# How To Preserve Meat Like The Pioneers



## Urinal Cake (Oct 19, 2013)

How To Preserve Meat Like The Pioneers

Food preservation is a huge problem during a survival situation. Imagine if you do not access to refrigerators (that work) or to food with preservatives that will stay edible when left on the shelf. What would you do to keep food edible?

Fortunately, answers to questions like this can often be found by studying a little history, and I don't mean the overview and indoctrination that too many people get in school. You need to study the day-to-day lives of people in older times such as the pioneers in the old west to find useful answers to these kinds of problems. With that in mind, here are four forgotten meat preservation methods from the 1800s:

Fat cap: Bacteria needs oxygen to do their damage in breaking down food. Fortunately for us, fat is incredibly useful as a sealant for food, keeping out oxygen to help preserve meats. James Walton writes,
One of the best ways to take advantage of this fat or fat cap is to create a stock or broth. Bone broth has become very popular and would work here, as well. As you simmer the bones in your stock or broth, try not to skim off the fat. (Although you do need to skim off the foam and impurities.)

As this mixture cools, you will see the fat cap begin to rise, form and solidify. Store this somewhere cool. A refrigerator is ideal for the modern homesteader, but a cool basement will work, as well, particularly in colder temperatures. In the fridge, you will get up to a month if you leave the fat cap undisturbed; you could get up to two weeks in a nice cool area.

Salt cure and hang: Salt has long been prized as a preservative. Using salt to cure meat can take months, but it will then stay good for an extended period of time in which you can use it.
Rillette: This is basically seasoning and shredding your meat, and, then, mixing in fat that then cools and seals the meat in to help preserve it. The primary difference between rillette and a meat cap is that the meat cap is applied on the outside. Rillette is mixed in with the meat.
Confit: This is slow, low-termperature cooking, again submerged in fat. The fat surrounds and, basically, seals in the meat, helping to preserve it.
There you have it: four ways to preserve meat that don't require a refrigerator.

How To Preserve Meat Like The Pioneers ? Survival Institute


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## Smitty901 (Nov 16, 2012)

Summer sausage in Wisconsin was, still is big.


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## Illini Warrior (Jan 24, 2015)

canning isn't going to disappear - no need to disregard technology just because the world slipped a cog ....


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## SOCOM42 (Nov 9, 2012)

Brine is another process.

Can be done under pressure.


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## Mrs. Spork (Jan 30, 2017)

Smoke house too... or so I hear


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## Joe (Nov 1, 2016)

Smitty901 said:


> Summer sausage in Wisconsin was, still is big.


 @Smitty901 I lived in Marathon County at one time. The family I lived with would have their venison made into summer sausage. I still remember how goood that was!


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## Mad Trapper (Feb 12, 2014)

I just finished reading the complete Lewis and Clark journals, again. Good reading. They preserved meats in a bunch of ways. 

They brought with them salted pork that lasted a very long time. They traded with the Natives for pemmican but I did not read of them making their own. 

Surplus wild game was dried/smoked/jerked and salted if they had salt available. At Ft Clapstop near the mouth of the Columbia, they established a nearby camp at the seashore and put up a supply of salt, by boiling down seawater, which lasted them to the continental divide on their return journey. 

The Crops of Discovery did have problems storing dried meat. If it was not initially dried enough it would not keep, and even well dried meat could pick up moisture by being exposed to water: splashing in the canoes during the river voyages, rain/snow, and high humidity particularly when they were on the west coast before they had established their Fort/Winter quarters. 

Salt does help with moisture problems as high salt concentrations are bacteriastatic, but salt is also hygroscopic. Dried meat should be kept dry to keep from spoiling.

Smoking imparts preservation in addition to drying. This can be applied to meat which has been previously brined (think smoked ham/bacon).

When large quantities of salt were available meat was put up in barrels of salt.

It should also be noted that milk/ice houses were common until electricity became available. This was not a freezer but provided a means of refrigeration for dairy and meats. In fact ice was a commodity and was stored and sold in large quantities. Some milk houses were built near springs which were plumbed to flow through a troth where food could be cooled by the flowing water. The overflow was plumbed back outside.

