Preserving your Food
Preserving your food does much more than just extend the shelf life of your fresh garden produce. While that is probably the main reason you would want to preserve your harvest, there are other benefits as well.
Since you’ll be making fewer trips to the grocery store, you’ll reduce your carbon footprint. Not only will you be saving gas and emissions, but also the packaging your food comes in. Almost everything we buy at the store is packaged somehow and all that ends up in the landfill. Home preserving eliminates all that.
Not only will you save money by not going to the grocery store, but you’ll also have better tasting canned food with much more nutrition. Preserving your food at home is worth the effort in so many ways, it almost seems silly NOT to preserve your food at home!
1. Dehydrating
According to Britannica, among other sources, dehydrating food is one of the oldest known food preservation methods. The modern method of dehydrating food wasn’t developed until the late 1700’s, but it’s still the method used today…hot-air dehydration.
Simply put, all you need is some hot air to dehydrate the food you are trying to preserve. The best thing about this method is that you don’t need any special equipment that any kitchen doesn’t already have. While a dehydrator is nice, all you really need is an oven.
Dehydrators can often be found at thrift stores or yard sales for next to nothing. I absolutely love the dehydrator I use, but it is a bit on the pricey side, especially if you’re just starting out in your food preservation journey. I recommend using and oven or finding an inexpensive dehydrator to begin with.
Dehydration will preserve your food for a very, very long time. Once it’s dehydrated, the food does not require electricity to stay fresh (like a freezer).
Some foods that dehydrate especially well are beef, apples, pears, nectarines, squash and potatoes.
2. Freezing
Freezing your produce might be the easiest way for most people to preserve their harvest since everyone has a freezer. You are, however, limited to how much freezer space you may have. With freezing, you are also limited by the need for electricity. If the electricity goes out for an extended period of time, your harvest will be lost.
However, you can freeze just about anything. I like to buy discounted meat at the grocery store (it’s almost 50% off when it’s expiring that day) and freeze it until I’m ready to use it. I’ll do this with chicken, beef and even lamb. When my freezer gets full, I know it’s time to do some canning.
Freezing requires no special skills and keeps the nutrients in your food. It can alter the texture of some vegetable, especially squash, but it’s a great way to store food long term. Some foods, like squash, will have an altered texture when you thaw them out, but if you’re just using them in other recipes, you probably won’t notice much of a difference.
Chicken should never be dehydrated because dehydrators don’t get hot enough to kill the harmful bacteria that tends to accumulate. Instead, use your freezer to preserve your store-bought or freshly processed chicken.
3. Canning
Canning is, by far, my favorite way of preserving my food. Once you know the basics and some safety information, it’s easy and fun. With a water bath canner, you can safely can things like fruit jam, applesauce, pickles and some fruit juices. The only equipment you need to water bath can is a large pot to boil some water in. Water bath canners are extremely handy and make the job much easier, but they aren’t essential.
For canning anything else, you’ll need a pressure canner. They sound intimidating and to be honest, they are. But I’ve been using one from Presto that’s all digital and it takes the guess-work out of it for me. It’s changed how I can things in my kitchen.
With a pressure canner, you can easily can chicken for ridiculously easy dinners! You can also preserve vegetables, homemade chicken broth, soups, tomatoes and almost anything else you can think of.
One thing to note is that you should never try to can dairy, pasta or oils. Always follow recipes from a trusted source, not just a random blog. I ONLY source my canning recipes from a university website, Ball (the canning company) or Melissa K. Norris. Anything else won’t even be considered in my kitchen. My family’s health is too important to risk on an unverified recipe.
Other Ways To Preserve Food
Fermentation is another preservation method that works well and is used to make thinks like Kimchi and coleslaw. I don’t particularly like fermented foods all that much, so this isn’t something I do in my kitchen.
Another method that I’m ridiculously excited to try is freeze drying. As of now, I don’t have a freeze dryer, but hopefully soon, I’ll be able to tell you all about my freeze-drying journey and how awesome it is. Freeze dried food retains all the nutrients and lasts almost indefinitely. The only thing to keep in mind with freeze dried food is that there is no moisture content, so you need to be sure to drink plenty of water when eating them.
From what I understand, freeze dried food rehydrates particularly well and using this preservation method is preferred by most who have access to it. I can hardly wait to try it someday!
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