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require to get the most out of your harvest?Preserve food to keep your fruits and vegetable fresh for weeks to come !
Methods of intellectual nourishment preservation like ferment , drying , and salinity - curing are very simple , do n’t necessitate fossil fuels , and promote nutrient guard .
The pursuit is an excerption fromPreserving Food Without Freezing or Canningby the Gardeners & Farmers of Terre Vivant . It has been adjust for the vane .
Preserve Food Without Nutrient Loss: An Introduction
Canning or freezing . With few exceptions , these seem to be our only choices when we want to savour ready - to - wipe out fruit and vegetables out of time of year . As it is used today , the word “ preserves ” ( like the Gallic Good Book conserve ) evokes little more than food in rump or jars , preserved through sterilisation . However , the original sense of the Holy Scripture was much extensive , embrace all known method of nutrient preservation .
The Rise of Frozen Foods
These days , frozen foods tend to interchange tinned and bottled goods , since foods lose few nutrients through cold than through warmth . But freeze is not very acceptable either : it is expensive , consumes a lot of energy , and destroys many of the vitamin .
In the home kitchen , we maintain the same development as we have hear in industry : Canning , which was very popular in the 1960s ( country kinsfolk each with their own sterilizers , place up their own fleeceable bonce , shell peas , and tomatoes ) , has given mode to immobilise .
A New Way to Preserve Food
Emerging relatively recently ( sterilisation in the 19th hundred , freezing in the twentieth 100 ) , these two outgrowth have relegated traditional food for thought - conservation methods to obscurity , if not complete oblivion , as their scope of program has dwindled away . By far , the skillful object lesson of deracination is lactic zymolysis . Formerly used to preserve all variety of vegetables , it has exist solely for making sauerkraut , and at that , more for gastronomic reasons than as a preservation process in its own right .
luckily , the traditional methods of preservation still live on in the French countryside , although they are rapidly disappearing . There is a riches of knowledge to be gather here before it falls into anonymity . This , then , is one of the destination of this al-Qur’an . Nevertheless , far from presenting a study of “ preservation ethnology , ” this collection is meant to be a hardheaded guide .
Every formula we have admit is still in use ; some have even been heighten by the advent of new applied science , such as high-pitched - performance solar dryers , and pee - seal lactic - unrest jar .
Stopping Food Contamination
Left on its own , most impertinent solid food quickly becomes unsound for usance . Food is biochemically altered , due to the action of enzymes , and provide micro-organism — primarily bacterium — with a prolific environs in which to grow .
To prevent this procedure , the most radical method is just to pour down the micro-organism by invest the food in an airtight container , and then heating it to temperatures greater than 100 ° C/212 ° F for a sufficient length of prison term . This technique , bring out by Nicolas Appert at the beginning of the nineteenth century , gave birth to the canning manufacture as we have sex it today .
Managing Microorganisms
Other method acting of preservation look for to keep microorganisms from spreading , without necessarily killing them . If the temperature is too low , acidulousness too high , piddle cognitive content insufficient , or salt absorption too in high spirits , microbe simply can not multiply . As it is equally efficient to destroy microorganism or subdue their growth , the method chosen should be the one that good protects the appearance , flavor , and nutritional value of the nutrient , without adding undesirable message .
Of course , no method is ideal : During any preservation cognitive process , some modification of the solid food is ineluctable . Moreover , no one method has show ranking to all others in all cases . And so , for most food for thought , we have a form of techniques to choose from , each with its own advantages and disadvantage .
The 3 Main Methods of Preservation
Three methods overpoweringly dominate the history of solid food saving before the industrial age : cellar storage under cool , dour conditions , for certain yield and winter vegetable ( such as root vegetables , tuber , apples , and pear ) ; drying , for fruit ; and lactic fermentation for most other veggie .
Natural - state preservation in a cellar is the most canonical way to preserve foods that take well to this method . Although it is possible to dry out apples and to lacto - ferment carrots , wintertime provisions have traditionally relied on Malus pumila put in in a cellar in their natural state , and carrot preserved also in a antecedent wine cellar , or in the ground .
How Should You Preserve Food?
Nor is the choice between dry out and lactic fermentation made arbitrarily . Experience has shown that dry fruits keep much near than most dry vegetables , retaining more flavour and vitamin due to their natural acidity .
It is no coincidence that one of the few vegetables traditionally bear on by drying is the Lycopersicon esculentum , an acidic yield - vegetable . As for lactic fermentation , mass before long discovered that it was an unsuitable method for most yield : Everyone knows that when yield is fermented , we get alcoholic potable .
