Domestic Civil Defence - No Food !

Annex J : Food Preservation

Food Preservation :

(a) : By Cooking :

For most people, the food that they may want to preserve is in their freezer. Here are some simple tips :-

• Cook meat and it can be kept for up to three days.
• Consider storing meat once cooked (and so at boiling point) in its gravy in strong glass jamjars with good seals to the lids. If the jars can take boiling jam, then they should be able to hold other things.
• Use the same trick with frozen vegetables and frozen fruit - but not frozen chips and other unsuitable products.
• Don't eat food that smells unpleasant or that has changed colour - the poisons in decomposing food can KILL you.

(b) : By Keeping Perishables Cool :

Britain is the kind of country where the weather is usually cool or cold, rarely frozen or hot. In the nineteenth century, meat, fish, milk and butter used to be stored on a marble slab in the larder. Another trick was to store perishable food in a container cooled by evaporating water.

Evaporation Cooler : To make one, take a large cake or biscuit tin and stand it on flat stones or wood blocks in a tray of water. Drape a wet towel over the box so that the edges of the towel stay in the tray. The better the draught over the towel, the greater is the evaporation. Heat for evaporation comes from the water and from the metal box. Anything stored in the box will be kept cool, although not cold. Top up the water at intervals. This device works well enough to preserve perishable food for about as long as it would last in the middle of a fridge.

A slightly more advanced design can be made by making a wooden box frame covered in sacking, stood in a tray of water and with a tray of water on the top. It is important to make the sacking sides longer than the frame at both top and bottom, so that they can rest in the water. The resultant wick-fed system, placed in a draught in shade, is remarkably efficient and as cool as the centre of the body of a commercial fridge.

(c) : By Excluding Air :

Centuries ago, people stumbled upon the trick of excluding air from eggs by dipping them in tallow. In the late 1800s, they switched to using water-glass, the eggs being stored in a 1 : 9 mix of sodium silicate solution in covered crocks or jars. This skill was only lost after the 1940s, when refrigerators reached most households. If in a crisis you have one or two evaporative coolers, then you can keep eggs, milk and butter cool; if you don't, then the old waterglass trick is worth reviving. According to an American site, the eggs will keep for up to a year, but one should wipe them clean and choose only the freshest eggs.

The idea of cooking meat and preserving it under cooled hard fat in a bowl (e.g. during the making of brawn, or a fat-rich beef gravy) is another example of preventing air from reaching a sterilised meat jelly or cooked meat.

(d) : By Salting :

Meat and fish have been preserved by salting them and storing them either dry or in containers of brine. Salted cabbage (dry salted) is a famous German and East European dish. The salt draws out the water and acts as a bactericide. Unfortunately, dry-salted meat and fish generally need to be de-salted by steeping in fresh water for from a day to a week before enough salt comes out to be edible again. Cooked fish and cooked meat can be stored in hot brine in sealed jars, but Kilner jars would probably be essential as brine is very corrosive. Whole or in large sections, cheeses used to be dipped in brine, then rubbed in dry salt to harden the rind; once dry enough, the cheeses were then dipped in hot wax to preserve them - a trick today famously used with Edam and Gouda cheeses, although Cheddar will do just as well.

(e) : By Pickling in Spiced Vinegar :

Small onions, chopped cabbage and fish, are often stored in spiced vinegar - the writer has helped to make pickled onions in the past. It would only be worth doing in a crisis if the ingredients are available. Although now no longer popular, hard-boiled eggs used to be preserved in hot spiced vinegar.

(f) : By Drying :

Grapes are sun-dried to become raisins and sultanas, but - more usefully - apples and other hard fruits can also be oven-dried for keeping. This information is unlikely to be of much use in any British crisis, except in preserving food after a destructive war.

(g) : By Smoking :

A fire of damp hardwood such as oak or beech produces a lot of smoke. This can be used to proof cooked meats such as hams or joints of beef or fish against bacterial attack. If the smoke can be maintained at a high temperature over a couple of days, it can both proof the meat and cook thin meat cuts or opened fish. As with drying, this is a tactic of last resort. At Beamish Open Air Museum, a mediaeval house is shown with sides of meat preserved in a smoke-room, the smoke coming from a chimney flue with a hatch in its side. Both bacteria and flies would have been defeated by this tactic - but the room had to be built to be fireproof.

How to Make Ghee (Clarified Butter)

Unsalted butter rapidly goes rancid in hot weather. At a pinch, you may want to convert it to ghee as a safety measure - properly made, ghee will keep for months in sealed jars. Ghee has 14 grams of fat per tablespoon. Use with moderation since it is 100% butterfat. Given some kind of cooking stove, a pan and a few scalded jars (and scald the lids) you can turn the butter into ghee in under two hours.

Recipe

1. Melt 2 pounds of unsalted butter at a very low heat.
2. Once melted, slightly increase the heat.
3. Decrease slightly if it starts to smoke or show signs of scorch. Do not let it burn. Remain at this point for approximately an hour checking often but not disturbing it.
4. The milk solids will sink, leaving a foam at the top. Do not disturb this foam.
5. Take the pan off the heat after an hour, let it cool for about 15 minutes.
6. Carefully skim any remaining foam or floating substances off the top.
7. Filter the remaining clear liquid into a clean jar, through cheesecloth, an unused coffee filter or paper towel as a filter.
8. Cover and store in a cool place.

Some Points to Remember :

• Do not let it burn - keep an eye on your ghee. If you see or smell smoke or notice ripples on the surface, turn the heat down.
• Do not stir the ghee while the solids are separating.
Your Ghee will be a golden color and will smell of butter. It will solidify but will not be hard.

Food Lists and Equipment :-

[One Week List] [Two Week List] [One Month List] [Food Preservation] [Basic Recipes]