If you are going to go camping or a hike in the woods, you will want to know how to preserve your food. Bacteria, which cause food poisoning, can multiply in as little as 20 minutes at 41 to 135 degrees Fahrenheit. Once they reach this stage, they can no longer be prevented from multiplying and become infectious. Bacteria that cause food poisoning include e-coli, salmonella, shigella, staphylococcus, and listeria. These bacteria cause a number of symptoms, including nausea, diarrhea, fever, and chills.

Pickling

There are many benefits to pickling, and preserving food is a very useful skill to have. Foods are preserved better when they're pickled, and you can make any type of food into a variety of delicacies. Learn how to preserve food in the wild using pickling by reading this article! The Red Cross and FEMA recommend building a two-week emergency food stockpile, and you can use pickled foods as part of your stockpile. In addition to being a useful skill, pickling food is fun to do and offers a taste you can't get anywhere else.

Curing

Curing meat is an ancient practice that increases the shelf life of meat. The process helps preserve its texture, color and flavor. Curing agents, including salt and sugar, also contribute to the flavor of meat. Generally, salt is the most important part of the flavor, but sugar has lesser influence and is used to enhance the sweetness of cured meat. Sugar also serves as the food source for flavor-producing bacteria. These bacteria produce the tangy taste of cured products.

Smoking

The ancient technique of smoking food for preservation is believed to have evolved from fire. Early humans used smoke to preserve meat, and smoked fish in particular, for extended shelf life. Prehistoric peoples hung excess meat from cave ceilings, and noticed that meat exposed to smoke from fire stayed more edible for longer than meat that was not smoked. Salt, which has preserving qualities, was also used to dry meat.

Root cellaring

You might wonder why you would need to start root cellaring for food. The answer is because it's a fairly large project that requires a certain amount of expense. However, the food you save from root cellaring will keep you a lot longer than the food you would find at the supermarket. Here are some of the reasons that you should start root cellaring:

Fermentation

Thousands of years ago, mankind used fermentation as a valuable method of food preservation. By letting food ferment naturally in the wild, bacteria produced by fermentation could turn the less desirable ingredients into more nutritious ones. Fermented foods are rich in vitamins and other beneficial substances. Pickling is another method of preserving food in vinegar. It involves fermenting foods containing starches or sugars. Bacteria then oxidize the alcohol to acetic acid, making them more palatable.

Drying

Dried fish and meats were life-sustaining foods for humans throughout history. Our ancestors did not have refrigeration, and therefore dried fish and meats were the most commonly consumed foods. Fish and meat were especially difficult to come by, and dried food was the most convenient way to preserve it. Fresh fish and meat are vulnerable to bacterial growth, so the meat was usually pretreated with salt or brine. But fish is difficult to dry, so the drying process of dried fish and meats has several advantages.