Later than pioneers but you can, pressure can, meats and fish.


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## Prepared One (Nov 5, 2014)

Smitty901 said:


> Summer sausage in Wisconsin was, still is big.


I remember the Summer Sausage as well. Love it. I used to spend summers in Wisconsin with my Grandfather. I used to love the roasted corn dipped in butter when we went to the fairs as well. Lot's of Polka music as I remember.


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## rstanek (Nov 9, 2012)

In my youth when I was still on the farm we smoked beef, and fish, we would catch carp then put them in the cattle tank for about a month feeding them alfalfa pellets, then smoke, can't find it in the store today that good....


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## Urinal Cake (Oct 19, 2013)

Smitty901 said:


> Summer sausage in Wisconsin was, still is big.


Quit Braggin'!
Are we to assume your winter sausage is small?


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## Redneck (Oct 6, 2016)

In the old days here in the deep south, smoked & cured pork was a staple & could last all year without refrigeration... even in our heat & humidity. Problem is, it is mostly a lost art. Doing it wrong has dire repercussions. I do store pails of regular salt plus both 1 & 2 curing salts but I have no smoke house & have never cured a ham before. The other method of preserving food down here was pickling and I am set up to do that on a large scale. I have around 150 apple trees and a manual cider press. Making apple cider vinegar is actually rather easy as it is the natural result from pressing apple juice. It naturally will ferment to alcohol and will then naturally convert to vinegar. Granted, by controlling the process with fermentation bottles & having some specific yeasts & mother of vinegar, one can get better, more consistent results.

I also am a fan of canning, both water bath & pressure. I find that to be a very safe way of preserving all sorts of food, including meat. I have a special rocket stove designed to work with my pressure canner but have yet to give it a try. I don't trust the reusable lids so I stock large quantities of the regular, metal ones.


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## Chipper (Dec 22, 2012)

Stock up on spam, now.


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## Redneck (Oct 6, 2016)

Chipper said:


> Stock up on spam, now.


Ha! Yep, do that too.


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## OrneryOldBat (Feb 10, 2017)

******* said:


> In the old days here in the deep south, smoked & cured pork was a staple & could last all year without refrigeration... even in our heat & humidity. Problem is, it is mostly a lost art. Doing it wrong has dire repercussions. I do store pails of regular salt plus both 1 & 2 curing salts but I have no smoke house & have never cured a ham before. The other method of preserving food down here was pickling and I am set up to do that on a large scale. I have around 150 apple trees and a manual cider press. Making apple cider vinegar is actually rather easy as it is the natural result from pressing apple juice. It naturally will ferment to alcohol and will then naturally convert to vinegar. Granted, by controlling the process with fermentation bottles & having some specific yeasts & mother of vinegar, one can get better, more consistent results.
> 
> I also am a fan of canning, both water bath & pressure. I find that to be a very safe way of preserving all sorts of food, including meat. I have a special rocket stove designed to work with my pressure canner but have yet to give it a try. I don't trust the reusable lids so I stock large quantities of the regular, metal ones.


I'm with you on the canning. I'm still looking for a reusable lid I'd trust, so I've also got a huge number of unused lids.

Speaking of dire experiences. My first attempt at corning beef was a disaster. The kind you have to bury deep in the back yard. Still not sure what I did wrong - luckily, later attempts turned out fine.


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## dwight55 (Nov 9, 2012)

Chipper said:


> Stock up on spam, now.


Just as soon as the devil is handing out ice cream cones, . . . and hell is frozen solid 6 feet deep.

My native American family all had a word for Spam............UGH !!

May God bless,
Dwight


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## bigwheel (Sep 22, 2014)

An old yankeee farm boy pal PA i think... talked about his mama frying large batches of pork sausage and layering it in a big ceramic crock submerged in its own grease. He say that stuff kept a long time and was real tasty.


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## Urinal Cake (Oct 19, 2013)

Prepared One said:


> Lot's of Polka music as I remember.


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