Foods like meat and fish spoil quickly without refrigeration, thus having a backup power source, such as a generator, is essential for most households. For this reason, it’s important that you learn about various methods of food preservation.
How to Keep Food Fresh Without a Refrigerator
First, smoking is a time-honored method of preparation and preservation. Smoking is a great way to prolong the shelf life of items like fish and meat that would otherwise spoil quickly. Smoking is as easy as starting a fire and setting up a grill or stick over it to smoke your meat or fish.
Although I acknowledge that this method is time-consuming, I find that smoked meat and fish are generally more flavorful.
Canning: placing food in a can and boiling it to kill any germs or microbes that could cause the food to spoil is one way to preserve it. Canned tomatoes are a popular pantry staple.
In this scenario, the tomatoes are ground, boiled until dry, poured into a bottle, and then boiled again
Foods, such as vegetables, can be easily preserved with the drying method. Natural sunshine and heat can be used to dehydrate food, however this depends on the temperature. You may dry vegetables at room temperature and still keep them green, or you can dry tomatoes, cereals, fruits, pepper, etc., in the sun.
It’s also possible to get a food dehydrator with a built-in extractor that will speed up the drying process by removing excess moisture from your food.
Healthline.com describes fermentation as a “natural process” in which yeast and bacteria are utilized to transform sugars and starches into alcoholic beverages and organic acids, respectively. Foods high in carbohydrates, such as corn, cassava, etc., can be preserved through fermentation.
Fermentation has other benefits, including the creation of beneficial bacteria that can enhance gut flora and digestive health.