Believe it or not, it is possible to live without refrigeration. Long before the advent of home coolers and freezers, the problems of food storage and preservation had been solved, but this invaluable knowledge has been largely forgotten by our modern “quick and easy” society. Today, you can learn how to preserve food without refrigeration to save money and have delicious produce all year.
Bacteria that cause food to go bad need certain conditions in which to grow. If they are deprived of those conditions, they may die or be unable to reproduce themselves. One thing that bacteria need is water, so drying foods can help to preserve them. Bacteria cannot reproduce at temperatures below 6°C (39°F) or above 37°C (98°F), so making them hot or cold can prevent them from being active. Canning preserves food by sealing it into a can and then heating it to a high temperature, killing off the bacteria inside. As no more bacteria can enter the can, the food is safe for a long time, until the can is opened. High concentrations of salt or sugar prevent bacteria from being able to use available water, as can acids, so foods such as pickles and preserves are cooked and stored in brine (a mixture of salt and water), vinegar or sugar.
Anyone who cans their own tomatoes, apple sauce, pickles, or jams knows there is a vast difference between their simple preserves and the chemical-laced stuff found at the grocery store. The flavor of home-preserved produce so far surpasses that of the mass-produced stuff, there’s almost no comparison. To get the absolute most out of your home harvest or CSA haul, try out traditional methods of food preservation such as fermentation, drying, salt-curing, storage in oil or sugar, and more! These methods are simple, require no fossil fuels, and are just as safe as hot-water-bath canning.
Three methods overwhelmingly dominate the history of food preservation before the industrial age: cellar storage under cool, dark conditions, for certain fruits and winter vegetables (such as root vegetables, tubers, apples, and pears); drying, for fruit; and lactic fermentation for most other vegetables.
Natural-state preservation in a cellar is the most basic way to preserve foods that take well to this method. Although it is possible to dry apples and to lacto-ferment carrots, winter provisions have traditionally relied on apples stored in a cellar in their natural state, and carrots preserved likewise in a root cellar, or in the ground.
Nor is the choice between drying and lactic fermentation made arbitrarily. Experience has shown that dried fruits keep much better than most dried vegetables, retaining more flavor and vitamins due to their natural acidity. It is no coincidence that one of the few vegetables traditionally preserved by drying is the tomato, an acidic fruit-vegetable. As for lactic fermentation, people soon discovered that it was an unsuitable method for most fruit: Everyone knows that when fruit is fermented, we get alcoholic beverages.
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