Occasionally, I rant about how much I despise canning foods… it’s always been a pain, in my opinion, and quite messy. That said, I know it can be a great way to put a lot of food if you’re willing to do so, and I’m just not THAT willing, lol.
Fortunately, there are plenty of other ways to stockpile food without refrigeration or canning, and the following article discusses three of them: fermentation, dry curing (meats), and dehydrating.
Personally, I’ve gotten into fermentation in the past few years and, for the most part, it’s really easy to do. I’ve only done a bit of curing and I used to do a lot of dehydrating, though, I’ve slowed on that once I really discovered freeze-dried foods.
Regardless, they’ll all great ways to preserve many healthy foods for the long term and I would strongly encourage you to try you hand at one or more of these methods if you’ve never done so.
Here’s the first part of the article:
“Canned food is so prevalent today that it’s hard to imagine life without it. When you have extra produce that you want to preserve, most people will tell you to can it.
But, what happens when you don’t have the equipment you need for proper canning? What if you run out of flat lids and can’t go to the store for more? Or if you can’t start a fire and keep it going long enough to properly heat and process your jars?
Depending on what happens, canning extra food may not always be possible. You need some alternatives.
Canning was thought to be invented by Nicolas Appert back in 1809, when he was looking for a way to preserve food for the French military. The invention of the mason jar in 1858 helped spread canning’s popularity, as did other inventions throughout history.
But prior to these events, people preserved food without canning. They knew they had to grow or harvest enough food each growing season to last the winter. Their very survival depended on putting up food that they could safely eat months later…”
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