7 Ways to Preserve Food Naturally
Watching food go to waste for lack of proper preservation has to be one of the most painful experiences anyone could pass through.
Sadly, this happens a lot more than you can imagine. Interested in finding out how to preserve your food and food items? Stay with me!
Freezing
One of the simplest and most effective techniques of food preservation is freezing. Invest in a vacuum sealer for the greatest results because the key to good freezing is ensuring that as little air as possible enters your storage. This will keep your food from being freezer-burnt and losing its flavor.
If you’re tossing in freshly cooked meals, make sure they’re completely cold first. Heat will not only produce steam (which accelerates freezer burn), but it will also drop the temperature of frozen goods, causing them to thaw.
Dehydrate
This simply implies that the food gets dehydrated while the nutrients are kept. Slice the meat into thin strips to dehydrate it. To drain the extra water, place it on a tray in the oven on low heat.
When you’re ready to consume your dehydrated vegetables, make sure it’s fully hydrated first. You can also buy a dehydrator, which slowly heats food to eliminate the water, resulting in unique and delectable snacks and dinners.
Salting
Prior to the invention of refrigeration, the most common method of food preservation was salting. Salt, like sugar, pulls water from food and dehydrates it. Bacteria cannot thrive without water and will die as a result.
Salting, on the other hand, is not something we suggest you do at home regularly. This is because most bacteria cannot thrive in situations where the salt content is more than 10%. Molds can resist much greater salt concentrations. To achieve 10% salt, dissolve 180 g salt in 1800 g water, which is around 1 cup of salt dissolved in 7.5 cups of water.
Canning
In the early nineteenth century, a French confectioner created this process. Cooking food, putting it in sterilized cans or jars, and then boiling the containers to remove any leftover germs is the process of canning. Air is extracted from the container during the heating process, and when it cools, a vacuum seal is produced, preventing any air from re-entering the container.
Canning can be done in two ways: Bathing in boiling water and Pressure Canning. To bathe in boiling water, cooked food is placed in a container with boiling water and cooked for a period of time. Foods like jams, fruits, pickles, and tomatoes perform well with this strategy.
With pressure canning, food is placed in containers inside a pressure cooker filled with water. Meat, veggies, and seafood are the finest choices for this approach.
Smoking
Smoking has the extra benefit of adding a great taste to the dish. This is the most difficult of the strategies discussed in this article, and caution must be exercised to avoid contamination and food poisoning. It can be done either hot (in a kiln or smokehouse) or cold (on low heat for up to 24 hours).
Smoking may be used to preserve food in three ways. Microbes in the meal are killed by the heat. Preservatives are present in the compounds contained in smoke. Because the food dries up, germs have no area to thrive on.
Use Sugar
Sugar is a natural preservative that works by evaporating moisture from food. It starves bacteria by depriving them of water in this way (this process is called osmosis by our friends in the sciences). Bacteria can’t grow, divide, or replicate without water, which is practically a death sentence. Sugar is commonly used to preserve fruit because it inhibits the growth of bacteria, mold, and yeast.
Pickling
Pickling is a centuries-old universal ritual that is practiced in almost every culture. Pickled foods may be found practically anywhere. Pickling can be done using two different methods. The first involves soaking food in vinegar, as the acid in vinegar stops food from spoiling.
The second method is to immerse food in a salt solution to promote fermentation. Fermentation promotes the growth of “good” bacteria while obstructing the growth of “bad” bacteria that cause deterioration.