she gives several different directions for how to roll and cut the pasta depending on what you have. Now I wouldn’t have mentioned specific brands of equipment since many high end mixers have pasta attachments but I won’t hold that against anything.

But then the most astounding thing it says is to “cook until pasta is cooked and tender, about 8-10 minutes”! Followed by “Fresh pasta cooks very quickly.”
Yes fresh pasta does which is why if you cook it for 8-10 minutes is going to be a soggy mess!
I have to imagine this is a typo since store bought pasta is cooked that long and not fresh pasta which depending on the thickness is anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes!
So Im hoping the physical copies haven’t been printed yet as this is an egalley

The we get to the part of the book that should be omitted “Dinner” Most of recipes are basic ones that have been around for a long time and are easily accessible online or in any cookbook. They are not unique nor provide a fresh perspective on them. Many contain canned ingredients which is not fitting with the theme of the book.

However, the highlight of the book is the Snack section. It is full of common things people buy premade and shows how easily that can be made at home. Like homemade potato chips, salsa, beef jerky, fruit leather and many more. Things where the book should have been focused and expanded along with the scratch recipes of the sourdough and other breads, pasta (with a proper recipe), and condiments like how to make butter and such. Lastly the quick breads were a nice addition to have expect its baking, it would have been better to have in weight not volume.

The recipes end with a “Quick Breads and Sweets” section which is a bit bizarre in composition to go from zucchini bread to hot cocoa (which again she says raw milk and doesn’t have the warning like in other recipes) to homemade marshmallows and then followed by a cheese cake.
The chapter should have been broken up and organized better.

I know this was long but I did try to break things down to the main eye opening things in the book. Personally I would not suggest this book to my audience which is much larger than my good reads one!

My rating system since GoodReads doesn’t have partial stars and I rarely round up.

⭐️ Hated it
⭐️⭐️ Had a lot of trouble, prose issues, really not my cup of tea (potentially DNF’d or thought about it)
⭐️⭐️⭐️ Meh, it was an ok read but nothing special
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Really enjoyed it! Would recommend to others
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Outstanding! Will circle back and read again

One of the first sentences to this book is “This book has been a labor of love, one that I have poured my heart into” and there is so much in depth information, at the beginning there is a grocery & kitchen tool list which will come in extremely handy. All the recipes sound really delicious & all seem easy enough to follow, I have always been intimidated by a sourdough starter
but because of this book, I’m going to give it a go. There’s a conversion chart at the end which is great for me, being from the UK.
I think this would be great book for anybody and is a real stepping stone into becoming more self-reliant. Oh and the pictures are just *self-reliant chefs kiss*

★★★★★
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I want to thank NetGalley and Skyhorse Publishing for the opportunity to review this book.

As someone who is very interested in being self-reliant, I found this cookbook very helpful. I love the pantry section and found it helpful to know some of the better items to keep in your pantry. I also found all of the information on ingredient sourcing helpful especially for someone new to self-reliance. I really liked the assortment of recipes especially recipes for everyday staples such as butter and cream cheese. I never even thought about making these items, and it is something I would love to start doing. While the recipes are not that unique, I feel like they are the type of recipes that everyone should know how to make so it is nice to have them in one book. Mastering these recipes would definitely make me more self-reliant. I would definitely recommend this book. I also think this book would make a great gift.

I downloaded this cookbook because I thought it would be one of the best ones I’ve ever read, but it ended up being kind of boring as I really just downloaded it to see the delicious pictures anyway. The only few things I liked about it were the grocery and tool lists that’s all. I would or wouldn’t recommend this cookbook to any chef.