01/29/2018 / By Zoey Sky
It’s always a good idea to brush up on your survival skills. You never know when your knowledge of fire making or foraging is going to come in handy.
If you’re new to hunting and meat preservation, this article can give you tips on how to cure and preserve meant when you’re outdoors.
The first food preservation method we’ll explore is curing, which uses salt, sugar, nitrite and/or nitrate to draw out the moisture in meat.
After the curing process, you can simply rehydrate the meat before consumption. This is usually done via boiling. Once cured meat is boiled, its nutritional content is almost the same as fresh meat. Curing is an effective method of meat preservation, but make sure you store meat in a dry environment to avoid spoilage.
Smoking meat gives it a “savory, barbecue” flavor. Meat that is smoked longer also has a longer shelf life. For example, meat smoked overnight can last for at least a week and meat smoked for two days can last for about two to four weeks. Do take note that smoking meat for longer than a day gives it a stronger smoky flavor.
To smoke meat:
Once the meat is smoked, it will be dry and rather brittle. It will curl a bit, but it shouldn’t feel cold to the touch. After smoking, the meat can be eaten right away.
If you’re in an area where the temperature is below freezing, you can leave the meat outside. Freezing meat like this is almost the same as putting it in a working freezer. When frozen, meat is well-preserved until thawed. Remember to cook frozen meat before consumption to avoid food poisoning.
To make jerky when you’re outdoors, place meat on a rack over a flame. This helps dry out the meat, but like smoking, you need to make sure that the meat racks are not too close to the fire. As the meat dries, the smoke will turn the meat into jerky. You can hasten the drying process by covering the fire.
You can also make jerky without a fire, but only if the meat has been cured before it is dried. You can hang meat inside a box and dry it using a fan, and this produces “exceptionally tasty jerky” that you can eat even before it’s fully dried. Jerky made using this technique often tastes better than store-bought jerky.
When gathering wood for curing or drying meat, avoid these toxic tree species:
You can learn more about food preservation, prepping, and survival at Bugout.news.
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