How to store food during the summer hike. Tip: How to store meat outdoors

Tuesday, April 12, 2016 07:56 + in the quote pad

Not only special devices, but also "people's advice" will help to keep the food fresh for some time. Our great-grandmothers and grandmothers somehow managed without refrigerators.

We preserve dairy products

This is especially true if there are children in the family who need fresh milk, cottage cheese, butter every day.

• Method 1

To prolong the freshness of the milk, boil it by adding baking soda or sugar to the tip of a knife. After boiling, pour into an enamel, glass or ceramic dish. Place the container with milk in a bowl of cold water so that the water reaches half of it. Then cover with a napkin or waffle towel soaked in water and wrung out, leaving its edges in the water, and put it in a dark place in a draft (remember the principle of operation of an atmospheric refrigerator). Constantly evaporating water will keep the temperature low and the milk will not turn sour.

• Method 2

You can act differently. Close the jar of milk tightly and wrap it with a layer of cotton wool. Fasten cotton wool for reliability with threads. Put the jar packed in this way in a shallow large plate with cold water. The cotton wool will absorb the water and cool the milk. Only you will have to add water often, since cotton wool will take it up faster than fabric.

Method 1

These foods can sit in saline-soaked parchment paper for two to three days.

• Method 2

Cut into portions and place in a bowl with strong saline solution. Just before use, be sure to rinse in cool water.

• Method 3

Refers to butter. It can be wrapped in a cloth soaked in wine vinegar. The oil stays fresh for a long time.

• Method 4

Again, about butter. Put a piece of butter in salt water and pour vegetable oil on top with a thin layer. It will create a film that will not let the air through, and the contents will remain "canned". The main thing is not to shake the bowl so as not to break the oil film. Be sure to rinse the oil before eating to rinse off the salt.

Before you put the curd in the jar, you need to sterilize it. Put a thin layer of salt on the bottom. Tamp the cottage cheese so that it fills the entire jar, and there is no air left. Close the container with gauze soaked in salt water. Close the structure with a wooden stand under the hot and put the load on top.

It is worth considering: no matter how hard we try and try, cottage cheese is very poorly stored if it is really natural. And if the freshness of a food is a concern, it’s best not to eat it.

We preserve meat products

Most people eat meat and sausage, and many still have no idea how to do without them. Therefore, many ways have been invented to keep these products fresh.

Meat

Method 1- in vinegar

The meat is wrapped in a cloth soaked in vinegar. Then the bundle is placed in a bowl with a lid and placed in the shade. Rinse the meat thoroughly with water before cooking.

• Method 2 - in nettles

A piece of meat is covered with fresh nettle leaves washed in cool water on all sides. Then it is wrapped in paper and stored in a cool dry place.

• Method 3 - with a crust

Fry until a crust appears or scald a piece of meat with boiling water. If the meat is scalded, then dry it over the fire. Wrap in cheesecloth and expose in a draft.

• Method 4 - with horseradish

If horseradish grows in the garden, you should pick 2-3 of the largest leaves. Wrap the meat in them so that it is closed on all sides. Wrap everything tightly in parchment paper and store in a dark place. Chopped horseradish is also suitable - it is coated with meat. Then everything is the same: wrap it in paper and put it in the shade. In the absence of paper, the meat, grated with horseradish, can be folded into a jar or saucepan and tightly closed with a lid.

• Method 5 - with garlic or onions

Put the meat on a small stand (like a stand for steaming in a multicooker), lower it into a saucepan. Before that, put onion or garlic chopped in a blender on the bottom of the pan (you can do both). Close the lid and put away in a dark place.

• Method 6 - in sour milk

The meat is poured with sour milk so that it is not visible, and placed in a cool place.

• Method 7 - in lemon

The meat is generously rubbed with lemon juice, sprinkled with salt. Stuff tightly in a saucepan with a lid - and straight into a cold place.

• Method 8 - for frozen meat

If you want to preserve frozen meat, it should be wrapped in several layers of paper or newspaper. Alternatively - in old clothes, again in several layers. This way it won't melt longer.

