How to Preserve Meat the Old Fashioned Way

One of the traditional ways to preserve meat is to use salt. Salting, otherwise known every bit curing, is an historic period-quondam technique for meat preservation. Just in today's wellness-conscious world, we know that besides much salt is bad for united states of america. And then how exercise we preserve meat without salt?

Can you actually preserve meat without salt? Aye, you can. But y'all do take to use the right techniques and follow instructions carefully to preserve food safely. You tin preserve meat past freezing, dehydrating, smoking, preserving it in lard in cold storage, or through pressure canning.

In this article, we'll look at how you can preserve meat in these 5 means – none of which require the use of salt. It is possible to avoid using common salt for preservation as long as you lot correctly employ other methods. But food safety is important. So brand sure you lot always keep safety in mind when preserving meat, and never eat any preserved meat if y'all are in whatsoever doubt.

Freezing Meat

The first, simplest, and virtually obvious way to preserve meat without common salt is simply to freeze information technology. All types of meat can be frozen, and when kept at temperatures of beneath zero, can be kept for long periods of time. But it is important to freeze meat at the right temperatures and in the right packaging or containers to make sure that it stays as freshly frozen as possible.

For quicker freezing times, it is ideal to keep your freezer temperature at 0 degrees F ( minus 17.7 degrees C.) or below.

Ideally, pack the meat in the smallest portions that you volition use. Individual portions of meat and small cuts will freeze faster and can likewise assist you avoid wasting food since you can defrost only the right amount and non more than than y'all need.

It is best to package meat for freezing in airtight packaging or containers if you tin. This will help to avoid freezer burn and stop the meat from drying out too much in the freezer.

There are time limits to how long meat should be kept in your freezer before it stops tasting its best. Candy and deli-manner meats should only be frozen for a couple of months or so. Ground meats are best used within four months. While steaks, chops, and roasting joints tin be good for up to a year or so earlier their texture and flavor might begin to degrade.

Simply what should yous do if you live off-grid or don't take access to a freezer? What should you practise to preserve meat if you lot don't have a freezer, or your freezer is already total?

Dehydrating Meat

I traditional way to preserve meat that does not involve the use of common salt or a freezer is dehydration. When you dehydrate meat, what you are doing is basically removing as much of the water from it as possible. This makes it more difficult for bacteria and other pathogens to grow.

Dehydration can be undertaken in a solar dehydrator equally long as the climate is warm and sunny enough to ensure loftier enough temperatures that the meat dries before mold or rot arrives. In cooler climates, more boiling environments, it volition be much more challenging to dehydrate foods using just the energy from the sun.

It is also technically possible to dehydrate meat in an oven or stove.

However, the safest approach is to use an electric dehydrator, which delivers less variable atmospheric condition and can make certain the meat dries quickly and evenly.

It is important to follow directions for the type of meat you are dehydrating. You lot volition fix your dehydrator to a certain temperature and leave the meat to dry for a certain number of hours. For instance, this might be around half dozen hours at 150 degrees F.

It should go without saying, merely whatever meat you lot program to dehydrate must be fresh. It should have been butchered and processed cleanly (if y'all are involved in that function of the process). Hygiene throughout the entire procedure is of paramount importance.

To dehydrate meat, you should get-go make sure that the meat is cutting into small pieces that are effectually the same size. For example, ham is often sliced into 1 inch (c. ii.v cm) strips, and beef into ¼ inch (c. 6-7 mm) strips.

Place the pieces onto the tray of your dehydrator (whichever type y'all are using). Make certain that no pieces are overlapping or touching.

Vacuum packing your dehydrated meat will increase its shelf-life and keep it safe to consume for longer.

Smoking Meat

Dehydration is too one component of some other form of preservation – smoking meat. In smoking, both dehydration and the fume infusing the meat inhibit the growth of harmful micro-organisms. Like curing with salt, smoking meat is some other preservation method that has been around for thousands of years. Diverse different types of forest can exist used that not just permit the meat to be stored for longer but too imbue the meat with different subtle flavors.

