Compare Food Preservation Methods

What methods of food preservation to you prefer to use and why?

These are some of the methods of food preservation I am aware of:



-Canning (water bath and pressure)
-Drying
-Sugaring
-Pickling (by vinegar or by lactic acid fermentation)
-Freezing
-Vacuum sealing
-Jugging
-Dry salting
-Smoking
-Root Cellaring

I’m putting my energy into cold frames. I have an experimental head of lettuce under a old plastic refrigerator drawer, that still tastes fine in March. It has survived single digit cold, snow, wind all winter. I wish I had a covered garden bed, full of lettuce, cabbage, kale, chard, beets, carrots, and celery. Maybe next winter. Keeping my vegetables in the ground has my vote.

My favorite for veg is usually fermentation (less work, more alive with healthy bacteria), although I do vinegar pickling and water bath canning as well. For fruit I usually make preserves and water bath can them. Meat is smoked—canned meat kind of puts me off. I freeze lots of stuff, too, particularly fish. I don’t pressure can because it just doesn’t seem worth it for the expense and trouble, but we’re subtropical and have a long growing season.

Let me explore how many methods I'm using. To tell you the truth, I never looked at this before.

... Drying. I dry quite a variety. Turmeric, macadamia nuts, tomatoes, peppers, squash, assorted greens, assorted herbs, pineapple, banana, beans, peas, corn, fish.
... Root cellaring (I don't have an actual root cellar. Instead, I store the veggies right in the ground because I don't have freezing to worry about.) Sweet potatoes, potatoes, onions, daikon, carrots, turmeric.
... Pickling. Pipinola, kohlrabi, turnip, radish, cabbage, beets, beans.
... Smoking. Some meats, mainly pork.
... Canning. Fruits in the form of preserves and syrups. Honey.
... Freezing. Just about everything.

I don't actually need to store much excess. Just some abundance here and there, and mostly seasonal crops.

I often end up preserving stuff that people give me or that I didn’t know what to do with in the first place, like the gallons of frozen and pickled habaneros my godfather grew this year...of which I have used three. Or approximately 4,000 radishes every year because my dad plants an entire row of the foolproof little suckers, and we use maybe a dozen.

Austin Durant was a instructor at the Permaculture Technology Jamboree at Wheaton Labs and he taught the participants many ways of preserving produce! Here's a quick summary of all the different methods he used:

I have no refrigeration at all. I use a dugout "fridge" (a cooler in a metal lined hole, 18 inches down in the earth, covered with a bag of straw and topped with an insulated lid with a latch). It keeps things about 10 degrees cooler than ambient temperature in warm weather, and about 10 degrees warmer in cold weather.

I also use vinegar to keep meats and fish from spoiling, by putting them in jars and covering with vinegar, or for the fish, a brine plus some vinegar. That has worked for a week, the longest I have ever needed, but I imagine it could work longer.

I tried using lactic acid fermentation but things over-fermented in warm weather.

I tried dehydrating things but I couldn't get them dry enough with my woodstove and they grew mold.

Refrigeration keeps things fresh but needs electricity and space. Freezing extends shelf life but takes up freezer space and can lead to freezer burn. Canning preserves flavor well but requires special equipment and time. Drying is lightweight and space-efficient but may alter texture. Pickling adds flavor but takes time and can affect texture. Smoking brings unique flavors but needs special gear and takes longer to prepare. It's all about finding what works best for your needs

There is a great book, "Preserving Food without Canning or Freezing", written by a French non-profit. They had put out a call for traditional methods for preservation of food without canning or freezing, which require a lot of fuel/energy. They outline some basic methods:
-oil/fat
-salt
-vinegar
-alcohol (such as cognac)
-root cellar/burying techniques
-sugar/sweet syrup
-fermentation
-dehydration

I have tried most of these techniques. Oil works great (but made my meat oily), vinegar is cheap and works excellently and imparts a wonderful flavor to meat and fish. So that is my main technique. I haven't tried cognac but I bet it tastes great! I daily utilize burying, with my dugout "fridge". I have not tried syrups as I don't eat sweets. I utilize fermentation but only on a quick turnaround basis for digestion, otherwise it overferments in my experience in hot weather. As for drying, I wasn't able to get things dry enough for proper dehydration in my climate.

I recommend the book highly, it is a fascinating read and part of my essential library here on my homestead!