Important!The meat removed from the bone retains its freshness better.

Another product that does not store well. You can put it in a well, but even there the sausage will not last long.

Here either take the amount that you can eat right away, or refrain from buying, knowing that there is no refrigerator.

Smoked sausage

Stored for three days. It is better to keep it in a dry ventilated area. You can fry or dry a little over the fire.

A whole chicken is wrapped in nettle leaves (or the same nettle is stuffed inside the carcass) - so the bird will "hold out" for a day, provided that the room is cool enough.

Chopped poultry meat in a bowl can be shifted with nettle leaves. All of the above "meat" methods are suitable for storing poultry.

We save the fish

• Method 1

If the fish is fresh (not smoked, not dried, and so on), then it is covered with rowan or nettle leaves, salted on top, and covered with a napkin dipped in vinegar. And, of course, they put them away in a cool room.

• Method 2

It is good to gut the fish, but do not wash it. Season with salt, pepper and hang in a cool ventilated place. You can also stuff the gutted carcass with nettles.

• Method 3

Smoked fish can be hung to dry in the wind and sun.

Save the eggs

• Method 1

Coat each raw egg with vegetable oil on top and cool.

• Method 2

Cover raw eggs with sand in a saucepan and place in the shade.

If your refrigerator has lost the competition in the summer heat and has ceased to cool properly, or even broke down altogether, do not be discouraged. Here are 9 ways to keep food hot without a refrigerator.

1. Meat. There are several ways to keep meat fresh without a refrigerator. You can dry it with a paper towel, coat it with beef or lamb fat on all sides, wrap it in parchment paper and hang it in a cool place. Another way: dip the meat in boiling water or oil for a few seconds so that a crust forms on all sides, then dry it, tie it with string and store in a draft. Cut off the crust before eating and cook or fry as usual. There are other ways: wrap the meat in a rag soaked in vinegar solution, or store it in a strong saline solution, just remember to rinse it thoroughly before cooking.

2. Chicken. To keep your chicken fresh, you need to scrub it, rinse it, and wrap it tightly with a rag soaked in vinegar. Moisten the rag with vinegar as it dries. Another way: rub the carcass inside and outside with salt and hang it in a draft.

4. Sausage. You can save sausages like this: make a strong salty solution and put the sausage there for a few minutes. Then take out and wipe the sausage with a towel, and spread the cut with raw chicken protein. Store sausage in a cool, dark place.

5. Cheese. To prevent the cheese from drying out, wrap it in a cloth soaked in brine.

6. Eggs. Before refrigerators appeared, housewives kept eggs by flooding them with water left over from slaking lime. Thus, eggs can be stored for a month even at above-zero temperatures. Another way: grease each egg thoroughly with lard and put it in a cool, dark place (it is important that the eggs do not touch each other). They can be stored for up to two weeks.

7. Milk. To prevent the milk from souring, it is better to boil it with a pinch of sugar and baking soda on the tip of a knife. Then pour into a glass jar or earthenware jug, wrap with a wet rag, put in a basin of cold water and cover. It is better to keep the dishes in a cool place or in a draft. As the water evaporates, add fresh and wet the rag again with cold water.

8. Canned food. After opening the canned food, immediately transfer the contents to a glass or enamel dish, and put a piece of sugar on top. Close the lid and store in a dark place for 2-3 days.
Canned tomatoes, tomato paste and juice will not mold for a long time if you pour a thin layer of vegetable oil on top of them.

9. Fish. The fish must be gutted, the gills removed, but not washed, but wiped dry with a cloth and rubbed inside and outside with salt. Fish processed in this way can be stored in a draft for several days. If you need to keep the fish for longer than a week, you can try the next method. Make a salty solution, bring it to a boil, pour a little vinegar into it, cool and put the fish in the resulting liquid. Repeat the procedure after 5 days.

