Workshop Discusses Saving That Taste Of Summer
Food preservation items on display at a recent ISU Extension workshop.
Oskaloosa, Iowa – Consumers today are oftentimes searching for the most healthy eating options available to them and their families. Garden and backyard farming have become more popular in recent years as ways to provide those healthy eating options.
Preserving the food grown in those gardens for use over the next year is important. Those options can include freezing, dehydrating, and canning.
Sara Sprouse is with the Iowa State University Extension, and she presented the basics of canning to the class, which is the biggest draw for many of the participants.
Sprouse said that informing others about the canning process is important to help ensure that those canned garden treasures are safe to eat when you go to use them.
Beyond the basic introduction to canning and food preservation, Sprouse says that the extension office offers more advanced classes “that really delve into the specifics of canning safely”.
For the basic class on Tuesday night, topics covered include heating to proper temperatures and creating enough pressure to make the vacuum that is needed to sterilize and preserve the contents inside.
Sprouse says they encourage and teach the USDA recommendations during their classes and help those interested find and use the resources they need to research those recommendations for safe canning. Variables for users to understand when canning include the size of the jar, altitude, and the contents of the jar, which make using the available resources from the USDA helpful for novice canners.
Sprouse says they encourage people to use their canned products within a year, “but don’t leave it more than 2 years.”
Dehydrating food is also a very popular form of food preservation, and Sprouse says they encourage people to dry foods because “there are so many benefits to drying foods.”
Those benefits include a reduced need for storage space and among preservation methods it is the least expensive. “It concentrates that flavor, and along with the flavor, it concentrates the nutrition in those foods, so your getting the best bang for your buck when you eat that dried banana because it’s really concentrated and really good for you,” added Sprouse.
Oven, solar, and dehydrating machine comparisons were talked about with Sprouse saying that the machine typically provides the best quality in preserving food.
You can find out more by visiting the ISU Extension website here – http://www.extension.iastate.edu/humansciences/preserve-taste-summer
