Radio Show ~ June 2

This week we talked about drying, fermenting and salting foods as methods of preservation. Here are some notes and resources;

You can download the program here and listen any time: The 21st Century Homekeeper Radio Program, June 2, 2011.

People have been preserving foods for a very long time. And these three methods for preserving foods are the very oldest methods of preservation. I can imagine that the first time someone harvested some fruit and left the fruit a while, it dried and the sugars were concentrated, and it tasted pretty good, so eventually folks were drying out fruit on purpose. Then they could have experimented on other foods including meat. A happy accident, perhaps.

Fermenting and salting foods may have been two more happy accidents. At any rate, we know that many civilizations have been preserving food in these ways for a long time. Today we tend to store food by freezing, refrigerating or canning. All good ways to preserve food, but I want to focus on how to preserve food without electricity or any other energy source …. besides elbow grease.

Many years ago, it was important to preserve food by drying, salting and fermenting so that the food itself wouldn’t be lost. Food had to be preserved too, to transport it from one place to another. If you have no refrigerator to store milk products, the milk has to be made into cheese or yogurt to be able to keep from wasting it or losing it.

Meat had to be preserved by curing. Vegetables were preserved by fermenting or drying. These are basic skills that can keep you alive and healthy. The preserving powers of heat, smoke, salt, vinegar, spices and alcohols are amazing.

Think about what is in your personal food storage. What kinds of things are in your pantry? You’ve probably stocked up on things like raisins, dried soup mix, pasta, rice, nuts, dried fruit, dry milk, gravy mix, jam, jelly, mayonnaise, pickles, tuna, meat ….. I could go on….. Each of those foods started out as a plant or animal product and it was fresh. It had to be preserved in some way in order to keep it edible for you to buy it in the store and take it home to store it and then eat it.

What about specialty foods like Italian sausage, kippers, olives from Spain, prosciutto? Its all preserved in some way, by salting, drying, smoking or fermenting.

Modern foods are often short of real preservation methods and long on chemicals like nitrates and nitrites. Authentic preservation methods are healthier and less expensive.

Drying is an easy way to preserve food. It was an important skill even when I was a child. You can dry herbs, vegetables and fruits out in the sun, in a pillowcase in the attic or in an electric dryer of course. My Mother dried apple slices in a clean pillowcase in the attic and also in the rear window of her car on sunny days. ………You can string foods on cotton string and dry it inside or out. I have lots of red peppers, green beans, herbs and flowers hanging in my kitchen right now.

You can dry foods outdoors on hot sunny days. The downside is that you have to watch for rain and critters. I remember stories from older relatives about taking turns fanning the drying fruit and vegetables while it was outside in the sun.

Drying racks are probably the easiest and best known way of drying food outdoors. They can be constructed out of stainless steel screens and pine frames.

Or from any materials you have lying around. The important thing to remember about drying is AIR FLOW. Air must be able to flow all around the food while it is drying. Heated air dries the food faster. Cool air dries it more slowly but you have to have air flow.

It’s not necessary to treat fruits and vegetables with anything before drying them. You can dry fruit and veggies by just slicing them and laying them out in single layers to dry.Blanching is usually recommended for vegetables to stop the enzymes that cause further ripening and to retain color.

There are a few things you can do to help the fruit dry better, look better, taste better and last longer.

1. Salt or lemon juice will keep light colored fruit like apples from turning dark. Not everyone finds dark dried apples unacceptable though.
2. Sugar can help somewhat tart fruit to taste sweeter. Sugar is a preservative too.
3. Sulphur treatments keep insects off the dried fruit. Dried fruit in a muslin bag, hang from a rafter, build fire put powdered sulphur on the fire, the smoke drifts up into the fruit.

I’ve dried food outdoors on a framed screen and put boric acid all around the edge of the frame to keep ants off. That doesn’t keep flies off though and you should still cover the food with a light cloth…. or get one of your children to fan it!

You don’t HAVE to dry foods outdoors. In fact, direct sunlight destroys a lot of vitamins. You can cover your food that is drying outdoors with clean sheets or other fabric. You can also dry food indoors in a very airy room.

I don’t know anything about this company, but here is an address where you can buy plans for a solar dryer for about $4 I will add the url to my site at www.christianhomekeeper.org after the show. The frame is basically a square with a diagonal piece of wood running from corner to opposite corner on the back of the frame for stability.

Here is a place you can go to buy drying frame plans for about $4: http://solarcooking.org/bkerr/publications.htm.

FERMENTING

Fermenting is another old preservation method. Cultures all over the world have ancient recipes for fermenting foods. People all over the world in antiquity knew how to preserve foods without electricity. Fermenting is an important method of preservation. Its done through the process of Lacto-fermentation. Lactic acid is a natural preservative that inhibits putrifying bacteria. Starches and sugars in fruits and vegetables are converted into lactic acid by one of several species of Lactobacilli. These lactobacilli are ubiquitous, they are everywhere on the surface of all living things.