The presence of a large amount of food during the trip does not mean that starvation certainly does not threaten its participants. Food must not only be prepared, but properly packed and stored during travel. Experience has shown that keeping food in good quality is not that difficult if you follow some simple tips.

I. Meat, fish and poultry:

In hot weather, fresh meat can be stored for no more than 2-3 days, fresh fish is stored even less.

Storage method: put meat or fish in an airtight package and put in running water (stream, river, etc.). Also, meat, fish or poultry can be smoked. Distinguish between hot (at a temperature of 70-130 degrees) and cold (at a temperature of 35-40 degrees) smoking. Products that have been smoked using the second method do not spoil longer. Before smoking, meat or fish must be salted: for 1 kilogram of meat, about 50 grams of salt is needed. The fish can also be dried or dried.

Spoiled meat is dark in color, grease is smeared. The fossa formed by pressing the finger on the meat is slowly and incompletely leveled. The smell is sour, unpleasant. In doubtful cases, to determine the good quality of meat, you can stick a knife heated in boiling water into it - by the smell of the knife, the freshness of the meat is determined.

The scales of spoiled fish become covered with mucus, become dirty and easily separate from the meat. The gills become gray, the eyes are sunken and cloudy. The pulp is easily separated from the bones, especially from the spine.

II. Vegetables and berries:

The best conditions for preserving vegetables is a low temperature. Therefore, they can, for example, be buried in wet cold sand. In cold weather, vegetables can be frozen, but it is worth remembering that when frozen, they lose the lion's share of their nutrients. The same cannot be said about frozen berries. Even after the deepest freezing, lingonberries, cranberries, blueberries will remain the same useful.

"In summer, the harvested berries are best stored in a birch bark container."

III. Sausages and cheeses:

Please note that you should not take the first sausage you find with you on your hike. Gourmets will be delighted, animal advocates will be upset, but the most nutritious and long-lasting sausage is horse sausage.

Of the cheeses, smoked cheeses are stored for the longest time in sealed factory packaging. But both those and other products may become unusable if they get under the rays of the bright hot mountain sun. Therefore, put them closer to the back of your hiking backpack, you can vertically. This will reduce the likelihood of crushing them, and at the same time the contents of the backpack absorb the heat of the sun's rays, and the food will be stored with the least temperature fluctuations.

Use the same way to store sausage and cheese in frost. And on a winter night, you can put them near embers so that the water in the food does not freeze until morning. And although the food turns into ice, it will last longer, but it will absolutely lose its taste and, to some extent, nutritional value.

How to understand that a product has gone bad:

1. Sausage.

The surface of the spoiled sausage is covered with mucus. A putrid smell comes primarily from those places where the sausage has folds or is tied with a rope. The color of the minced meat in these places is grayish.

IV. Chocolate and biscuits on the hike:

It is advisable to store chocolate in field conditions in the same way as sausage with cheese - inside a backpack. Chocolate is more often taken with them on mountain hikes or in the cold season. Otherwise, it will melt from the heat and become completely unsuitable for human consumption. Cookies should be placed in the backpack on top, above all things. This is the only way you can bring him to the halt.

V. Flour, cereals, pasta:

Before storing flour, cereals, pasta, dry it well, put it in cloth bags or paper bags.

Vi. Canned food:

Before eating canned food, you need to make sure that it is of good quality. First, it is recommended to inspect the jar - sometimes there are rust, dents, smudges on it, which may be a sign of a leakage. To check the tightness (if there is any doubt about this), the jar is immersed in water heated to 70-80 ° C for 5-7 minutes. If air bubbles appear above the canned food, then they should not be eaten.

Tin cans of canned food should not have swollen bottoms - bombing. This occurs from the accumulation of gases as a result of the vital activity of harmful microbes. Such canned food, especially meat and fish, is dangerous. You should be aware that sometimes the lids swell during freezing of canned food during winter or high-altitude travel. After they are thawed, the bombing disappears. This is the so-called physical bombing, which can also be in benign canned food. Leakage of sauce at a height when opening canned food is due to the pressure difference, and not because the canned food is spoiled, as tourists think.

