Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Food Storage: Preserving Meat, Dairy, and Eggs (My new book!)

My new book is out!  Dave, of Dave's Kitchen, co-authored it wth me.

 It's called "Food Storage:  Preserving Meat, Dairy, and Eggs"

The kindle version is available now from Amazon and the print book will be out next week. Click on the picture to go look at it:


Product Details

Here's the 'blurb' about the book:  "There are a lot of books about food preserving but what sets this book apart is that each food and all the methods for preserving that particular food are described in their own chapters. The active Table of Contents allows you to click on a subject and go right to it. The book includes parts I and II:

Part I is an explanation of all the preserving methods, how to do them, and what you’ll need: Canning, Dehydrating, Freezing, Salting, Brining, Sugaring, Smoking, Pickling, and Fermenting, as well as some not-as-often heard of ones as Ash, Oil, and Honey for preservation.

Part II starts with meat and works it’s way through beef/venison/elk, pork/bear, goat/sheep, rabbit, chicken, turkey, duck/goose, and fish; then dairy: milk, butter, cheeses, yogurt and sour cream, and finishes with a chapter on preserving eggs. All the methods that work well with each food are explained along with directions for the preparation and processing of that food. There is also information about what doesn’t work and why."

This is a good book for preppers to keep on hand.  If the SHTF, you'll have directions for preserving food without modern equipment, although the modern stuff is in the book too.

The "Look Inside" sneak-peek looks terrible on the Amazon website, but it looks okay on a kindle. 

7 comments:

  1. Great job. Read your book last night. I will try the canned eggs to have some ready to eat comfort food for my granddaughter. Could you drop a sausage patty in before eggs ?

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    1. I'm glad you liked the meat/dairy/eggs book! I'll have to check with Dave on the canned eggs, since that was his project, but it sure sounds good, putting the sausage patty in before the eggs! Yum!

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    2. Yes, a sausage patty should work out just fine, it should be cooked fairly dry though so no excess moisture is left to get the egg soggy. I have made them with crumbled sausage and it was good and stored OK, the patty is a good idea and I will have to give that a try the next time I can them.

      I have also canned the eggs with bacon, ham and hamburger and they work pretty well and add some verity to the jars.

      Dave...

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    3. Thanks for the reply. I was thinking something along the lines of a homemade Jimmy Dean brown and serve patty with cheese and eggs. I did really enjoy this book. I live in Alaska and this would be great to take to hunting camp or on the boat. Anywhere that I have some motorized transport so they are not to heavy. I will be the hit of camp whiel everyone else is eating Mountain House or MRE's. I better take extra.

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  2. You talk about not canning "gravy" as it is to thick and may not allow the heat to get to the middle, paraphrasing of course. What about a Stew or Chili that is thick in nature? ould you try and water it down and then try and simmer it thicker when heating or is there a better option. I like some homemade spaghetti suace made from ground meat, some chili with ground meat and some stew with meat and veggies. Granted with the stew I could can th emeat and veggies seperate and then add them together. I was wondering if I could have the stew spiced liquid canned with the stew meat and then just add a can of veggies? Thanks for an outstanding book. I am posting as anonymous becaue I don't know how to post as something else. Thanks. AlasKen

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  3. Not canning gravy? Did I really write that? I know that if you're canning something thick you have to be sure to process it the maximum length of time to be sure that the elevated temperatures penetrate all the way to the center. Canning with liquid in the jar is the safest way to accomplish that. The 'dry canning' I do with meat is more risky because if I have a jar packed with something like ground meat, it takes more time to raise that temperature all the way into the middle of the meat.

    Water is a good conductor of heat, so adding it to the jar helps get that heat to the middle. However, I don't like soggy ground meat, so I can it longer and take my chances. Gravy, though, unless it's very thick, should be fine. The only things I see that could happen wouldn't be something that would sicken or kill you. It's possible the heat of the canning process would scorch the gravy, or make it separate, or cause the spices to morph into something weird-tasting. Those are things you could experiment with, and I know someone is probably going to complain that I suggested that someone else experiment, which along with suggesting people do further research on things they're interested in, seems to irk people. I do as much of it as I can. I have a real life, real work here on the homestead and I've already spent hours researching and being bashed for doing so, while chores and the 2-year old grandson my husband and I are raising, have had to come second. No more. I'll keep writing what I know about and posting the guest posts, but I'm done researching and writing books for now.

    Oh, by the way, I think canning the stew meat with the liquid (or even gravy) and then adding the veggies later, is a great idea. It is possible to can the stew with the vegetables. I've done that, with both beef and chicken, then later used it for soups/stews, meat and dumplings, or pot pies.

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  4. Hi, I wanted to comment on the "ash" preservation technique. I once left ash I thought was cooled into a bucket by our wood stove, that night I smelled burnt plastic and went to investigate. When I reached the wood stove I could see smoke rising from the plastic bucket with the ash. I lifted the bucket and there was a hole straight through the bucket and rug it was sitting on. My theory is what if that is the purpose of covering meat with ash? To cook it slowly? Ash is a strange thing, even if it is barely warm it could heat back up to a 100 degrees or more in a few hours. It doesn't need ventilation, and it generates it's own heat.

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