Food Preservation and Storage
Exploring the different methods to store and preserve foods for later consumption.
Choosing the Method for Food Preservation.
To chose how we are going to preserve foods we need to take several things into consideration such as:
- What are we going to preserve?
- How much we going to preserve?
- How much room we have for storage (freezer or pantry)?
- How much time do we have?
- Most importantly what would be the taseiest way to precerve it?
Methods of Storage
Drying/curing - Removing water from the food is one of the oldest practices of food preservation. By removing water it inhibits the growth of bacteria.
Canning - Saving foods by prepairing them and sealing it in a steral jar in such a way that referigeration is not needed.
Steeping - The use of fats such as olive oil to preserve herbs. Warning do not preserve garlic in this fashion as it can grow botchalism.
Smoking -
Hot Smoking
Cold Smoking
Making a smoker
Wood for smoking - Apple, Pear, mesquite, hickory
Pickling - There are two types of pickling, chemical pickling and fermentation.
Chemical pickling - Is using an edible liquid that kills or inhibits micro-organisms such as bacteria often this is vinegar.
Fermentation pickling - Fermented or lacto fermantation are foods like sauerkraut and kimchi.
Freezing - Freezing allows for long-term storage of foods in an unprepared state.
Downsides of freezing - Some foods do not freeze well. Requires a freezer and electricity. In a power down situation such as the ice storm of 2009 many residents were left without electricity, and allowed foods to thaw and go bad.
Good candidates for freezing - Tomatoes
For other methods of preservation checkout wikipedia.
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Resources
http://www.wikihow.com/Choose-a-Method-of-Food-Preservation