PRESERVING FOOD

Preserving food is no longer a necessity given the availability of fresh produce and packaged foods available at supermarkets all year-round. However, there are a number of good reasons to learn how to preserve food, namely to take advantage of a food surplus or abundant harvest, to stretch the availability of nutritious foods into colder months, and to reduce our reliance on supermarket manufactured foods and produce that has to travel thousands of miles. Knowing how to extend our food sources is a great confidence booster in our ability to live locally and sustainably.

There are a variety of ways to preserve food, many of which have been in practice for thousands of years before the advent of refrigeration and chemical preservatives. Determining what to preserve and how to preserve it largely depends on what you enjoy eating or cooking, what ingredients you have available, and how much space you are able to allocate. Below outlines the main food preservation methods that we currently use.

DRYING

This is one of the oldest and simplest method of preserving food, which fundamentally just requires you to spread out the food stuff to completely dry. How you dry depends on the density of the item. For example leaves used for herbs and teas tend to be small and light so can be spread out over a tray or bundled like a bouquet and hung in a dry cool place, like the top of a shed or wall hook or coat rack works (below picture shows sage that we dried which we store in a jar to be used as spice). For denser and juicier foods, you will need more heat. An oven set to low heat is a good solution, but if you decide to get serious about drying foods, investing in a dehydrator makes a lot of sense - it does not take a lot of energy to run and it makes drying very easy.

We primarily air-dry or use a dehydrator. We air-dry foraged plants (e.g. lemon balm, mugwort, goldenrod), herbs and greens from our garden (e.g. shiso, mint, alfalfa), and leftover store-bought herbs that were needed for a dish but we could not use it all. Once dried, we use these for teas and spices. We also dry thicker/juicier foods such as kale, bananas and onions (makes great dried snacks or toppings) as well as lemons (great for teas or to soothe a sore throat). We started by using a conventional oven for a little while, but found the investment in a dehydrator made drying much more efficient, and the lower heat setting options more effective at preserving the nutrients in the food (e.g. dehydrating kale at 110-115 Fahrenheit for 6-8 hours still qualifies it as a “raw food”).

The possibilities are almost endless in the types of food that you can dry, from herbs to fruits and vegetables and meats, and the ways that these ingredients can be used.

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FERMENTING

Fermentation is one of the oldest practices for preserving food, thought to be used as far back as Neolithic times. It is a metabolic process that involves the breakdown of carbs (such as starch and sugar) by the action of beneficial bacteria and yeast in an oxygen free environment. Although it may sound a bit daunting at first, it is actually one of the simplest ways of preserving that also amplifies the nutritiousness of many foods. Some common foods that we consume regularly requires the act of fermentation to produce, including yogurt, cheese, vinegar (found in ketchup, mustard, salad dressings), coffee, and alcohol.

All you need to ferment most vegetables are a wide-mouth container with a lid, salt, and water (unless the vegetable already contains a fair amount of liquid). The other key ingredient - lactobacillus - is a naturally occurring bacteria on fruits and vegetables (as well as in the human digestive system), so you already have it “on hand”. The following is a very simple recipe for making sauerkraut - a good one to try for first timers. Once you have gone through the process, you can try it on other single or combination of vegetables, as well as experiment with adding herbs and spices - the possibilities are almost endless, while the process is largely the same!

Ingredients:

  • 1 lb of cabbage (any kind)

  • 1 teaspoon of salt (more or less to taste)

Instructions:

  • Remove the outer leaves of the cabbage and keep aside

  • Finely chop cabbage into ~1 inch strips (don’t worry about chopping perfectly, although the smaller the pieces, the easier it is to extract the juices from the leaves). Place the chopped cabbage into a large bowl.

  • Sprinkle the salt over the bowl and toss the cabbage lightly to mix the salt throughout. Leave aside for about 10 mins.

  • Squeeze the cabbage with your hands to help extract the juices from the leaves - this will take a few minutes

  • Once the cabbage is quite wet, pack it tightly into your container with force. This will continue to expel more juices. You can use any type of wide-mouth food-grade container, but avoid metal. We usually use wide-mouth glass mason jars, which makes it easy to eventually store in the refrigerator and access.

  • Once the cabbage is tightly packed, pour any remaining juices from the bowl so that the cabbage is submerged and leaving about an inch from the top of the container to allow for eventual expansion. It is important to keep the cabbage submerged; however as some of the small pieces tend to float, fold the larger outer leaves you had set aside and use it to push the cabbage beneath the liquid like a stopper (it’s ok if parts of the outer cabbage leave is above the liquid). If this doesn’t do the trick, you can supplement with a glass or ceramic weight or use a small sealable plastic bag filled with salted water (water is salted in case it leaks into the sauerkraut).

  • Place the lid on loosely (i.e. unscrewed) to allow pressure to release as the cabbage ferments. Note that the fermentation process may also cause some of the juices to bubble up and sometimes out of the jar, which could also attract unwanted flies. To protect against this, we place the jar atop a rimmed plate or inside another container to catch any escaping juices, and loosely drape a dishtowel over it to keep out flies.

  • How long you let the fermentation take place is up to your preference on texture and taste - whether you like the cabbage lightly fermented and more crunchy (several days to a couple weeks), or more acidic and softer (several weeks or months). The best way to tell is to taste it regularly. Once it is at your preferred texture and taste, store it in the refrigerator in a resealable container (we just use the same jar and screw on the lid). This will slow or stop the fermentation process and keep for several months.

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CANNING

Canning is a relatively more modern way of preserving food invented and further developed during the 1800s. It is a great way to preserve produce from a bountiful harvest, such as tomatoes ripening at the same time, which also reduces the need to buy canned tomatoes when making tomato soup, pasta sauce, chili, or other dishes requiring canned tomatoes. There are different types of canning methods suggested for different types of food (largely based on level of acidify contained in the food). As we primarily can tomatoes, cucumbers and applesauce, we use the boiling water bath method due to its relative simplicity.

The basic tools needed for boiling water bath canning are glass mason jars with canning lids, a large pot that the jars can fit into and be submerged under at least 2 inches of water, and a tool to remove the hot jars from the pot. There are also other tools used to facilitate the canning process, although many of these may be improvised. There are numerous canning recipes online, but the possibilities are endless with the types of food that can be preserved and the various spices that you can incorporate (for example we’ve canned cucumbers with garlic clove, cumin, or ancho peppers. The following are some basic recipes that we’ve tried, as well as more detailed references

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FREEZING

Freezing is an easy way of preserving food and leftovers, although it does require the ongoing use of electricity (which may be less popular if one’s objective is to consume less energy). However, there are ways to minimize the use of energy, such as investing in a small deep freezer which requires less energy to keep food cold, and also make it possible to be powered by solar panels (this is often an option for those who life off-grid).

Another requirement of freezing food is to wrap the food securely to keep it air-tight so that it does not get freezer burn. We do this by using a double layer of disposable plastic bags, but although we reused the outer bag, we often had to dispose of the inner bag especially if it held meat or greasy foods as those were harder to clean. However today there is a proliferation of reusable plastic bags and containers that are freezer and dishwasher safe, making it easy to clean and generating less waste.

To date, we have primarily used the freezer to stock up on wild or pasture raised meats purchased from local farms or farmers markets, as well as to store extra food or condiments that we prepared to save time preparing meals (e.g. pesto, smoked pork shoulder, stew, homemade bread, salsa and hot sauces). The following references provide tips for how to best freeze various foods.

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