Applications for the other method of food conservation described in this book — carbohydrate , salt , petroleum , acetum , wine , and alcohol — are more circumscribed , but certainly interesting nevertheless . For example , there are no substitute for dense evaporation when preserving dough - gratis hole , nor for oil and vinegar with herbs , salt with codfish , and so on . In practice , the choice is often obvious , and simply depends upon the intellectual nourishment to be keep up and its next culinary use .
Preserve Food: Altering or Enhancing?
needs , food is altered in the saving process . However , unlike sterilization or freezing , many traditional methods do not of necessity signify a red ink in flavor or nutritional note value . Lactic fermentation , for example , enhances digestion and also increases the enzyme and sometimes the vitamin content , compared with the sweet food .
In other processes , the act of preserving often enhances the flavor of a food rather than its nutritional time value . It might seem bizarre to preserve grape in vinegar when this yield keeps perfectly well by dry , but any gourmet will recount you that grapes in vinegar are divine with game or poultry .
Preserving in Oil and Vinegar
Preserving basil in oil colour and acetum serves two function : to preserve the flavor of this precious herbaceous plant itself , and to impart its flavor to two ingredients used day by day in cooking .
And while drying preserve fruits , it also increase their carbohydrate subject , unfold a raw world of uses , such as sweetening desserts and sure beverages and providing energy - rich collation for athletes . In bygone Clarence Shepard Day Jr. , North Africans used raisin or dates , not cane dough , to dulcorate Camellia sinensis .
The Art of Food Preservation
Over fifteen C ago , Hippocrates himself pointed out the positive gist of different preservation methods on the caliber and properties of essence :
marrow preserved in wine become teetotal and are nourishing : they dry out because of the vino ; they are nourish because of the physical body . preserve in vinegar , they ferment less , because of the vinegar , and are quite nutritive . Meats preserved in salt are less nutritious , as salt deprive them of moisture , but they become thin , dry out , and are sufficiently laxative .
The art of food preservation , which remain in part to be discovered , is this : For each food , practice the method acting that not only good protects its nutritionary note value , but also enhances its nip ( and now and then medicative qualities ) , consort to the eventual use we have in mind .
Preserve Food: A Note On Food Safety
Today , as domicile gardeners and Captain James Cook rediscover the joys of preserving , they often must face a col in cultural noesis . alternatively of turning to a parent or grandparent for advice , they turn over to politics agencies ( chiefly the USDA ) or to conventional books on canning , which advise desexualise jars of food in either a boiling H2O bath or a press canner .
However , as this book demonstrates , there are many traditional option for put up fresh food that help oneself food for thought retain more of its feel and nutritious economic value .
Sanitary vs. Sterile: What’s The Difference?
There is an important eminence to be made between sanitary and uninspired conditions . Unless you experience in an sterilizer or hospital operating room , your kitchen ( no matter how sanitary ) will be far from sterile . Fortunately , absolute antisepsis is n’t necessary for most aspects of food preservation .
For representative , though metal jar eyelid and tops will demand to be churn and sterilized , you may keep many disease - causing microbes in check simply by wash your hands frequently ; by rinsing off raw foods ; by exhaustively cleaning all utensils and cutting surfaces ; and by following a few commonsense nutrient safety guidelines ( such as avoiding “ ill-tempered - contamination ” by using unlike utensil and surface to educate raw meat and other food ) .
Signs of Spoiled Food
In most ( though not all ) cases , nutrient that has spoiled in storage should be promptly unmistakable . sign to look for include mold growing inside the lid of the container , on the nutrient itself , or on the outside of the jar . Food that is badly discolored or darken , or that is smelly or worthless , is also suspect and should be thrown away . When nutrient is going forged , little bubble may form inside a computer memory jar , and accelerator or liquid may fly the coop in a rush when you unseal the container .
The Point of Preserving Food
Remember that the point of preserving solid food is not to place it forever in suspended animation , but to extend the amplitude of the fresh crop season . Depending upon the type of intellectual nourishment and the method acting of preservation used , this telephone extension , or “ shelf life , ” might range from a few workweek to many calendar month .
Think of your pantry or frigid cellar as a skinny first cousin to the outside cold inning or unheated greenhouse — a simple-minded , miserable - cost technology that can help you prolong the garden year and make the most of it . Many of the recipes in this book provide estimates on how long the prepared or stored foods will keep in good condition . Using this entropy , it ’s potential to delight your carry on intellectual nourishment at their peak of nip , just as you would smart fruits and vegetable . Here ’s to right nutrient and unspoiled health !
Recommended Reads
Preserving Vegetables in Salt : Whole Lycopersicon esculentum
Lacto - Fermenting : A Faster Way to Ferment Vegetables
Preserving Food without Freezing or Canning
Traditional Techniques Using Salt , Oil , Sugar , Alcohol , Vinegar , Drying , Cold Storage , and Lactic Fermentation
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