We’re preppers. And while some of us may only buy food that’s already packaged and ready for us, many of us are doing what we can to grow more food, to grow food more efficiently, or to better preserve and utilize our stored food year over year. If we are growing or purchasing our own food to preserve for the year. Most often we are going to freeze or can our food, but there are so many more ways to preserve the bounty of either our harvest or pocketbook. Today we’re going to dive into NINE different food preservation techniques. And what’s even better, you can utilize each of these methods during the dark winter months of January and February when life’s pace will sometimes slow down and you may have more time on your hands to learn and experiment.
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Food Preservation method #1 – Freezing
Freezing is the easiest, cheapest, and least time consuming way to preserve foods, but there are several pitfalls of which you need to be aware.
First off, for safety reasons, most vegetables need to be blanched before freezing.
What is blanching? Blanching is the act of putting vegetables into boiling water or steam for a very short period of time in order to kill any microorganisms on the outside of the vegetable. This will also cause the enzymes on the vegetables to be inactivated. Once the vegetables have been removed from the boiling water or steam, they need to be cooled down to 60 degrees. This prevents cooking.
Both over and under blanching can cause you to lose the integrity of your food. Consequently, make sure that you blanche each food for the proper amount of time. The University of Missouri has in-depth instructions on blanching your vegetables before freezing them. They also include blanching times.
Upsides: Cheap, fast, least time consuming
Downsides: It takes electricity to maintain your preserved foods.
Method #2 – Water bath canning 
According to The Flour Handprint, “Water bath canning is simply the process of using hot, boiling water to kill micro-organisms and seal home preserves so they’re shelf stable.”
Believe it or not, when it came to food preservation, I didn’t start with freezing. I started with water bath canning.
When I was growing up, my mom used to can strawberry jam every single year. I have incredibly fond memories. Our family loaded up in the van and drive to a strawberry farm to pick 40 quarts of strawberries. I think sometimes for some of us kids we enjoyed snacking on strawberries throughout the process too. But then we would come home and my mom would process strawberry jam for an entire year.
So when I started dabbling in food preservation, I started by making jams. Not surprisingly I started with strawberry, but since, I’ve made many different types including blackberry, blueberry, and cherry.
Water bath canning is incredibly easy and doesn’t require a lot of expensive specialized equipment. You need a large canning pot – with jar rack, jars, and utility canning set. It can be used with highly acidic foods like most fruits. You can also use a water bath canner with tomato sauces provided your recipe adds a little extra lemon juice to ensure a good level of acidity.
You water bath foods by processing these in boiling water. By bringing the internal temperatures of these foods up to the boiling point, microorganisms and tiny insects that might have been on or in the foods are killed.
Upsides: Inexpensive, an easy way to get into canning, (almost) foolproof
Downsides: Most of the items you can will be full of sugar, it takes more active time than freezing.
Food Preservation method #3 – Pressure canning
Pressure canning is using a piece of equipment – a pressure canner – to create temperatures much higher than 212 degrees fahrenheit. This extra heat is used to process low acid foods (meat, veggies, soups, stews). This process kills bacteria and microorganisms that will continue to grow if these are only processed in a water bath canner.
I have ‘graduated’ from only water bath canning to pressure canning. Pressure canning scared me for a long time. It really isn’t hard. It’s just time consuming and you have to be present in the room to monitor the pressure canner. With a water bath canner you can set your timer for how long your cans should process for and walk away. With a pressure canner, you must be able to be in the same room as the canner because you’ll have to make sure that the jiggler – and yes, that is the actual term for it – is jiggling a proper intervals.
While pressure canning is not hard, it is much more expensive as you need to purchase a pressure CANNER – not a pressure cooker. Pressure canners tend to be significantly more expensive than water bath canners. But it does preserve vegetables, meats, and soups in a way that they are shelf-stable making for fast and easy meals.
Upsides: Convenience of foods ready for meals, you know what’s in your food that you can yourself, ability to tailor it to your family’s preferences.
Downsides: It costs more money to get started. You have to be present for the processing. There are more ‘moving parts’ than there are when you pressure can.
