Different Ways to Preserve Food
There are many different ways to preserve food and there are some methods that are better for certain foods and some methods that just don't work for some types of food.
So, the best ways to preserve food depends on your individual circumstances.
What you have available, how much effort you want to put into it and what types of foods do you want to preserve. It also depends on your taste buds.
Foods preserved by salting, pickling and fermentation changes the taste a lot and you may not care for the taste of some foods preserved this way.
Pickling is a tasty way for a lot of vegetables but not all vegetables.
Salting was common years ago because it was simple and the only method available to many people. However, you may not care for the taste and it adds a lot of salt to your diet, which isn't the best idea.
The Canning Method
Canned foods can last for many, many years. When I was a kid, I can remember finding some dill pickles that got misplaced and when found, they were a few years old.
They still tasted great!
DIY food preservation is the cheapest & healthiest way to prepare for food emergencies.
When I was young, I remember my mother using one main method of preserving foods. The canning method - using mason jars and a hot water bath to kill any pathogens, then sealing the jars and storing for the winter.
Food tastes great with this method and also, there is no added taste with this method like there is with pickling or salting.
But you have to stock up on enough jars to use for the amount you want to preserve and you also need some equipment, such as a container large enough to hold a few mason jars at a time, so you can put the jars in the larger container and then fill with enough water to almost reach the top of the mason jars.
Others combine this canning method with a pressure cooker, but my mother never used one of those. When she was young, they never had such things.
This is also the best way to preserve meat as far as preserving taste and texture. Meat preserved this way is so tender, it almost falls off the bones and it tastes delicious.
Click here to read more details about all the different ways to preserve food.
Freezing Food
Out of the different ways to preserve food, freezing is the most popular and a lot of us use this method every day.
But this isn't a good option if you are looking for a simpler lifestyle or you want to be prepared in case things go to hell. If things go crazy, you can't count on electrical services or maybe you're just getting tired of the way the price on goods and services is going.
Since Covid, the cost of a lot of things has been going crazy while wages are standing still.
But if you want to experiment, a lot of foods freeze well but there are some foods that don't taste the same after freezing.
One example is corn on the cob. Corn is a food that should be stripped from the cobs and blanched (immersed for a couple minutes in boiling water) before freezing. It tastes strange if you freeze it on the cob, then thaw it and cook it.
Another example that is the opposite is grapes. You can freeze and thaw most types of grapes and they still taste the way they came off the tree.
Just try freezing a small amount of foods you don't normally freeze and see what happens!
The most common food kept frozen is meat, but there are other ways of preserving meat that are good too. Also, meat lasts a long time frozen but many people think it can last forever this way. Not true. Food still deteriorates but it's just a lot slower.
I had some meat once that got forgotten at the bottom of a freezer for 2 years and it was almost tasteless. That tells me that frozen food should be eaten within a few months if you want good taste.
Preserving Foods by Drying
Out of all the different ways to preserve food, this method is my favorite for fruits and vegetables and it's also the simplest method, but there is still some work involved at the beginning of your first food drying adventure.
You have to build some sort of drying racks, which is cheap and easy and can be done in an afternoon, but you just need to build the racks once and you'll have them for the following years. They are fairly flat and easy to store.
Or you can buy an electric food dehydrator and do it that way. Dehydrators aren't very expensive and you can do the food drying inside your home.
Drying with the sun is just as fast as using an electric food dehydrator for most foods, but you have to set up outside and have some nice, sunny weather.
Mother Nature is the best food dryer of all!
Also, may dried foods are almost like original again if you soak them in water for a while before cooking.
Some Foods Require More Caution
Some foods require more caution and eggs are one of these foods. They must not be going bad before you cook them but also, after cooking they should be preserved right away.
If they sit for a couple weeks after cooking, but before preserving, you are asking for digestive trouble.
You can pickle or dehydrate eggs effectively and there are two methods that can be used to dehydrate the eggs. Eggs also require a higher temperature than most produce to dehydrate them into a powder and make them safe to eat.
Eggs are exceptionally high in nutrition and a food any prepper should keep on hand.
Eggs will also easily keep for a couple months in a refrigerator, but after cooking, should be eaten in a few days if you aren't preserving them. They start to go bad after a few days if they are cooked, even in the refrigerator.
More info on how to store fresh eggs for longer shelf life and drying eggs in our food prep guide.
Pickling Foods
Pickled foods can last for a very long time and are a great emergency food.
How to pickle foods is also in the food prep guide!
DIY canning techniques included in the food preservation guide.
There are two basic types of pickling solutions: salt-based (dry salt or brine) and vinegar-based. Both methods work well, but they’ll either make your food taste saltier or more sour. So, your own personal taste will dictate which method you end up using.
Just spreading a lot of salt on a piece of meat, for example, will make it last a long time, but this is more of a last resort method.
A better way is to add salt to pure water and make a brine to soak your food in. This begins a fermentation process that gives the food a unique taste and helps to preserve it for a long time.
Another way is to add vinegar to the process, giving another type of unique taste and a familiar example of this is dill pickles. Some dill weed added to the process gives dill pickles their unique taste.
You can also add your choice of other spices to enhance pickled foods.
Recipes for these processes are also included in the guide that shows you many different ways to preserve food. You'll also find suggestions on spices you can add to these pickled foods to enhance their taste.
Root Vegetables Store the Best
Root vegetables store better than most other produce and different types of foods last longer in storage at certain temperature and humidity levels.
Most root vegetables store well all winter season if you keep them a few degrees above freezing and in lower humidity.
Some produce, like tomatoes, only keep for a few weeks in fresh harvested form, no matter what you do. So you have to preserve them some other way.
This guide shows many different ways to preserve food and includes meats, vegetables, fruits and eggs. It shows you the best methods to preserve different types of food too. Some methods, you have probably never even heard of because they are so little known.
The food prep guide tells you all you need to know about preparing and preserving food for an emergency situation.
There is also plans for a simple homemade cooler device to make foods last longer. It requires no technology to make it work!
Homemade Wine & Alcohol
It's fairly easy to make simple wine and alcohol.
Info on this is also included in the food preparation and storage guide.
You can also make alcohol and wine out of virtually any type of fruit or vegetable although, because they work better, fruits are more commonly used. Recipes for making apple cider, simple alcohol and wine are also in this food preserving guide.
There are so many techniques for preserving food in this guide that you will never use them all. Almost 400 pages of food preparation and storing advice.
More Different Ways to Preserve Foods
Using Root Cellars & Cold Rooms
Jars of preserves on a shelf in a cold room!
Foods prepared and stored this way will probably outlast you!
You can see that there are many different ways to preserve food and I have only touched on basic stuff.
You might even want to build yourself a simple root cellar. That just a fancy term to describe a shelter to store your produce. A fairly constant temperature and humidity are the important factors.
It can be a building, a dugout in the side of a hill, underground bunker - however you want to do it.
You can even create a cold room to accomplish food storage by isolating a part of your basement and not heating the space. This is called a cold room.
The heat from the surrounding space will keep the room from freezing but it will be a lot cooler than the rest of your basement.
There are also suggestions in the food preparation and storage guide on the subjects of root cellars and cold rooms.
Try this food prep guide. It comes with a money back satisfaction guarantee and can save your life in an emergency.
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