The basic idea is to promote the growth of the lactobacilli which in turn produce a useful by-product; carbon dioxide, alcohol or lactic acid. Many of these by-products inhibit the growth of harmful bacteria, allow the good bacteria, lactobacillus, to thrive, and lend the delicious flavor.
The main thing I remember my Mother and grandmother fermenting is sauerkraut and cucumbers.

If you use whey in your fermenting you can reduce the amount of salt but don’t use commercial or dried whey. You want to use whey from where you’ve made cheese or yogurt or kefir. In all fermenting recipes it’s important to use organic vegetables, sea salt that contains no iodine, pure filtered water that contains to flouride or chlorine. All of those added chemicals can cause the food to become soft and spoil.

Fermented foods became modernized through the years and food manufacturers began to use vinegar to pickle and preserve food. Lacto fermented foods don’t lend themselves to making big batches. Vinegar is not bad in small amounts but large quantities are not necessarily good for us. And, vinegar kills all the bacteria, even the good lactobacilli that we want in our preserved food. So with vinegar preserved foods you don’t get the benefit of the lacto-bacteria.

Three principles of fermenting:

1. Cleanliness. Scald, boil and sterilize all utensils, crocks and jars, lids.. Then rinse with cider vinegar..
2. Give the good organisms something to eat like sugar. Its present naturally in most foods as glucose, fructose, lactose.
3. Store the fermented foods correctly. Not too hot nor too cold. Salt or vinegar is sometimes added to help it last longer.

Signs of harmful bacteria: discoloration, abundant mold growth, and repugnant aromas. though sauerkraut and kimchee have been know n to smell pretty atrocious when they are perfectly fine.

For most fermenting a temperature between 59*F and 68*F is best.

I’ll be giving you recipes on my site for sauerkraut, fermented radishes and beets and kefir. Kefir is a yeast/mold that you add to raw milk to form a yogurt-like drinkable fermented milk. You can also purchase water kefir grains to make water kefir that can be flavored with fruit or other flavors. Its a natural carbonated soda.

Here is one of the premiere sites for learning how to ferment foods: www.gnowfglins.com

SALTING

Salt is a natural dehydrator. It pulls moisture out of food thus inhibiting the growth of bacteria. Food is covered with salt and allowed to dry out. Later it can be revived in water or sometimes milk. Its important to use salt for drying that has no iodine in it. Iodine can interfere with food preservation.

One of the most common foods to cure or preserve in salt in this country is pork. If the meat is smoked as well, you have ham. If its dried in salt you have salt pork. Beef is often salted or “corned”. Corn has nothing to do with the vegetable corn, but the size of the salt pieces that were called corn many years ago. I will have a recipe for corned beef, salted fish, salt pork and salted herbs on my website later this week.

Recipes and Methods:

Dehydrating Potatoes
1. Scrub, peel and rinse potatoes. (You can leave them unpeeled if you like)
2. Dice, grate or cut into ¼” slices.
3. Soak potatoes in lemon juice and water, or salt and water for 5 minutes and drain. Use 1 tablespoon salt per 2 quarts of water, use 2 tablespoons lemon juice per 1 quart of water.
4. Dehydrate potatoes at 100 degrees for 8 hours or until crisp. If you are dehydrating outdoors, leave the potatoes in the sun until they are crisp.
5. Store dried potatoes in a clean, dry, airtight container, in a cool dark location.
To rehydrate, soak in cold water for 30 minutes, drain and pat dry. Use like fresh potatoes.

Dehydrating Corn
1. Shuck ears and remove silk. Scrub ears til clean and free from silks.
2. Blanch ears for 4 minutes.
3. Cut kernels from ears.
4. Dry kernels at 100 degrees (F) for 18 hours or until crisp. Outdoor dehydrating: dry til crisp.
5. Store in a clean, dry container with a tight lid, in a cool place.
To rehydrate, soak in hot water for about 30 minutes and drain. Use in casseroles, creamed corn, chowders and soups. Grind the dry kernels to make corn meal.

Dehydrated Apples
Peel and slice apples into 1/4″ slices. Soak in a water/salt solution for 5 minutes, making sure aall apple slices are covered with water.
Dry in a dehydrator at 100*F until they are the level of dry you desire. Some like to dry apples to a leathery stage, some like the apples to be crisp. The dryer the apples, the longer they will store.
Store dried apples in air tight jars in a cool, dark place or in the freezer.

Monday I will post my recipes and methods of making corned beef, salted fish and pork and more….