Last week, we discussed five fairly conventional food preservation techniques. But this week, we’re going to venture into some less traversed techniques.
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Method #6 – Root cellaring
According to MerriamWebster.com a root cellar is an underground storage area for vegetables and especially those (as carrots) with enlarged roots. More recently, it’s also called cold storage, cool storage, and underground storage. They are meant as a temperature and humidity controlled place to store, root vegetables, fruits, roots, and preserves.
Root cellaring is a traditional food preservation technique. They are usually underground or partially underground. Some people have dug them out of the ground, but more often they were dug out of the side of hill.
Now there are varied types of root cellars. Some people – like the family from Homestead Honey – dug their own root cellar, others have created a root cellar out of a corner of their basement. (It’s at the end of the article.) There are prefab root cellars like the groundfridge and this pre-built concrete root cellar by Off-Grid Unlimited.
But no matter if you dig your own with plans (scroll down, the information to build your own is under the part of the article on the Ground Fridge), all proper root cellars will do several things. First off they will keep the temperature low – usually around 40 degrees fahrenheit. They assure proper ventilation so that your food will not mold or rot while keeping the humitidy levels high. They also keep critters out.
Upsides: It’s an electricity free-fridge! So even if the power goes out, you can keep things cool. I mean who wouldn’t want that?
Downsides: You have to go outside to access it (unless you can get the indoor version to work as advertised). It will cost you either in materials and (your) labor or it will cost you to purchase one and have it installed.
Food Preservation Method #7 – Pickling 
Definition: Pickling is submersing foods in a brine or an acid solution (sometimes vinegar) that changes both the taste and the texture of the food. Some foods that are still regularly pickled are beats, cucumbers, onions, peppers, and eggs. I’ve even heard of pickled pigs feet.
During the summer of 2022, our family planted its first HUGE garden, and by huge, I mean 120′ x 30′. It was BIG. We had more cucumbers than we could process. So besides eating some as cucumbers, our oldest daughter canned 72 jars of pickles. Yes, you read that right 72 quart-sized jars of pickles. She created a brine of hot vinegar, salt, sugar and spices, and she poured it over jars full of cucumber spears. Then she processed all of them in our water bath canner. So really this incorporated two types of food preservation.
Because we also canned these, they were good for more than a year and a half, but we decided not to move all those pickes with us, so in Ocober of 2023, we dumped all of the pickles we still had left. But they were still good to eat a year and a half later.
If you want your pickled foods to last longer, they do need to be processed in a canner. However, pickled foods will last longer in the fridge than they would just as produce.
Upsides: It’s cheap and easy.
Downsides: You still have to water bath can them if you want them to last for a year or more.
Method #8 – Fermenting
What is fermenting? According to healthline.com lacto fermentation, “uses good bacteria, fungi, or yeasts to give food a different aroma, flavor, or texture and extend shelf life.”
There are many types of fermentation! More than you probably think about reguarly. You can eat fermented breads – aka sour dough. You can consume fermented milk products including yogurt and milk kefir. You can drink fermented drinks including kombucha, water kefir, beer, mead, and wine. And then there are things that many recognize as fermented foods like saurkraut, miso, tempeh.
Now where things get confusing is that sometimes pickling and fermentation overlap. When you make fermented pickles instead of the pickles getting their zing from the vinegar, they get their zip from a process known as lactofermentation. But because lactofermentation also creates an acidic environment, many vegetables and fruits that are preserved through lactofermentation are also considered pickled.
According to Fermenting for Foodies, saurkraut and lacto-fermented pickles can last for up to a year in a cold, dark area. Other vegetables laco-fermented in brine like carrots, green beans, and turnips can be stored for up to six months. Fermented hot sauce can stored for up to six months as well. Fermented chutneys, salsa’s and relishes need to be refrigerated. But they can keep in the fridge for up to three months. If you put them in the freezer, they can keep for six months.
Upsides: Simple to do and requires very little equipment.
Downsides: It doesn’t keep for a lot longer than it would in the fridge.
Food Preservation Method #9 – Leaving veggies in the ground
Now, I have to admit that this one had never ever crossed my mind until I saw a video that Melissa K Norris did on preserving foods by leaving them in the ground over the winter. Now, she lives in the Pacific Northwest in a milder climate than I live in Central Illinois; however, depending on where you live and how much insulation you put above the in-ground veggies.
So Melissa keeps – especially – her potatoes that she doesn’t think that they will use short-term in the ground. When temperatures start to cool off, she’ll layer them with 4-6″ of straw or hay. She says that if she knows that they are likely to get a big snow, she’ll go out ahead of time and harvest the potatoes that she believes that she’ll want to use of the period of time that they will likely be snowed under.
And if they get to the following April and the high temperatures are regularly between 55 – 60 degrees, she’ll dig up what’s left and if any of them have started to sprout, she’ll use those as the next year’s seed potatoes. So not only is she doing much less work, she’s creating her own seeds in the process.
Upsides: SO much less work!! You harvest them as you are ready to eat them.
Downsides: You have to harvest them before you can eat them. They aren’t just ready and waiting inside the house.
Did you know that there were so many methods of food preservation?
In this short series of two articles, we have covered the gamut of food preservation techniques. I’ve given you a lot of basic information and also a lot of links so that you can go deeper and learn more about any of the presented methods.
Which ones would you like to dive deeper into? Which surprised you? Which had you not heard or or considered before? Share with us below in the comments so that we can all be better prepared.
So remember when you are looking into which methods you want to use to preverve 2024’s harvest,
You’ve got this, Mama!
