Outdoor Life Prepare for Anything Survival Manual (38 page)

Our ancestors had preserving (and life without modern refrigeration) perfected. We’ve unfortunately forgotten many of their lessons. However, there are plenty of resources available to us in the pursuit of rediscovering some of those lost secrets. Almanacs and farm guides often provide tips for pickling, including recipes for specific types of produce.

PICK IT FRESH
Always can fresh produce. The fruits and vegetables from the market may look great, but they’re usually coated with wax, which will spoil your efforts.

KEEP IT CRISPY
Cut off the blossom end of cucumbers and squashes, as they can contain an enzyme that will turn a crisp pickle to mush in the jar. For crisper pickles, spread your cucumbers out on a baking sheet and cover with canning salt. Let them sit overnight, which draws a lot of moisture out of the vegetables, then rinse and dry them before canning.

GET ACID RIGHT
Control both acidity and food appearance with with the right vinegar. White vinegar at 5 percent acidity is the best bet.

MIND YOUR SALT
Never use iodized salt in your pickling. It clouds your brine and can adversely affect the consistency and color of your pickles. Canning or pickling salt is easy enough to find.

WAIT TO EAT
After pickling foods, wait at least three weeks before eating to allow the flavors to mix and mellow.

There’s little difference between making pickles and making jams or jellies. The technical process remains the same, with the obvious variation in the use of sugars. When canning your favorite fruits, use white granulated sugar, as it is the least likely to alter the fruit’s natural flavors. If you’re truly curious about the differences between jams and preserves, it’s really all about the fruit. Jams use smaller bits of a fruit, whereas preserves have larger chunks or whole pieces. Jellies use a gelatin base to congeal the fruit.

PICK THE RIGHT FRUIT
When you’re preparing your produce, make sure it’s at room temperature to help more quickly and efficiently dissolve sugars. Also be sure the fruits are free of bruises or blemishes. Avoid soaking berries prior to canning to keep them from turning soft. Simply wash and dry them.

DON’T SKIMP ON SUGAR
The sugar in your canning acts as a preservative against harmful microorganisms. If a sugar-free or lower-sugar product is what you’re after, find a recipe to account for that at the outset.

GIVE THEM A BATH
Water-bath canning is fine for jams and jellies. You can also freeze uncooked products in canning jars or airtight plastic containers. Freezer-stored preserves should be good for a year, and, if refrigerated, will last a month or more. If making preserves from frozen stock, simply defrost thoroughly before following your normal canning procedure.

Fruits and vegetables are essential to a healthy diet, but dried fruit has a lot of sugar. Don’t let that deter you; instead of avoiding dried fruit due to high sugar content, moderate your intake by eating it mixed with nuts for a trail mix, or with healthier, low-sugar foods like yogurt. Also, remember that in a survival situation, calories are your friends.

Once you’ve selected your fresh fruit, thoroughly wash it and make sure it’s free of marks and blemishes. (If you are not sure what fruits are best to use for dehydrating, just take a trip to your local market and see what’s common.) Then pit and slice the fruit accordingly. If you’re drying larger berries, make sure to cut them in half.

With your fruit prepared, it’s time to pretreat it. Most store-bought dried goods use sulfur to maintain color throughout the dehydrating process. You can skip the sulfur by creating a bath of ascorbic acid. You want 2 tablespoons (30 g) ascorbic acid for every quart or liter of water. And if you don’t have ascorbic acid on hand, crush Vitamin C tabs (you’ll want 5 g).

If you live in a very hot environment, use the sun. Line a cookie sheet with cheesecloth, then lay out the fruit and let dry in the sun. Bring it in overnight to keep it from forming dew.

If you want to use your oven, keep it at its lowest setting, making sure internal temperatures don’t rise above 145°F (63°C). Keep the oven door slightly ajar to allow any steam or moisture to escape. Drying times vary by fruit, so monitor closely. Successfully dried fruit should be leathery and not brittle to the touch.

When it comes to canning, acid is your friend. Forget reflux. You’re out to prevent botulism, which is a very serious and sometimes deadly illness in the best of times. If you’re in a survival situation, you have to be able to trust your food. The most common cause of cases of botulism in canning is eating improperly canned low-acid foods such as plain, unpickled vegetables. Botulism is a threat because of its origin: the
Clostridium botulinum
spores themselves, which produce neurotoxins. Boiling water will kill the bacteria itself, but it won’t harm the spores. What’s more, the spores are activated in oxygen-free environments—like the inside of a canning jar. Even if you’ve boiled, processed, and sealed those yummy green beans inside your jar, you can still be ingesting active botulism spores when you eat them.

Fortunately, the spores can’t tolerate acid, so pay close attention to the pH level. For foods to be safely canned in the water-bath method, you need to achieve a pH level lower than 4.6. If you’re following a recipe that calls for a specific type of vinegar, make sure that you follow the recipe—to the letter—and use the exact acidity percentage specified. In the event you are canning low-acid foods that have not been pickled, including meats, you have no choice but to use a pressure canner, which processes jars at temperatures much higher than boiling water (temps high enough not only to kill the bacteria but also to kill the spores) and removes the air from inside the cans.

My friends have voted me most likely to survive the apocalypse without having to eat one of the neighbors, since I can easily turn backyard foraged plants into a gourmet meal.

My name is Hue, and I have been a lifelong wild-food and primitive skills enthusiast with a passion for teaching foraging skills—particularly how to turn wild edible plants into a gourmet meal. I began exploring wild foods at an early age when the promise of excitement and adventure drew me to the wild places in the Northeast without a lunch sack, leaving me extremely hungry. Since then, I have spent many years becoming a seasoned forager, with extensive wild-food experience in a variety of North America’s temperate, boreal, mountain, grassland, and desert eco-regions and biomes. Twenty years in the military also gave me ample opportunity to experience wild food in differing environments. It’s available everywhere, and if I can learn, so can you.

When creating your own foraged meals, remember the rule of 2T: Wild food needs to be Tantalizing on the plate and Tempting to the taste buds. That’s how to create an authentic meal rather than the more common hand-to-mouth survival food. Learn your area, brew up some recipes, and experiment!

You can follow my foraging and epicurean explorations at Primitive Café on Facebook.

These tasty wild foods can be found in the city and the country. Get yourself an identification guide and sample some on your next outing.

GARLIC MUSTARD
(
Alliaria petiolata
) A widely distributed invasive that is the most nutritious wild green available.

DANDELION
(
Taraxacum officinale
) This healthy bitter herb is packed with vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants.

WILD GARLIC
(
Allium
various species) Flavor is paramount in wild food meals—here is where you find it.

CHICORY
(
Cichorium intybus
) Bitter herb similar in usage to dandelion.

LAMB’S-QUARTERS
(
Chenopodium album
) Best spinach substitute available throughout its growing season.

EVENING PRIMROSE
(
Oenothera biennis
) A versatile wild food with spicy hot roots, young leaves and flowers for salads, and abundant seeds.

WILD CARROT
(
Daucus carota
) Provides a flavor additive and some starchy calories.

BURDOCK
(
Arctium
various species) Provides starchy calories from root and stalk.

CATTAIL
(
Typha latifolia
) If you can find it pollution-free in the urban environment, the roots can be cooked up like vegetables, as well as the green heads and shoots in spring.

ACORN
(
Quercus
various species) Calories are king and acorns pack a punch. Easy to gather in quantity, they do require processing in water to remove tannic acid before consumption.