You can find some defects in the quality of canned food, which are safe for health and do not reduce the nutritional value of the product. So, on the inner surface of a can of canned food (most often fish and meat), rich in proteins, you can see bluish-brown spots of tin sulphide. Sometimes a dark coating appears on the inner surface of the lid and on the rim of the neck of the glass jar. It is better to remove the darkened layer so as not to spoil the appearance of the food. In some canned vegetables, black small particles are formed - pieces of iron sulfide. In these cases, vegetables should be rinsed in water before eating. In canned vegetables and fruits, the top layer darkens - this is the result of oxidation of products when they come into contact with the air remaining in the can after canning. In cans with condensed milk, you can find white crystals - the result of the crystallization of lactose and sucrose. None of the listed changes should raise doubts about the good quality of canned food - all of them are not hazardous to health.

Opened canned food should be used immediately, especially in summer, when the access of warm air accelerates the processes of oxidation of products and the reproduction of microbes.

Vii. Bread, biscuits:

They can withstand medium temperatures well, but at elevated temperatures and especially at high air humidity, they have a musty, unpleasant smell and taste if the packaging is not sealed. Keeps well in plastic bags.

Being outside of civilization, in the field, it is quite difficult not only to get food, but also to preserve it. What to do, how to store food when there is no refrigerator at hand? If it is winter then the problem disappears by itself, but if it is a hot summer.

First of all, if the trip is thought out and planned in advance, promises to be long, you need to give up perishable food, raw meat and fish, dairy products.

If you find yourself in a situation where you yourself are forced to get your own food and the hike is not a hike at all, but survival, then you need to follow the rules for storing food so as not to be left with nothing.

One of the most important rules is that food products should not get wet and come into contact with each other. Especially from moisture it is necessary to protect cereals and bread. Sugar and salt are also afraid of moisture, but when they get wet, they will not deteriorate much, they only stick together and lose their presentation and friability, but in this form they
it is quite possible to use. But cereals, bread products must be stored in plastic bags, periodically inspecting and, if necessary, drying (since condensation may form in the bag due to the temperature difference).

The extracted meat in the warm season can be stored for no more than 2-3 days. The fish is stored even less (fresh fish storage). To increase the shelf life, it is recommended to transfer fresh meat with nettles and store in a cool pit, covered with branches, or in running water in an airtight container. For the best
the preservation of the meat must be rubbed with salt. Fresh meat can be stored by cutting it into thin slices and hanging it on tree branches, in a place where it will be exposed to the wind and where it will be protected from flies and other insects. This process is similar to drying. But you need to remember that
the smell of such meat can attract predators.

Vegetables, like almost everything else, are stored better at low temperatures, for this they can be buried, for example, in wet, cold sand. Harvested, whole, not wrinkled, cleaned from debris and from insects, berries can be stored in a birch bark container for quite a long time. In winter, with the storage of meat and
fish is easier - it can be frozen. Best frozen in low temperatures in the wind. So the freezing process will take place faster, more nutrients in the product will be preserved. They retain their nutrients well - lingonberries, cranberries, blueberries, blueberries. But it is better to dry vegetables for storage.
For long-term storage, you can use such methods of preserving food as smoking, drying.

Smoking is hot (at a temperature of 70-130 C °) and cold (at a temperature of 35-40 C °). Hot smoking is faster in terms of time, but the shelf life of hot smoked products is only a few days. But for long-term storage, the cold smoking method is very good.

Before hot smoking, meat, fish or poultry must be salted at the rate of 40-50 g of salt per 1 kg of meat, 50 -70 g per 1 kg of poultry. The fish is gutted, cut along the back and rubbed with salt. After salting, the meat and fish must be put in boxes and kept for a certain time - meat 12-18 hours, fish 24 hours, poultry 3-4 days.
After holding the bird, if possible, also sag in the wind for one or two days. You can smoke, for example, in a barrel or bucket. If the barrel has a bottom, then it is placed upside down on the fire, and small branches and wood for smoldering are put inside. If there is no bottom, then the fire is made in the barrel itself. Meat and fish are hung inside on sticks, or on a wire rack made of rods. For a fire, you can use spruce branches, oak bark, aromatic herbs to give the best taste.

