I went to a rummage sale a few weeks ago and got the best deal of my life--a working Food Saver vacuum machine, with four rolls of vacuum bags unopened, and all the parts for only $10. This thing is the best machine I've ever owned. We shop at a meat market and get a lot of bulk meat for the family, and using freezer bags causes our food to get freezer burned (ironic, right?), so I wanted a better way to do things. Enter Mr. Food Saver. We packaged all our meat and vacuum-sealed it flat, so it fits in the freezer really well, and it won't get freezer burn. You know what else I can do with my Food Saver? You guessed it. I can package my herbs for sale or later use. (You're really good at this game!)
Preserving food has always been a challenge for the human race. According to the National Center for Home Food Preservation, ancient people discovered food preservation mostly by accident. Early forms included curing, drying, fermenting, and freezing (for people living in cold climates). Anyone who has ever read the Laura Ingalls Wilder books knows that ice houses were common ways to store food. They would cut ice in blocks from the lakes and ponds, then pack sawdust around the blocks. They could keep food cold for a while using this method. Ancient societies would ferment food in beer or wine, dry it out in the sun, or cure it in salt.
Nowadays, we have technology to help us preserve our food in several different ways. Canning, freezing, pickling, and drying are the most popular forms to keep our food safe for later consumption. With all the things we can do to keep our food for later, it's a wonder how much food is wasted on a yearly basis. Here on the farm, we usually save our leftovers and either feed them to the chickens, or eat them ourselves. Of course, we rarely have more than a container or two that we save because of the number of people in and out of the house, but we try not to waste as much as we can.
Here are some ways to preserve your food, and some tips and tricks we have learned along the way.
Canning
By far, canning is the #1 thing we do around here to keep our food. Especially the tomatoes and peppers. We live off the canned tomatoes all winter, and with the purchase of a pasta roller last year, it costs us nearly nothing for a pasta dinner now.
Canning is NOT EASY when you first start. There are things you have to do to make sure your food is safe, and our methods may not be what is recommended by the NCHFP, so please do your research before starting. It works for us, but may not work for you. Trial and error is your friend. Here are some tips to get you started:
Start with clean and sanitized jars. This is especially important for canning tomatoes the way we do it, because we don't water-bath or pressure can our tomatoes (this is NOT the advised method; the NCHFP recommends you pressure-can tomatoes now, but we do it Grandma Smith's way.) Our dishwasher has a 'sanitize' setting that will do this for us, but if you don't have one, you can rinse the jars in a gallon of water with a teaspoon of bleach. Let the jars dry completely before use.
Keep the jars hot. We boil water in the teakettle (thank you Ma Smith) and pour it in the jars to keep them hot before adding the hot tomatoes. This is also important for jams and jellies, as the sweetened mixtures are super hot and will break a cold jar. I actually broke a jar just yesterday when I added the boiling water to warm it up. Apparently it was colder on the counter than I thought. I have also broken jars in the pressure canner because the food cooled the jar down too much before I plopped it in the canner. What a mess that was! Make sure everything is heated through!
Boil your lids and rings. We have an old 13x9 cake pan I use for this. I add the rings and lids to the pan, pour boiling water on it, and keep it on the stove at a low simmer while we are filling jars. It helps to soften the rubber a bit and makes for a better seal on the jars. It's rare that we lose a jar to a bad seal.
Tongs are your friend. We use them to pick the lids out of the hot water and put them on the jars. An old hand towel is also essential, because-again-the jars are super hot, and you need to tighten the ring at least enough to keep it on the jar while processing. This is very hard to do one-handed. Trust me.
When you take the jars out of the canner, an old towel on the counter is helpful. This is pretty important if you have any kind of stone counter, as stone and marble stay pretty cool, and we don't want your jars to break. I have Formica counters, but I still set the jars on a towel to cool.
Wait for the 'pop'. When you start hearing the popping of the jar seal, you know you've done a good job. If your jars don't seem to pop (there's always 1 or 2 a season), give it 24 hours. If the seal isn't there after that time, just refrigerate the jar after labeling. It happens, even to the best of us.
Freezing
Freezing food doesn't keep it as long as canning does, but for some people this is the only option. Before we got busy canning, we used to freeze everything. We bought a small chest freezer (that now is pretty much for ice), and it was filled to the brim. Some tips for freezing:
Before freezing your food, invest in good freezer paper and freezer bags (or get a good deal on a Food Saver :D), and freeze it as soon as you get it home.
