Pickled Carrots. Photo by Leda Meredith.

Leda Meredith has kindly offered this excellent post for the readers of Israeli Kitchen. It’s about food preservation without fancy equipment – just in time for late summer’s abundance of fresh produce. For those who would love to keep those ripe, colorful seasonal treats for later in the year, this is a wonderful introduction and worth keeping.

Visit Leda’s Urban Homestead to find out much, much more on eating locally, sustainable living, gardening for food and foraging wild edibiles in city settings. And Leda’s charming, informative memoir with recipes is a treasure for any library.

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THE EMERGENCY PANTRY: LOW-TECH METHODS FOR PRESERVING FOOD

By Leda Meredith

When the power went out, I stepped into the hallway to discover if it was just my apartment or the whole building. It was my whole building. Then I wondered if maybe it was my whole street. It was still daylight, so hard to tell just by glancing out the window. I went outside and found a small crowd of people gathered around a man who had a battery-operated radio.

This was in 2003, and the power was out not only in my neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, but across the entire eastern seaboard of North America. The voice on the radio said it might be days in some areas before power was restored.

I went back into my apartment and assessed my pantry. The food in the refrigerator would clearly spoil if the power outage continued for long. The stuff in my freezer might last a bit longer because my freezer was packed full (food in a full freezer stays frozen longer than in a half-empty freezer). But before long the freezer food would spoil, too.

That was the first time I fully appreciated my food preservation “hobby.” My shelves were lined with homemade dried and canned food, as well as ingredients preserved in salt, oil, and vinegar—methods that have been used for millennia. A quick look at my shelves let me know that I would be eating well that night and the night after that, and many nights after that, with or without electricity.

Aside from emergency preparedness, I get a lot of pleasure from “putting up” food. The quality is good because I preserve each ingredient when it is in season and at its peak. I save money because peak season is when each ingredient is also at its cheapest. And there is something satisfying about looking at a shelf filled with colorful jars of food. When birthdays and holidays come around, my jars of preserves make much-loved gifts.

When I bring up the subject of food preservation the first thing many people think of is botulism; scary—and entirely unnecessary. There are a few rules you need to know and stick to in order to safely preserve foods. If you follow those rules, harmful bacteria will not be an issue.

It turns out that harmful bacteria are finicky. They need air, moisture, a very particular PH (not too acidic or alkaline), and a moderate temperature range in order to survive. That’s good news for us because it’s easy to create an environment that is too dry, too sour, too salty, too hot, or too cold for harmful bacteria to exist.

The scare stories about botulism come from mistakes that occurred when someone didn’t understand the difference between canning in a boiling water bath, which doesn’t require special equipment, and canning in a pressure canner, which does. Certain foods must be canned in a pressure canner in order to be safe. Canning (by either method) is a subject worth a whole post unto itself, and not what I want to write about today (maybe Miriam will invite me back for a guest post on that subject!). What I want to share with you today are methods of food preservation that require no special equipment or electricity. These are the methods that our ancestors used long before there were pressure canners or refrigerators.

I have to add that many preserved foods last longer if stored in a cool, dark place. If the only cool, dark place in your home is your refrigerator and it is working, by all means do store these products there. Exceptions are foods preserved by dehydration or in alcohol, both of which are fine even when stored at a very warm room temperature.

Drying

Dehydrating food is one of the oldest and trustiest of food preservation methods. Dried foods have the advantages of taking up very little space, weighing almost nothing, and having a shelf life of close to forever.

If you care about the appearance of your final product, there are a couple of extra steps you can take that will keep the colors of your food bright: Blanch vegetables in boiling water for 1-2 minutes before drying. Let sliced or chopped fruit sit in acidic water (water with a splash of vinegar or lemon juice added) for 20 minutes before drying. Neither of these steps is essential, but without them foods tend to lose color or darken to brown when dried.

All foods dry best when sliced or chopped no thicker than 1/2-inch. Always be sure to leave space between pieces of drying food so that air can circulate all around them.

A dehydrator is not necessary, but is a worthwhile investment if you plan to dry a lot of food. However, I promised no special equipment, so here are a couple of other methods:

Sun drying is only an option where the weather is dry as well as hot. Here in New York, our summers are hot enough, but far too humid to successfully dehydrate food before it molds. If you are lucky enough to have the right climate, lay a window screen flat in a sunny place. Arrange the food you are drying on it and place another screen on top (to keep out insects). Be sure to bring the food in if it looks like rain, and turn the pieces of food every so often so that they dry evenly. This method works especially well with tomatoes.

To dry foods in the oven, spread the prepared pieces of food on a rack on a baking sheet. Heat the oven to 150˚F. If your oven does not go that low, prop the door open with the handle of a wooden spoon.

My oven is an old one of the type that has the pilot light on all the time. Because of that, I do not even need to turn the oven on in order to dehydrate food. I just spread the food on a baking sheet and leave it in there for a few days.