For cold smoking in field conditions, you need to try. Prepare the product as for hot smoking. And build a smokehouse.
The device of a cold smoker is very different from a hot smoker. The main task is to obtain cold smoke from burning wood. The smoke temperature should not exceed 35-40 degrees. And if the products are salty, then even less. In this case, it is necessary to provide traction from the firebox to the smokehouse. It is very difficult to do this in a natural way, since the thrust depends on the difference in temperature between the smoke and the surrounding air. Therefore, when setting up a cold smokehouse, two problems have to be solved. First, arrange a sufficiently long chimney, several meters, so that the smoke has time to cool down to 35 degrees. Secondly, to provide traction from the firebox to the smoking chamber.
In the old days, such smokehouses were built on the slopes of steep hills, cliffs, etc. from the windward side. By arranging long chimneys right in the ground. They dug a trench along the slope of the hill, blocked it from above with sticks, branches and covered it with removed sod. And the wind helped blow smoke into these chimneys. On another
a smoking chamber was arranged at the end of the chimney. The cold smoking process itself can take up to a day, but for that the product obtained by cold smoking can be stored for a long time even at high temperatures.

For a long time, you can prepare fried meat: well-fried, cut into small pieces and salted meat is placed in a clay container, and poured on top with hot melted fat, ideally if there is mutton fat, so that the fat fills all the space between the pieces. After cooling down, wax paper is laid on top, on which salt is poured. In this form, the meat can be stored for several months, even in extreme heat.

When drying and drying fish, it is salted as for smoking, kept in a box or barrel for three days. Then they burst with chopsticks and dried in a well-ventilated, lighted place. When drying, poultry meat is cut to the bone in fleshy places, dipped for 2-3 minutes in a boiling saline solution and hung out in the wind and sun for 2-3 days.

To preserve the mushrooms, they need to be dried. For drying, porcini mushrooms, boletus, boletus, boletus are best suited. Mushrooms are selected only clean, without damage and dried on dry sunny days, strung on a string or on a wire rack. After the main drying, the mushrooms can be dried by the fire at 60-70 C °.

When harvesting mushrooms, fish, meat, one should remember about diseases such as botulism, the pathogens of which enter the body with particles of soil, poorly washed mushrooms, vegetables, from the intestines of fish, etc., therefore, high-quality washing and heat treatment of products is recommended. Salting and drying is not
gives a 100% guarantee of the destruction of all pathogens of various diseases. But good roasting, long cooking and both types of smoking will completely eliminate these troubles.
You don't have to be a chef or a technologist, but you need to have at least minimal knowledge in the field of food preservation. Knowing how to preserve food, being in hiking or field, extreme conditions, outside of civilization, you can always stock up on food for future use and not die from
hunger.

Traveling has always greatly worried our editorial staff - we devote more and more materials on the site to this issue: stories of the heroes of the publication, tips, unexpected finds. Once we have already ventured into the territory of specialized outdoor publications by writing about. Today we continue to delve into this topic and talk about how to store meat during the trip (especially freshly mined).

It doesn't matter if you go hunting, accidentally find yourself thrown into an impenetrable forest, or just travel in authentic extreme ways - these basic tips will be useful in any case.

How to store meat
in field conditions

For storing meat, seasoned hunters use conservation: they salt, smoke or pickle the meat of killed game. But all these methods, firstly, require preliminary preparation, and secondly, it is not always possible to carry an additional load in the form of large vats or cans, salt and ingredients for making the marinade. Therefore, we will tell you about how to preserve the meat obtained during the hunt, literally with improvised means.

