Salting Food Down
Sharon July 10th, 2008
Another “oldest method” of preserving food is salting. It is comparatively rarely used now, and for fairly good reasons - some people are salt sensitive, and experience blood pressure rises if they consume too much. Eating lots of heavily salted foods has been linked to stomach cancer. And salted foods are salty - they have to be soaked to remove the salt and be palatable. But that said, however, salt brines were the standard method of preservation for many meats and fishes for centuries, and we should know how to do this - period. Salt is inexpensive, and its replacement came with the era of refrigerated shipping, which is probably getting close to over. And salt foods have their place in various cuisines and cultures - baccalao, or salt cod, is a traditional food for the large Portugese populations in coastal Massachusetts - having grown up around fishing communities, this was a familiar food to me as a kid. Salt pork was the staple meat of most pioneers, simply because it could be transported, and is still commonly used in baked beans.
The theory is very simple - enough salt and microorganisms can’t live. They can’t tolerate an extremely salty environment. The recipes I’m using have not been USDA approved - I can’t find any useful USDA information about salting at all, except in collaboration with smoking. I don’t think anyone recommends it. But in _Keeping Food Fresh: Old World Techniques and Recipes_ there are recipes from French gardeners and farmers that have been used for centuries. They suggest that fish should be essentially buried in salt - and that’s what is done with salt cod. The fish are cleaned and layered with a thick layer of sea salt (sea salt has a better flavor than most kitchen salts) - at room temperature, salted fish will keep a full year - although use your nose and eyes for signs of spoilage. Here’s how to make salt pork: fooddownunder.com.
More to my family’s taste, there’s wonderful recipe in the above cookbook for a salt stock - 1/2 lb of sea salt is layered with 2lbs of mixed green vegetables and herbs - they suggest parsley, chervil, celery and leeks but I’ve tried it with basil, onions, tarragon, etc… Just chop up the herbs and toss them with the salt, put it in a jar and ignore - lasts forever, tastes fabulous in soup stock.
Cheers,
Sharon
sharonastyk.com |
