There is nothing new in preserving food!

Since time immemorial mankind has been actively preserving the food harvested to survive through the times when it wasn’t freely available.

Preserving food is not a matter of survival nowadays. Fortunately times have changed! The seasons aren’t the restriction they once were. We can buy just about any type of food we want in supermarkets whether it’s in season or not. So why bother preserving food?

Why you should think about preserving food

Supermarkets have offered chutneys, pickles of all types relish and sauces. They are mass produced and although we all have our favourites, they are much of a muchness.

In the last couple of years, some supermarkets have started to offering premium ranges of preserves with distinct branding which usually cost more. Nonetheless, they are still mass produced.

Preserving food to produce your own pickles, relish and chutneys means that you will have a unique taste to your produce.

At first follow several recipes to get the hang of preserving and then experiment with different herbs and spices, combinations of fruit and vegetable. You will be surprised at how good the results can be.

Remember to write down any changes you make to a recipe so you can make it again. I have fallen foul of this many a time when preserving because I couldn’t replicate the exact ingredients!

Offer the results with well cooked plain food. Complimentary preserves of any kind will make a meal memorable particularly if you did the preserving yourself!

Places to get fruit and vegetables for preserving.

Farmers markets are a good source of locally grown fresh fruit and vegetables when they are in season.

If you grow fruit and vegetables in your garden, consider preserving any of the food crop you can’t use.

Fruit and vegetable stores at everyday local markets are another good source.

When selecting food produce for preserving, use the freshest you can find.

Preserving any food? Some basics you need to know!

Food stuff generally starts to decay quite quickly and it start even before the it has been harvested.

It’s the start of natural process that’s there for the tree or vine’s reproduction cycle’s benefit, not ours! And this can render food stuff unfit for human consumption.

Always use the freshest fruit or vegetables you can find and discard anything that’s spoiled or blemished.

So what have we got to look out for when preserving fruit and vegetables?

This may sound scary but don’t let it put you off preserving!

Once you know, you know and a lot of it is just plain common sense. This is not a safety course but we all need little refreshers once in a while. I have to go through an assessment every two years to renew my ‘Food Safety in Catering Award’.

There are three risks that can and do present real hazards to the well being of food. Physical, chemical and biological.

General food safety

Physical and Chemical hazards are about common sense in your kitchen.

Cleanliness is next to Godliness as the old saying goes and it certainly applies when preserving as it does when cooking hot meals..

Any possible source of contamination should be eliminated. Objects in chutneys for instance, that shouldn’t be there, may put people’s health at risk.

By the same token, the risk of contamination from the chemicals in the numerous cleaning products we use nowadays must also be removed. Put cleaners etc. in a storage cupboard.

Most people have good food safety practices otherwise there would be a lot more reported cases of domestic food poisoning.

So I’m not going to go through them here but when preserving, good food hygiene is paramount to prevent contamination of any kind.

Biological hazards to preserving food

If you are going to preserve food, you need to be aware the biological hazards that present themselves and how during the preserving process we can minimalise or eliminate them.

Most preserving recipes for chutneys, relish and sauces involve boiling and simmering. The reason is reducing the amount of fluid and thickening the chutney or whatever it might be.

However there is another reason that’s equally if not more important and it’s to do with what the IEH (Chartered Institute of Environmental Health) call the ‘Danger Zone’ which is the temperature range between 5 to 63 degrees C. Pathogenic bacteria multiply in high risk foods in this temperature range as do other spoiling agents.

So what does that really mean to us?

When preserving, we boil at 100 degrees C and we simmer between 85-95 degrees C.

Preserving food and the four spoiling agents

The four spoiling agents are bacteria, fungi and moulds, enzymes and yeasts.

Preserving food is a process that halts or significantly slows down food spoilage. High salt, acid, alcohol and sugar content create environments where the activity of the spoiling agents is significantly slowed down or kills them off.

Simmering and boiling are however highly significant in the process of preserving food because the vast majority of the spoiling agents cannot survive heat.

Bacteria are largely killed off between 90 and 100 degrees C. They are at their most active between 20 and 40 degrees C (i.e. in the Danger Zone).

The activity of Fungi and Moulds decrease beyond 60 degrees C and more so as the temperature rises. Maximum activity range is between 10 and 39 degrees C.

Enzymes which are naturally occurring proteins in food stuffs start to be killed off at 60 degrees C and beyond. They are most active between 28 and 50 degrees C.

The majority of yeasts are destroyed at 60 degrees and again more so as the temperature rises.

So you can see that boiling and simmering are significant apart from fluid reduction in the preserving process.

Using sterile and airtight containers in the preserving process

This probably sounds obvious but using sterile and and airtight containers to keep our preserved food in, is key.

After taking the trouble during the preserving process to at best eliminate the spoiling agents, using unsterilised containers is a crime and worst still, could affect somebodies health by re-introducing a spoiling agent.

More detailed articles exploring preserving food to follow including tips and recipes from the folks at the Old Hatfield Pickle Co.

Links to other preserving related articles and recipes on the Limepickle.com website.

Lemon Pickle recipe
Lime pickle recipe

Have a go at preserving your own food.