There is a range of different techniques, ranging from the most archaic to the virtually upward to date and modern, that tin can be used to smoke meat for preservation. Smoking falls into one of two primary categories – hot smoking (at temperatures at around 150 F (65.5 C) and common cold smoking (at temperatures below 100 degrees F (37.7 C). Fifty-fifty with hot smoking, the temperature should not exceed 155F (68.three C), or the meat volition be cooked rather than smoked and dried.

Meat that is cured with common salt before smoking will final longer. But y'all can also undertake this procedure without this initial step. Smoked meats can last i-2 months in airtight containers (or tin be canned, as described below).

Information technology is important to create a smoker with a consistent amount of smoke and a required temperature over a set period of time. The smoking time will vary considerably depending on the blazon and size of the pieces of meat you want to dry.

Smoking meats over wood makes for some interesting flavour additions. Mesquite, hickory, oak, and cherry are some woods burned to imbue flavour to smoked meat.

For food safety, information technology is a expert thought to bank check the meat with a meat thermometer to make sure it reaches a prophylactic internal temperature before you remove it from the smoker. Poultry should reach an internal temperature of 165 F (73.9 C). Pork and basis meat should be 160 F (71.2 C), and chops and roasts should be 145 F (62.8 C).

Force per unit area Canning Meat

Though we accept touched upon these other methods, by far, the safest and best way to preserve meat without salt if you cannot use a freezer is to force per unit area can it?

Meat admittedlymustbe pressure canned, and other methods for canning like water bath canning will not be suitable or safe. So yous will need to invest in a pressure canner for this method if you practise not have one already.

Information technology is important to always take actress special care when handling meat from slaughtering to canning. Fantabulous hygiene and best exercise are essential at every stage. Make sure that you keep meat at low temperatures during your canning preparations and process the meat equally quickly as possible.

It is best to use lean meat for canning. You lot should cut off all the gristle and as much of the fat every bit possible. Remove any big bones and chop the meat into pieces convenient for canning. Bony pieces tin be used to make a goop that tin can be used, boiled, in jars that are packed with pre-cooked meat. Don't chocolate-brown the meat with flour or use flour to make the broth/ gravy to pour over the meat you have packed into your jars.

For almost recipes, you will leave 1 inch of headspace when filling your jars.

You lot can add together table salt when canning meat, but you can also choose to leave it out. If y'all do decide to utilize some common salt for flavoring, and then be sure to use canning common salt and not table table salt. Canning salt has a filler in it, which tin can make canned goods cloudy. While you can add more or less, a general rule of thumb is to apply ½ tsp per pint or one tsp per quart. Though should yous wish, as mentioned, you tin exclude this entirely for dietary preference or wellness reasons.

Processing Canned Meat

When processing canned meat, information technology is important to brand sure that you follow recipes and procedures perfectly. Getting the processing fourth dimension incorrect won't simply impact the flavour of the food. Information technology tin also mean that the food is non prophylactic to swallow.

When working out the pressure level to set your pressure canner at for canning a item type of meat or meat recipe, information technology is important to bear your altitude in listen.

Elevation	DIAL GAUGE CANNER (For Pints and Quart Jars)	WEIGHTED GAUGE CANNER (For Pints and Quart Jars)
one,001 – 2,000 ft.	11 lbs.	xv lbs.
2,001 – 4,000 ft.	12 lbs.	fifteen lbs.
4,001 – 6,000 ft.	thirteen lbs.	15 lbs.
6,001 – 8,000 ft.	xiv lbs.	15 lbs.

Processing time remains the same no matter what your attitude may be.

Chopped-Upwardly Meat (cubes, chunks, or strips):

You tin can either raw pack (without liquid) or bot pack (cooked meat, with simply water, with lycopersicon esculentum juice, or with broth).

Process jars at 11 lbs of pressure (dial gauge), 10 lbs (weighed judge) (or see the chart in a higher place if y'all alive at a college elevation). Processing time is 75 minutes for pints and 90 minutes for quarts.

