How to Preserve Food At Home
Whether you have an overflowing home garden, bought too much produce at the grocery store or are wondering what to do with the surplus of herbs on your windowsill, simple food preservation methods can help you save ingredients, as well as retain their nutritional value, for months to come. Learning how to preserve food at home is easy with these simple techniques!
Culinary Nutrition Benefits of Preserving Food at Home
There are multiple reasons to consider learning to preserve food at home. This process:
retains nutrients of certain foods when they are most potent
saves you money
allows you to stash seasonal foods to enjoy later when they’re out of season
reduces food waste, as you are storing or preserving food to use later rather than composting or tossing it
helps you explore different ways to use foods
Tools Needed to Preserve Food at Home
What you need to preserve food depends on which method you are using, but a basic food preserving setup can include:
Sheet pans
Knife and cutting board
Blender or food processor
Storage containers
Parchment paper
Masking tape and a marker for labeling
Easy Ways to Preserve Food at Home
These are some of our favourite methods we use on a regular basis.
Freezing
Image: Bozhin Karaivanov on UnSplash
Freezing is the most basic and accessible way to preserve your own food with a minimal amount of specialty equipment.
You can freeze ingredients whole or chopped, freeze partially made or fully made recipes to use later, or freeze kitchen scraps or stray ingredients for homemade broth.
Some of the things we like to freeze are:
General Freezing Tips to Preserve Food at Home
Whatever you are freezing, be sure to label the name of the item and the date you are putting it into the freezer. You don’t want to forget what’s in your container or how long it’s been there, or defrost the wrong thing because of misidentification.
To store fruits and veggies
Wash and dry well, then cut into bite-sized pieces (or larger, if you have a specific recipe in mind for what you’re freezing). If you’d like, you can quickly blanch veggies…..