Best Food Preservation Methods

As we start working our way through spring and into summer, we need to start thinking about the best food preservation methods. There are many different ways to preserve your harvest and they are all great. If you follow the FDA and USDA guides, you’ll find that preserving your harvest may not be possible and freezing is your best bet. If you are a rebel, like myself, you may find that pressure canning is the saving grace to all that hard work. Regardless the question will eventually arise “what is the best way to preserve this?” While the answer is totally up to you, I will give you my reasons why I choose to can the majority of my garden harvest.

Best Food Preservation Methods

There are 3 main types of preservation and obviously many sub categories. The 3 big ones are freezing, canning, or dehydrating. Each one of these methods have pros and cons. Each food that you are looking to preserve will have better results depending on your methods. While I am very much a rebel when it comes to how I preserve my foods, it all comes down to two main considerations, texture and safety.

Freezing

I have two huge chest freezers and one upright freezer, which sounds like a lot. But it’s not when you purchase whole hogs and cows and butcher 100+ meat chickens every year. A whole cow will overflow an entire 18cu ft chest freezer. And even breaking down chickens still takes up a ton of space. Despite great organization, those freezers are crammed to the max with various meats.

But there are certain things that we are just going to freeze instead of canning. Things like green beans, corn on the cob, shredded potatoes, and the over abundance of tomatoes.

We are at the point were we are going to have to get a third chest freezer to handle all of the produce and meat we consume every year.

The biggest downsides to freezing is space, texture and power outages.

Canning

I am a rebel so I will can pretty much anything. There are certain things that I will absolutely pressure can vs waterbath. There are also things that I will freeze over can. The big one is meat. Canned meat just doesn’t suit our tastebuds. I have some and let’s just say, it’s not pretty. The ground beef taste like cat food looks. The chicken looks nasty and to be honest, I don’t know if I can bring myself to try it.

But there are many, many things that I choose to can for the ease and space saving. Things like corn, green beans, soups, potatoes, beans, and the like.

But I don’t can things like squash, green beans, peas, and meats. I can’t stand the texture of these foods canned. Though I will can French cut green beans occasionally.

I have found that canning is a huge space saver when it comes to freezer space but it has it’s own draw backs. Storage becomes a hassle if you don’t have the ability to dedicate a space to storing jars, canners, lids, etc.

Another big draw bag is the time it takes to prep for canning. While I don’t babysit my canners when they are working, I do stick close because I don’t want to risk the canner stopping or running out of propane.

Dehydrating

This is probably my favorite way to preserve foods. It is very hands off and I don’t need to worry as much about setting timers, checking propane or making sure I have enough space in the freezers. I just fill my trays, pop them in the dehydrator and hope I remember them in a day or two.

I love to puree tomatoes and then dehydrate the crap out of them. Skin and all. When it’s finally dry, usually two days, I throw it in my blender and now I have tomato flakes. I can reconstitute it for paste, sauce, or added flavor in soups.

I’ve also done the same thing with left over mashed potatoes. Throw it in a silicone liner, pop it in the dehydrator and then blend. Now, I’ve got instant potato flakes that I can just add warm milk or water to.

I love the minimal waste of a dehydrator too. If I don’t need a whole onion, I can chop up the rest of it and put it in the dehydrator and now I’ve got a shelve stable product that will take years to go bad.

Dehydrating is the most versatile of all the options. But it can take forever.

I have this dehydrator as well as a DIY one that we found at Habitat For Humanity. I would recommend going as big as you can afford and store if you have a good size garden. You would be surprised at how much you can fit in a dehydrator but it also really isn’t that much either. So make sure that you go bigger than you need.

But What’s The Best Food Preservation Method?

That is really going to depend on you, what you are preserving and what you have at your disposal. If you don’t have a ton of space for extra freezers, then freezing isn’t going to be a good option. Or if you don’t have a basement that you can put in shelves, canning may not be a good option either. Finally, if you are looking for good emergency preparedness options, adding foods that need water to reconstitute isn’t a great option either.

For me and my family, I choose to do a mix of all three methods. I enjoy having my meats and some veggies in the freezer. I prefer to have soups canned and ready to go to take to work or on nights that I just don’t feel like cooking. I love the versatility of dehydrated veggies in soups to help soak up the water and add some heartiness.

The best food preservation method is the one that works for you, your family and your situation. If you can’t stand the texture of frozen strawberries, then dehydrate them. If you don’t have the space for hundreds of jars of food, look into freezing.

Try Different Methods

I love a good experiment and luckily, if we don’t like something, we can feed it to the chickens. I froze a bunch of strawberries I had gotten at half price and when I went to use them, I couldn’t stand the texture. So they got put in to mix drinks, got used as ice, or just got thrown to the chickens. But I also dehydrated a bunch and they were a decent snack.

I canned a bunch of dried beans because I never remember to soak or have time to make them on the go. The beans were okay and I’d do it again, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to make cases and cases like I did. If my instapot broke, I would definitely do it again though.

Don’t be afraid of trying a few of these methods and figure out what you like. I didn’t know that I loved green beans until I had them fresh from the garden. Go figure.

If you like this post feel free to share it on your social media and follow us on the social medial links below!

If you like the content I put out, feel free to buy us a coffee! It helps keep this site running, marketing and the goats in grain!

Buy me a coffee