Storage of game with herbs

First of all, it should be remembered that waterfowl spoils faster than upland game. A duck, if not gutted in time, but thrown into a backpack, will deteriorate in ten hours, or even earlier. At the same time, the black grouse without any manipulation may well remain fresh throughout the day.

In order to slightly extend the shelf life, killed game should be carried in a game bag or tied to a belt so that it is constantly blown by the wind. But this is just a half measure.

As soon as possible, a shot bird should be gutted and stuffed with nettles or juniper. The leaves will provide airflow while preventing flies from entering the carcass. In addition, the leaves of the nettle or juniper will release bactericidal substances, which will extend the shelf life.

Primary processing of meat of large animals

The first rule of processing animal meat is to immediately bleed and gut the carcass. It would be wrong to talk about how to do this correctly within the framework of such material, so we will limit ourselves to reminding you that this needs to be done. Otherwise, the meat will be hopelessly spoiled, and it will become impossible to eat it. At the same time, the meat of a large animal should not be eaten immediately - it should "ripen" after lying for 10-12 hours. The main task at this time is to prevent damage.

There are several ways to do this. First of all, you can build a curtain of gauze or mesh, which will provide air access, but prevent flies from entering the carcass. This is done so that a dried crust forms on the meat, which will serve as a natural analogue of the protective film and will allow the meat to be stored for two to three days in a cool place.

Freezing

In the cold season, problems with storing meat should not arise - all nature becomes a refrigerator. But even here there are some nuances. The faster it freezes, the better the meat will be after thawing. However, for harmful microorganisms seeking to spoil your prey, the most destructive temperature is from minus 6 to minus 12 degrees Celsius.

In order for the meat of large ungulates not to lose much taste when frozen, it is cut into pieces, dipped in water and only then hung up for freezing. The resulting ice crust prevents the juice from freezing out of the meat and prevents it from winding up.

Storage in cold running water

If there is a pond with cold running water nearby, it can be used as a makeshift refrigerator. The meat is cut into pieces and laid out on a flooring made of branches and pressed from above with the same flooring, after which it is immersed in water. It is assumed that meat can be stored in water at a temperature of plus 3-4 degrees for up to a week. True, after the meat is taken out of the water, it deteriorates very quickly, therefore, using this method of storage, care should be taken to quickly cook the meat.

Smoking

For quick smoking, four stakes about a meter high are driven into the ground. You should get a rectangle with sides of one and two meters. Two longitudinal poles are placed on the fork forks of the stakes, and already on them - rods. The main thing is not to use coniferous twigs. It is necessary to cut off all the fat from the meat, and then salt it properly. The meat prepared for smoking is hung on rods, and the bark of a non-resinous tree is laid out on top with a dense flooring.

First, for two to three hours, the meat must be fried over low heat, not allowing the flame to touch it. Ready pieces should be moved away from the fire along the rods, and uncooked pieces should be moved towards the fire.

The meat obtained in this way can be safely stored in a bag, periodically taking out and drying it. Its taste leaves much to be desired, since the quick method cannot be compared with hot or cold smoking, but it will save a lot of time and is suitable for preserving a large amount of meat.

Drying meat with soot

Meat can be dried using soot. To do this, 400 grams of soot is poured into three liters of water, and then boiled under a lid until the water is half boiled away. The resulting liquid is infused for 10-12 hours, after which it is poured through cheesecloth. Next, the coal-black water is properly salted and the meat cut into pieces is put into it for five hours; if the piece is large, then you need to soak it for a day. After this procedure, the meat can be hung to dry in a ventilated, shaded place.

Kourma

This method came from the south - from Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. By the way, it is great for storing meat in any climate, even the hottest. Its essence lies in the fact that the meat is cut into small pieces, fried, folded into a separate bowl and filled with fat melted during the frying process, mixed with salt. When the fat hardens, you get a natural preservative that prevents air from reaching the meat, and therefore prevents the development of microorganisms.

There is a story that archaeologists found a pot of kourma during excavations, and after an analysis it turned out that the meat is quite suitable for food. And it lay in the ground for more than one hundred years.