Herbs can be dried simply by securing the stem ends of 10-12 sprigs and hanging them in a place away from direct light. Use rubber bands, not string: The stems shrink as they dry and tend to fall out of bundles secured with string.

Preserving in Alcohol

Any fruit can be preserved in alcohol. Usually brandy or rum are used, with or without added sugar or honey. Layer fruit in a glass jar, adding alcohol and optional sugar to cover as you add fruit over as many weeks as you like. Store covered, at room temperature, away from direct light. The longer you can bring yourself to wait, the better fruit preserved this way tastes (wait at least three months). Spoon the fruit onto desserts and serve the liquid as an aperitif or after dinner drink.

Preserving in Salt

Any vegetable can be preserved in salt, as can most meat and fish (although usually these are first smoked before salting). Layer vegetables in a glass container, making sure each layer is no more than 1/2-inch thick and completely covering each layer with kosher or other non-iodized salt (iodized salt will discolor the food). Tap or shake the container to settle the salt into all the spaces between the vegetables. Finish with a layer of salt. Cover and store in a cool, dark place. To use vegetables preserved this way, first soak them in water for an hour or two to remove some of the saltiness. Green beans are especially good preserved this way.

Verdurette

This is an excellent way of preserving herbs and odds and ends from the garden.

4 parts finely minced vegetables and fresh herbs

1 part kosher or other non-iodized salt

Combine, pack into clean glass jars, cover, and store in a cool, dark place. Use as a flavorful alternative to regular salt, or as a base for soup. Any fresh herb or vegetable can be preserved this way, so long as you stick to the 4:1 ratio.

Preserving by Lacto-fermentation

Lacto-fermenting begins as another form of using salt to preserve food. It is the method used to make traditional sauerkraut and dill cucumber pickles, but can be used for almost any vegetable. The way it works is that first the food is immersed in a brine that is too salty for harmful bacteria to survive in it. Fortunately, there are beneficial bacteria that can survive in this alkaline environment. They begin a fermentation process that ends up preserving the food in a lightly sour, tangy brine.

Place raw vegetables in a clean glass jar or ceramic crock. Cover with a brine made by dissolving 1-3 teaspoons of kosher or other non-iodized salt per cup of water. Use the lower amount of salt in cool weather, the higher amount in hot weather. The chlorine in most municipal tap water can interfere with fermentation, so if you are using tap water, filter it. Weight the vegetables so that they are completely submerged in the liquid (a plastic bag filled with liquid works—just be sure to fill it with more brine, not plain water, in case the bag leaks). Leave at room temperature for between three days and a week, daily skimming off any scum that forms on the surface.

You will see some bubbling occur as fermentation gets under way. When that subsides, your vegetables are ready to pack into clean jars. Use a slotted spoon to remove them from the brine, and leave an inch of headspace in the filled jars. Pour over enough of the brine they fermented in to completely cover the food. Secure lids and store in a cool, dark place.

Your lacto-fermented foods should have a clean, lightly sour smell. Discard any that are cloudy or slimy or smell “off.”

Lacto-fermented foods are higher in vitamin C than their unfermented counterparts and have many health benefits thanks to those beneficial bacteria.

Preserving in Vinegar

Recipes abound for vinegar pickles: some dilute the vinegar with water for a milder pickle, others add sugar or honey for a sweet-and-sour taste (think chutneys and relishes). If you want to play around with making up your own recipes, keep these two rules in mind for safety: 1. Only use vinegar that has an acetic acid strength of 4.5% or higher. Almost all commercial vinegars are in this range and list the acetic acid percentage on the label, 2. Never dilute the vinegar with more than 50% water or it will not be acidic enough to safely preserve the food.

Small, hot chili peppers are good left whole and preserved in undiluted vinegar. Prick them with the tip of a knife to allow the vinegar to penetrate. Loosely pack into a clean glass jar and cover with vinegar.

Preserving in Oil

Oil preservation works because the oil prevents air from reaching the food. Unfortunately, if the food was contaminated before being preserved in oil, the oil doesn’t correct that. The following method combines heat and the acidity of vinegar to destroy harmful bacteria with the airtight seal of the oil. The vinegar adds to the flavor of the finished product.

Chop vegetables no thicker than 1/2-inch. Put them in a non-aluminum pot with enough vinegar to cover. Bring to a boil and boil for 5 minutes. Drain. Loosely pack the food into clean glass jars, adding a few herbs if you like for extra flavor. Cover with olive oil, lightly pressing on the food to get rid of any air bubbles. Make sure the food is covered by at least a 1/4-inch of oil. Secure lids, and store in a cool, dark place. Mushrooms, summer squashes, and eggplant work especially well with this method.

Two books I love on the topic of low-tech food preservation are Wild Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz and Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning by the Gardeners and Farmers of Terre Vivant. I’ve also got some simple food preservation recipes in my book Botany, Ballet, & Dinner from Scratch: A Memoir with Recipes.