Method #4 – Dehydrating 
Dehydrating is using low heat to remove as much of a food’s liquid content as possible in order to ensure food preservation.
Properly dehydrated fruits can stay good for up a year without special storage, but if you vacuum seal them, they can stay good for up to 15 years! Dehydrated vegetables will spoil faster because they don’t have as many natural sugars. If you store dehydrated vegetables in the pantry, they will generally keep well for up to six months. However, if you vacuum seal them, then they may last up to 2-7 years.
Make sure to visually inspect your dehydrated foods if thy’ve been stored away for awhile. Then smell them, then take a nibble of them before you plung ahead throwing caution to the wind.
Dehydrating is so incredibly simple and while having a dehydrator is nice and helpful, it’s not 100% necessary. You can dehydrate foods in your oven on a very low temperature. You can even dehydrate foods (during the summer time) in your vehicle.
Now, granted, most of us would prefer the convenience of a dedicated dehydrator. The great news is that there are some really inexpensive varieties of dehydrators out there. For example, did you know that if you have an Instapot or Vortex air fryer, by purchasing this simple rack set, you can use your air fryer to dehydrate your food for you.
However, if you want a dehydrator that does double duty, I would highly recommend an Excaliber dehydrator. I have used mine to make yogurt, to help sour dough ferment, and of course, to dehydrate items.
If you want to learn more about dehydrating, PrimalSurvivor has a great article on it.
Upsides: Can be economical, decent shelf life – especially when coupled with a jar top vacuum sealer.
Downsides: It can be pricey depending on the dehydrator that you purchase, you need water on hand to rehydrate foods, there are some foods you just can’t use the dehydrator with – milk, cheese, meats.
Food Preservation method #5 – Freeze drying
Freeze drying is the process of flash freezing foods and then rapidly heating them to create an effect called sublimation. Sublimation is where the water in the food’s contents go from frozen to gas skipping the liquid state.
Freeze drying creates incredibly shelf-stable and convenient foods, but at a price. So I will tell you that we purchased a freeze dryer and – when its working properly – it’s absolutely amazing. I LOVE my freeze dryer. I can do so much more in it than my dehydrator. We use a TON of tomato sauce in our house. Having tomato sauce in much more compact, lighter, easier to store form than cans is a win for us.
I have freeze dried milk, cheese, cooked ground beef, tomato sauce, more vegetables than I can count. We have had our freeze dryer going for months on end.
But as everything there are some of the downsides to using freeze drying as a food preservation method.
I know food preservation is important, but a freeze dryer is stinking expensive!! We bought a top of the line one that didn’t need a dedicated 220 circuit. I don’t need to change out the oil etc, but it was more than $5,000 when we purchased it. We’ve saved a ridiculous amount of money by freeze-drying our own food, but I’m not sure we’ve saved $5,000.
It’s also expensive to run. Running our freeze dryer 24/7 for quite awhile didn’t help our electric bill. We made some energy effecient changes to our home. Because of that even if I showed you our electric bill from year to year, it wouldn’t be an accurate reflection of how much money we spent. But batches can take 24 hours or more, and because you’re using a high powered piece of equipment, I guarantee you it’s not cheap to run.
A Freeze dryer is really loud! We didn’t have a basement in our last house, so our Freeze dryer went in our kitchen, and sometimes it was hard to concentrate with that thing running.
And as someone who focuses on food storage, I know most people don’t store enough water. And when you want to cook with freeze dried foods, you have to have extra water to rehydrate them.
All of that being said, I would purchase a freeze dryer over again if I had the choice.
Upsides: Get more food stored in less space. Freeze dried foods are lighter and easier to move around. You can store foods that you can’t store any other way – eggs, cheese, milk, meats.
Downsides: It’s expensive to buy, expensive to run, and loud.
Next Week
This week, we’ve covered more five conventional ways to preserve food. But next week, we’re going to cover four unusual and very cheap ways to preserve your food. Make sure you come back to join us then.
And as you’re planning your various food preservation methods for 2024, remember …
You’ve got this, Mama!