Basis Meat:

Mix the footing meat well and add seasoning as desired. Avoid sage, however, equally this can impart a bitter, somewhat unpleasant season. Shape the ground meat into balls or patties, or class cased sausage into iii-4 inch links. Cook the ground meat until it is lightly browned. Or sauté without shaping. Bleed off excess fatty, and fill the jars. Cover the meat with boiling broth or water. Again, be sure to leave i inch of headspace.

Process jars at xi lbs of pressure level (dial approximate), 10 lbs (weighed guess), or see the chart higher up if you live at a higher elevation. Processing time is once more 75 minutes for pints and xc minutes for quarts.

Canning Stews:

Y'all can too tin meat aslope vegetables, herbs, and broth in the form of a stew – such as a beefiness stew, for example. While some people raw pack the ingredients of the stew, official guidelines state that it is amend to hot pack. (ie. Cook all the ingredients, and so place the recipe hot into your jars). Vegetables may sometimes end up a trivial mushy when information technology is done this fashion, only it is even so more often than not best to follow official guidelines when canning.

If the meat used in the stew was very fat, bleed off excess fatty before filling the jars and processing. This is because backlog fat can chimera up around the jar edges during processing and crusade the lids non to seal properly.

If you normally add a thickener such as flour or cornstarch to your stews, it is best not to do and then if yous programme on canning it. If necessary, simply add it afterward yous open up the jar and reheat it for consumption.

Process at eleven lbs of pressure (dial gauge), 10 lbs (weighed gauge) (or run across the chart in a higher place if you lot live at a higher summit). Processing time is again 75 minutes for pints and 90 minutes for quarts.

Once candy, your canned meat should be kept correctly in a absurd shop or canning cellar. For the highest quality, your canned meat should be consumed inside a twelvemonth from the canning date. However, it can often, if correctly stored, nonetheless, be condom to consume afterwards two years or even more.

Preserving Meat in Lard (Confit) and Cold Storage

Another way that meat was frequently preserved in the days before refrigeration was as a confit. A layer of lard or another animal fatty was used to seal the elevation of a crock in which meat was layered. This layer of fat stops air from reaching the meat and suppresses bacterial growth. Traditionally, the meat (duck in a duck confit, for example) was cured with table salt as an additional method of preservation. Today, people use the lard or other fat alone, without the curing stage. However, this is not really recommended unless you can keep the meat refrigerated.

Information technology is important to melt the meat before encasing it in lard. This is because bacteria may already be present in the meat, and the lard, therefore, won't exist able to keep information technology out. Cook meat as you lot would consume it, and so place it in a sterilized crock and cover information technology immediately with hot lard. Encompass with wax wrap and place on this a crock cover or plate.

If you lot do non take a fridge, it is very important to make certain that you lot do have a cold storage expanse with consistently low temperatures in order to shop your meat preserved in lard safely.

Why Preserve Meat Past Canning?

Preserving meat by canning is the best style to preserve meat without salt because, when done correctly, it is as safety as freezing when it comes to food prophylactic. As long as y'all procedure at the correct pressure, for the right length of fourth dimension, and post-obit all recipe instructions to the letter, your meat volition be safely preserved. And you don't need to rely on table salt to go along the meat pathogen-free.

The reason why I feel canning is the best way to preserve meat without salt is not just related to nutrient safety. It is too a proficient mode to go considering it can allow yous to rest easy knowing that your meat won't be wasted if, for some reason, your power goes out. As long as you proceed your canned meat in a cool, safe location, it won't be wasted even if something goes wrong with your power supply.

Furthermore, different the other methods mentioned above – dehydration and smoking – canning won't significantly modify the texture or flavor of the meat. So you can relish meat that tastes pretty much the same as information technology did when used fresh, right away.

You don't need salt or a freezer to preserve meat. So if you take more meat than you tin can manage, why not give one of these other ideas a go?

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