The USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning

This is the document every tested home-canning recipe in the United States traces back to — Agriculture Information Bulletin No. 539, in its 2015 revision. It is published as an introduction plus seven numbered guides, and all eight files are here, exactly as the National Center for Home Food Preservation publishes them. Below is the thing the file names alone never gave you: a line saying what is inside each one.

It is public domain. The guide is a work of the U.S. federal government, prepared for USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture and published by the National Center for Home Food Preservation at the University of Georgia. Print it, copy it, hand it round a class — there is nothing to ask permission for. The original files live on NCHFP's own page for the 2015 revision, which is where these copies came from and where you should go for the newest version.

The eight files

Each row links straight to the PDF. The "covers" line names the subjects in that part's own table of contents — it is a signpost to the right file, not a version of what the file says.

USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning, 2015 revision — all 8 parts
Part	What it covers	Pages	PDF
Introduction	Front matter for the whole bulletin: preface, acknowledgments, the “For Safety's Sake” page, and the contents list that the seven guides hang off.	12	PDF · 0.4 MB
Guide 1: Principles of Home Canning	How canning preserves food, food acidity and the two processing methods, jars and lids, boiling-water and pressure canners — and the high-altitude process adjustments.	40	PDF · 3.6 MB
Guide 2: Selecting, Preparing, and Canning Fruit and Fruit Products	Syrups, and the fruit directions — apples through zucchini-pineapple — plus fruit purees, juices, fruit salsas, and pie fillings.	32	PDF · 1.0 MB
Guide 3: Selecting, Preparing, and Canning Tomatoes and Tomato Products	Whole, crushed, and juiced tomatoes, tomato sauces and spaghetti sauces, ketchups, tomatillos, and the salsa directions.	26	PDF · 0.9 MB
Guide 4: Selecting, Preparing, and Canning Vegetables and Vegetable Products	The plain-vegetable directions — asparagus, beans, beets, carrots, corn, greens, mushrooms, peas, peppers, potatoes, pumpkin, squash — and soups.	22	PDF · 1.9 MB
Guide 5: Preparing and Canning Poultry, Red Meats, and Seafoods	Chicken and rabbit, ground and chunked meat, meat stock, chile con carne, and the seafood directions — clams, crab, fish, oysters, smoked fish, tuna.	16	PDF · 1.3 MB
Guide 6: Preparing and Canning Fermented Foods and Pickled Vegetables	Fermenting containers and pickling salts, the low-temperature pasteurization treatment, fermented dill pickles and sauerkraut, the cucumber pickles, and the other vegetable pickles and relishes.	36	PDF · 3.0 MB
Guide 7: Preparing and Canning Jams and Jellies	Jelly and jam with and without added pectin, extracting juices, the reduced-sugar fruit spreads, and remaking a jelly that stayed soft.	13	PDF · 1.2 MB

Looking for the altitude tables? They are the most-used pages in the whole bulletin. Guide 1 carries the process adjustments for high altitudes, and every per-food direction in Guides 2–7 prints its own altitude column beside the processing time — which is exactly the lookup this site was built to do for you: canning altitude adjustments by state and city gives your town's elevation and the band it falls in, and the processing-time adjuster applies that band to a time you have already read out of the guide.

What this copy is, and what it isn't

Each file above is the PDF as NCHFP serves it, fetched from the entry pages linked in the table's own source list below and stored here unchanged — same pages, same tables, same page numbering (Guide 1 pages run 1-1 to 1-40, Guide 2 starts again at 2-1, and so on, which is why citations to this bulletin look the way they do). No part of it has been converted to HTML on this site, and none ever will be. A processing time retyped into a web page is a processing time that can drift from the tested one, and there is no version of that trade worth making.

What this site does with the guide is separate and clearly its own work: the rest of CanningDates reads the guide's published tables and does the band lookups for your elevation, and names every source it uses, including the one table that is not federal.

Frequently asked questions

Is this the current edition?

These files are the 2015 revision of Agriculture Information Bulletin No. 539, which is the edition the National Center for Home Food Preservation publishes as the USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning. Research does not stop when a bulletin is printed, and NCHFP posts newer findings on its own pages between revisions — so check nchfp.uga.edu for anything issued since. If NCHFP posts a newer revision, this page follows it.

Why eight files instead of one?

Because that is how the guide is published. The bulletin has always come in parts — an introduction plus seven numbered guides, each paginated in its own series (1-5, 2-5, 3-5 and so on) — and NCHFP posts one PDF per part. Splicing them into a single file would produce a document that does not match how anybody cites it, so each part is here exactly as it is published.

Can I print it, copy it, or hand it out at a class?

Yes. It is a work of the United States government and is in the public domain, so there is no permission to ask and no licence to accept. Master Food Preserver programs, extension offices, libraries, and canning classes are welcome to print, copy, and redistribute it. Crediting USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture and the National Center for Home Food Preservation is good manners, not a legal condition — see usa.gov on U.S. government works.

Which part has the altitude tables?

Guide 1, in the section on process adjustments at high altitudes; the per-food directions in Guides 2–7 then carry their own altitude columns beside each processing time. If you would rather not read a table, this site's altitude pages do the lookup — your town, its elevation, and the band it falls in.

Is this a copy or a retyped version?

A copy. Each file here is the PDF fetched from NCHFP, unaltered — same pages, same tables, same figures. Nothing in the guide has been converted to HTML, summarised, or restated on this page, and that is deliberate: a retyped processing time is a processing time nobody tested. Where this page describes a section, it names the subject the section covers and nothing more.

Sources

Every file here was fetched from the National Center for Home Food Preservation's own entry page for that part, listed below. NCHFP's index of the whole guide is the canonical place to check for a newer revision, and it also links a printed copy for anyone who would rather have the bulletin on paper.

Keep going

Canning altitude adjustments by state and city — your town's elevation and the band it falls in.
Tested recipes with your altitude applied — the guide's own recipes, with the adjustment already done.
Water bath or pressure canner? — every food's required method, and the never-can list.
About & sources — where every number on this site comes from.