A few benefits to preserving your own food

Preserving your own food through smoking, salting, pickling, or freezing has become a popular practice in many modern kitchens. Here's a simple guide to preserving your own food:

In the days before refrigeration, drying, ­salting and cold storage were the only ways known for preserving produce. In modern times there has been a strong revival of interest in home-preserving.

• The special appeal of preserving in the modern world of processed foods comes from the pleasure of taking freshly harvested foods at the peak of flavour and sun-warmed goodness and, in the home kitchen, preserving that perfection for the pantry.
• Using the traditional methods of preserving, such as drying, pickling and smoking, or a variety of convenient new processes, such as drying in a microwave oven and freezing, what was once a basic skill needed for survival through the lean winter months.
• Later, it was a way for the thrifty to make ends meet, and has become the culinary art of producing wholesome, homemade gourmet treats for the family.

Food spoils for two reasons:  the actions of external biological agents, such as disease-causing bacteria, molds and yeasts; and chemical reactions such as the actions of naturally occurring enzymes that trigger growth and ripening but also cause decay and consequent loss of texture, flavour and colouring.

• The art of preserving food involves slowing down or halting both types of spoilage, while at the same time maintaining the nutritive value and creating a food that tastes good.
• Heat processing can destroy both bacteria and enzymes (although bacteria are able to survive much higher temperatures than enzymes); cold storage slows down the actions of both; drying removes the moisture that both need; and pickling and salting prevents the development of molds and bacteria, for they cannot grow in acids.
• Whatever method is used, the preserved produce must be stored in properly sealed containers to guard against the entry of further harmful organisms.
• This safeguard is of vital importance in the case of heat-processed bottled fruit and pickled vegetables.
• While no method of preservation is perfect, each of the systems contributes something of its own: in taste, in food value, in convenience, in simplicity or in economy.
• Remember that scrupulous attention to cleanliness — of hands, surfaces, equipment and jars — is essential at all stages to minimize the risk of contamination by spoilage bacteria, molds and yeasts.
• The higher in quality and fresher your produce is, the better the preserved product will be.
• Exceptions are fruit for jams and jellies, which should be a little underripe and can be blemished, and fruit for fruit leather, which can be overripe and blemished, as it will be reduced to a pulp.

There are many benefits to preserving your own food, especially if you are conscious about the kind of food you feed your family and want to know where it comes from. Growing your own food and preserving it is a great way to do this. Time to get started!

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