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Preserving Food

Preserving Food

Other than figuring out how I am going to harvest grain, preserving food is probably the thing that intimidates me most next.  In order to be as self-sufficient as possible in a northern environment I need to be able to preserve food for year round usage.  When you talk about butchering a whole pig or cow, let’s face it, that is a lot of meat.  Freezing it all is just not an option when you also want to put some veggies (like corn on the cob) in there as well as some poultry and a rabbit or two!  Not to mention you need to have a backup plan if electricity is lost for an extended amount of time.  This week I am signed up for a web seminar called “Beyond Off Grid Summit” that will have many classes including one on canning and one on traditional food preservation.  For those interested the web site is http://beyondoffgrid.com/summit (and it is free)There are three types of food preservation/storage I plan to practice (other than standard freezing). 

Canning

The first is canning, it is also the one that I am most apprehensive about as I have never done anything like this before and I have never really consumed anything not commercially canned or preserved before so I am not sure I will even like the taste of the results!!   I am not sure how much work and time it will take to can, and it will take a lot of research on my part to see what requires a pressure cooker and what you can do in boiling water!  I have seen a few posts lately about canning meat, and that I am not quite sure about yet, in theory I can understand it having seen cans of chicken but in practice, I will have to see!  This is one I will be able to practice a little here before having to do it for real when I retire. 

That being said I just ordered 36 jars with lids, some pectin and a jarring kit.  So I will start my canning adventure sometime next month, will start with just some simple fruit preserves that does not require a pressure cooker   and will go from there, I will be sure to post how it turns out!  We all have to start somewhere!!!

Smoking

There are two kinds of smoking, hot and cold.  Hot smoking is used for cooking where cold is used more for preserving.  Cold smoking is almost like dehydration with smoke.  The process is a two-step process.   The first step is curing the meat, either with a dry cure primarily salt and sugar/maple syrup/Molasses mix or with a wet cure in a brine mix for about a week in order to start to pull the moisture out of the meat and open the meat to better accept the smoke.  The meat is then hung up in a smoke house or in a smoker where it is exposed to typically a hard wood smoke or apple or cherry tree wood smoke.  The temperature for a cold smoke seems to vary but none I have seen exceeds 120 degrees with most being between 90-100 degrees and for an extended period of time, typically 12-24 hours.  In European cold smoking the temperatures often do not exceed 80 degrees and the smoking time is between 1-10 DAYS with the fire going out and being re-lit each day!

To accomplish this, we are going to build a 4X4 foot smoke house.  The smoke house will have two smoke entrances into the smoke house, one for a hot smoke system and one for cold.  I want something that will be large enough to be able to smoke many cuts and many different sausages at the same time.  The smoke house will also be used to hot roast large batches of nuts as well as roast chick peas so that they can be used to as chicken feed (Some peas and grains have protein inhibitors for certain animals and the heat treatment de-activates them). 

This is something I am very much looking forward to trying, I mean, who does not like bacon and a smoked ham!

Root Cellar

Not all fruits and vegetables need to be canned or smoked to be preserved, many of them will store fine for long periods of time in cool temperatures.  A root cellar uses natural cooling, insulating, and humidifying properties of the earth in order to maintain temperatures of 32-40 degrees with a humidity of about 85-90%.  Root cellars are great for storage of cabbages potatoes, carrots and other root vegetable as well as fruit like Apples and pears.  Unfortunately, the house we are looking at does not have a basement meaning that we will have to build our own root cellar, this however will not be on the top of the “to do” list so will probably have to wait a couple of years before we can make this happen.
All in all, I am looking forward to the challenges involved in growing, harvesting, butchering and storing the food we will need for the winter.


That being said what is your favorite thing to can or smoke?

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