Preserving Food Without Refrigeration
How can you prep your food for long power outages so it doesn’t spoil? Here are some tried and true ways for mountain resilience.
by Pam Sherman
Without backup power, a lot of food in the fridge and freezer spoils, as many of us saw during the recent extended power outage. How did our ancestors from everywhere, who lived before electricity and refrigeration were invented, store food without it going bad? Residents of regions which are largely without electricity today still use these methods. We explore basic methods below, looking at low-tech solutions. (There are ancient city-scale engineering methods requiring many workers, which are beyond the scope of this blog.)
Storing and Using Grains
Grain has traditionally been stored above ground, often in baskets set in well-aerated wooden structures (granaries or barns). This both keeps the grain dry and helps protect it from rodents. These days, in our dry climate, storing large bags of grain (five to 25 pounds) in clean, never-used metal garbage cans works well. You can buy grains-- different types of wheat, rye, rice, corn, amaranth, quinoa-- in bulk from grocery stores, wholesalers, farms or coops on the plains.
Grinding your own grain before baking your own bread – or just cooking your whole grain into cereal-- is said to retain many more healthy nutrients than buying your bread commercially (bakeries which make and sell their own high quality products excepted. But bakeries up here in the mountains are as scarce as palm trees.) There are hand-cranked grain mills to be bought, as well as electric ones; they vary in price and people have their favorites.
Preserving and Storing Meat
Slicing meat thin and smoking it slowly over an open fire is a traditional way to preserve meat. Sometimes the fire is made deliberately smoky and this is done on a non-windy day. Use a rub of your choice; salt and sugar and some herbs are preservatives. Commercial smokers, both electric and non-electric or both, can be bought as well and you can smoke in some BBQ grill. If you want to smoke meat but there’s a fire ban, having the electric option is handy (if there’s no power outage of course). Beef jerky is a hot commercial commodity these days, so maybe you can buy some in bulk. James Beard award-winning author and chef Hank Shaw shares recipes for smoking and making charcuterie (sausages et al, which are made with traditional methods for preserving meat without refrigeration).
Sourcing: raw meat can be bought in bulk from a local rancher (they are almost all online). If you want meat that’s good for the land as well as you, find one who does holistic management aka regenerative ranching. There are many; it’s a selling point, so it will be obvious up front.
Preserving and Storing Vegetables and Fruits
Cache Pits, Root Cellars, Clay Pot Coolers
Nomadic as well as sedentary people have used cache pits, constructed a few feet below the surface according to local knowledge of soils, wood structure materials, away from wind and water. Lined with rocks and grasses, they have been covered and camouflaged with brush piles and other means. Some traditional peoples have built storage pits into the cool soil, accessed by ladders. Similar structures today we call root cellars. This classic book on root cellaring features methods for storing crops over the winter in the garden as well.
Clay pot (evaporative) coolers can be used to extend the shelf life of vegetables without refrigeration. MIT-D Lab working with the World Vegetable Center and another partner has evaluated and re-designed the most functional ones based on user research. Their website has instructions for making your own, from pot size to room size.
photo courtesy of Gate74 at Pixabay.com
Drying
For food drying, consider building a non-electric solar food dryer. Some people prefer to dry fruits and veggies in the back of a hot car in the summer – taking care to watch carefully so the food doesn’t scorch and rodents don’t partake. Or use the lowest setting on your gas oven (or electric or toaster oven.) Some ovens come with food-dehydration settings. When the power’s on, an electric food dehydrator is handy (Excalibur works reliably and long-term, as the heat is even and there are multiple dehydration settings –both essential features. Read the reviews of whatever you are thinking of purchasing. You don’t want to lose half your food because of a poorly-functioning dryer). Some food dryers (such as Excalibur) will dry meat and make “raw” vegan breads, crackers, cookies.
Canning
When we think of canning, many think of their mothers or grandmothers--or Cooperative Extension. Extension has a National Center for Home Food Preservation website which covers not only canning (veggies and meat) and also covers drying, canning, curing, smoking, fermenting, pickling, making jams and jellies, and storing. Extension offers online courses in these methods, which can be adapted for grid-down situations.
Fermentation
James Beard award-winning food fermentation guru Sandor Katz writes in his book and on his website The Art of Fermentation: “Fermented foods can reduce the need for both refrigeration and cooking. … lactic acid ferments, on the whole, enable foods to enjoy some measure of stabiility outside of refrigeration. I regularly meet people who – for reasons of remote location, economic circumstances or choice – live without refrigeration, and sauerkraut, miso, yogurt, hard cheese and salami are among the kinds of foods these fridge-free folks eat. Envisioning a future where the refrigeration bubble could burst … ferments such as these would become far more important.” (p. 32) Katz’s book covers how to ferment alcohol and beer, veggies, tonic beverages, grains and starchy tubers, milk, beans, nuts and seeds, meat, fish and eggs, and much more.
Preserving produce with Salt, Oil, Sugar, Alcohol, and Vinegar
We know these products as pickles and vinegars of all kinds, jams, syrups, and honeys, essential oils and herbal tinctures, wine-preserved pears, jars of oil filled with roasted peppers and so much more. The book Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning by the Gardeners and Farmers of Terre Vivante (France) shares simple, traditional European methods for vegetables.
Dairy
Dairy in the Days Before Pasteurisation and Refrigeration is an introduction to how to deal with dairy when the power is out. Ferment milk into curdled milk, hard cheese, yogurt, kefir. There are abundant instructional sources online and in books for this. Consider a slab of slate kept in the coolest place in the house (lucky if you have a cool old basement.) Cheese can also be dehydrated into cubes, sticks or powder and re-constituted with as much or little liquid as you like. How to Dehydrate Cheese for Long-term Storage is a great start. Check backpacker food prep manuals as well.
Water
We can only live 2-3 days without water, so water tops the list for preparedness. Know where your local springs are for emergencies and how you would transport the water if you didn’t have fuel for your car. Store water you know is safe in clean, sealed glass jars. This Utah State Extension Service website has excellent information on Creating and Storing an Emergency Water Supply. Check the CDC’s recommendations for how to make water safe in an emergency as a preparedness measure.
What to Buy or Grow for home food preparedness
The Utah State Extension Service is also a great source of information on food safety, storage, organization, planned buying, and drying all kinds of foods.
Whether you buy in bulk for short or long-term emergencies, you will do well at minimum with a selection of grains, dry beans, shelf-stable oils, nuts and whatever fruits and veggies you preserve.
Whatever you decide to buy in bulk, be sure to label each unit with name and variety (eg “Purple Pole Beans”) and the date--or at least the month--you purchased or harvested and processed it. This will save you impossible guess work in the future, when you will be asking, “how old is that? Should we use it first?”
If you’ve never gardened, learn to grow some nutrient-dense and healthy food like potatoes and cabbage, both of which do well up here. Plant some native food-bearing shrubs. Look for mountain gardening and orcharding in a future blog post at Mountain Resilience Substack.