Meat can be frozen in freezer paper and wrapped in plastic before putting it in a freezer bag, but make sure it's wrapped tightly or it will only last a month or so.
We freeze extra butter and cheese (not that we ever have extra cheese around here). Just wrap the cheese in freezer paper and plastic wrap before putting it in the freezer bag. When cheese thaws, it becomes a bit crumbly, so only freeze cheese you plan on using in a recipe, or shred the blocks to freeze them.
Herbs packed in freezer bags will last over a year if you get the air out of the bag (Food Saver!). Just make sure you wash the herbs and dry them completely before packaging. They do lose a little bit of flavor, so freeze more than you think you will need.
Drying
My amazing baby daughter got me a food dehydrator for Christmas last year, and let me tell you--what a gift! Before the dehydrator (BH), I had to use the oven to dry herbs, and we have one of those new-fangled ovens that doesn't go below 170 degrees. Drying temperature shouldn't go above 120, so I lost a lot of herbs to that oven. I used to dry them naturally as well, between paper towels or in paper bags, but it took a longer time to dry things, and covering my counters with paper towel-filled herbs drove me crazy. It can be done, however. You can dry almost any kind of food (except lettuce-don't ask me how I know). Meat, veggies, herbs-they all dry exceptionally well, and will store for more than a year if kept in a cool, dark place.
Tips for drying food:
If you are lucky enough to have a dehydrator, make sure there is only one layer of food per tray. If there is moisture on your food, it can cause bacteria to grow and will spoil the entire batch when stored. The same is true for drying in paper towels or in the oven (the paper towel drying method is not recommended for meat or most veggies. Those need to be done in an oven or dehydrator).
Store dried food in a cool, dry, dark place like a root cellar or pantry, either in zipper bags or jars. When we dry herbs for tea, we store them in jars with a paper towel lid, and we screw the ring directly on the towel. This helps keep moisture at bay.
Save your spice jars and re-label them with your own seasonings! Even the old dollar-store salt shakers can be re-used for shaking dried basil or oregano in your spaghetti sauce.
Pickling
Pickles. That's what everyone thinks about when we say pickling, but did you know that you can pickle almost anything? Before people canned their food to pickle it, it was done in stone crocks with heavy lids topped with heavy rocks (fermenting was also done this way, but since I have no experience doing this, I cannot offer advice on that part of food preservation). Nowadays, we pickle things in canning jars. Pickling is preserving food in vinegar or other acid. Vinegar will dissolve the metal from pots, so if you use the old-fashioned way of pickling, do it in stone or glass containers. According to the NCHFP, ketchup was an oriental fish brine (um, ew) that traveled the spice route to Europe and eventually to America where someone finally added sugar to it. So technically, ketchup was pickled tomato juice. So appetizing (NOT!). You can pickle more than just cucumbers. Any vegetable grown in the garden (again, except for lettuce) can be pickled and eaten later, but I really don't recommend trying to pickle kale. Or eating kale. Or even growing kale. I'm not a fan of kale, can you tell? Some things that are delicious pickled are: cucumbers, carrots, watermelon rind, eggs (but not for me), peppers (any kind), cauliflower, and asparagus. You can choose what to pickle and experiment with more.
Some tips on pickling:
Start with good vinegar. It is recommended that you use a vinegar with 5% acidity for pickling. This is important for the safety of the food!
Use only canning or pickling salt for making your pickled foods. Other salts can cloud the contents and make for an unappetizing jar.
Don't use corn syrup or honey for sweetening pickled foods. The taste will be 'off' and you will notice it!
When making pickles from cucumbers, it is very important to cut the blossom end of the cucumber off before adding it to the jar. The blossom end contains an enzyme that can cause excessive softening of the pickles, and no one likes a soggy pickle.
Pickle Crisp can be added to your jars before adding cucumbers or vegetables to keep them crisp, especially if you are not making refrigerator pickles.
You must measure or weigh your pickling veggies carefully. The measurements in pickling recipes are exact and must be followed to insure the food safety.
When pickling eggs (I will never do this), you can add beet juice to make them pink.
That's basically it for my repertoire on preserving food. I keep experimenting with things, and I just keep researching ways to make our food dollar stretch, so I'm sure I'll be sharing more with you in the future.
Happy Preserving!