Meat Storage during paw?

[driftking777]

so was curious what everyone thought about meat storage, or methods if you will during the paw. Obviously salting the meat could gain some time, however only so much.

Now say your in the woods with 4 people in your group and kill a decent size deer. Obviously you can only eat so much meat between 4 people, and you also want to preserve as much rations as possible. i suppose you could dehydrate the meat. but suppose how long you think that will last?

When i think about it i cant really think of any good way to store meat or keep it longer than a week before it goes bad, and i would hate to kill an animal and not eat it all. I hate wasting.

Ideas anyone?

*EDIT* btw, im pretty much strictly talking summer/early fall. as the other seasons are pretty easy to cope with.

[¿]

Air-drying/smoking it?

[herbalpagan]

proper smokng, canning or dehydrating will keep a product for a year (or more). It takes a lot more effort than freezing, and it also takes following careful instructions, so I'd keep books on hand for it, as well as supplies. However, those means of preservation kept people in meat year round for centuries so it's worth learning and doing, especially in a PAW.

[TheGunslinger]

Salting it, smoking it, pickling it in brine.

Depending on how you are getting your meat, keeping it live is often a good way to ensure its freshness too!

[Skokie]

+1 for smoking... It's the best way I know of to preserve meat without refrigeration. Plus, everyone loves jerky, right?

[incendiary_dan]

Also, learn how to properly age meat.

[derajer]

Look into Biltong, it is a type of dry pickling that is actually quite fast.

[Galath]

Depending on how you are getting your meat, keeping it live is often a good way to ensure its freshness too!

This traveling salesman is _way_ out in the hills and approaches a farmer to try to
sell his wares. He notices a three legged pig hopping around in the front yard and
asks the farmer about it.
"That's no ordinary pig!" exclaims the farmer. "That pig is smart! We all owe our lives
to that thar pig! Why, last winter we wuz all asleep and a spark from the fireplace
caught the cabin on fire, and we would've all burned up. But that pig squeeled and
beat on the front porch to wake us up and saved all our lives! And last sprang my
son wuz a swimmin in the pond and took a cramp and woulda drown, but that thar
pig come a runnin to the back fourty where I was a plowin and drug me by the
overalls til I saw him and saved his life again!"
"Wow, but what happened to his leg?" asked the salesman.
"We owe it all to that pig! Why, it wouldn't be right to just eat him all at once!"

[Lucretius]

Depending on what resources you have, you could try making an improvised root cellar. Keeping the meat cool wouldn't hurt, no matter what other methods you use.

I think you would ideally use some combination of methods, each adding to the meats shelf life. Smoked and salted meat, stored in a cool place sure would last longer than raw meat in the open....

[driftking777]

i was thinking of doing a shelter myself. nothing like diggine a 5ft deep hole to keep it as cool as possible. possibly with some improvision you could make forms. If you could find some sort of quikcrete you could make walls and a floor which could also act as a fridge.

and yea, smoking/dehydrating would probably be the way i went with it. along with the hole in the ground. (cellar)

[Lucretius]

i was thinking of doing a shelter myself. nothing like diggine a 5ft deep hole to keep it as cool as possible. possibly with some improvision you could make forms. If you could find some sort of quikcrete you could make walls and a floor which could also act as a fridge.

If you've got geology on your side, you can find 5 flat rocks which could make floor, walls and roof. I've seen it done - but only to make a tiiiiny fridge...

[colinz]

i was thinking of doing a shelter myself. nothing like diggine a 5ft deep hole to keep it as cool as possible. possibly with some improvision you could make forms. If you could find some sort of quikcrete you could make walls and a floor which could also act as a fridge.

The natives in NZ (the Maori) used buried cellars like that for long term(ish) storage of their root vegetables, so they certainly can work.

[Shadowsbane]

Make a spring house if you have access to running water.

[evil0rphan]

Been a while since I've been here, and saw this thread as I was getting caught up...

One way they used to preserve pork was to fry it up in pieces, and save the oil/rendered fat. You need a clean (very clean) crock. You pour in some of the liquid fat, then lay in a layer of the meat, then more fat, then meat, and so on. When the fat cools (think bacon grease) is will for an anaerobic seal. Pork will keep like that for months, but it does tend to go a bit off after a time. That's one of the possible origins for the term "scraping the bottom of the barrel" comes from.

This was the method that some folks used to preserve pork during the winter months after they slaughtered hogs in the late fall. When ever you needed some meat, you just dug down a layer and pulled some out, careful not to expose a lower layer.

And no salt was used in this method, but it may increase storage times. Foxfire series of books really go into this sort of thing, and worth owning the set.

[Ufdyixcaff]

1> Eat til you explode
2> Make sausage out of some of that fresh meat.
3> Cold smoke the sausage and any other meats you plan to eat soon-ish
warm weather option:
4> Slice the meat into thin 3inx12in strips and air dry them - use to make jerky/biltong, borts or pemmican.
cold weather option:
4> Freeze the meat and keep stored in raised cache.

[arrowolf]

Drying and smoking. Native Americans were preserving buffalo by the herd for hundreds of years. I'm sure we wasicu could learn a few things from them.

[American_Infidel]

Canning.
I can meats every now and then (more of an experiment than anything right now) and as long as you follow the instructions to a T, everything is good to go.
So far I have canned stew beef, hamburger, and chicken.

[ZombieGranny]

Before Off Topic contributors and their posts are "burned to the ground" as stated by 'The Powers That Be', I have decided to take action and remove the 6,747 unwelcome posts contributed by me in the past 7 years.

My apologies to forum members for any inconvenience this may cause. This is the 4th time it's been threatened and I'm too old and tired to fight it again.
Bless you.

[Tentickles]

Smoking meat is an awesome thing.

I like to cover my meat in fresh sage then air dry it (with insect shield). But that only works in summer.

[Chantrea]

I know that you can salt fish and presumably other meat, but I'd think the salt would be more precious than the meat. Maybe?

Smoking rocks though.

[driftking777]

^^you certainly can use the salt method, its part of a aging/dehydrating process (depending how you go about it). works really well. like i said though, its typically used for aging meat though.

[scafool]

Well, this is a bit different.
http://www.ur.umich.edu/9495/May08_95/storage.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

He suggests sinking it in a lake.

[Kathy in FL]

If you're interested in doing a little reading, try the 'Feeding America: The Historic American Cookbook Project'. Historical cookbooks that cover everything having to do with historical kitchens.
You'll find butchering, smoking, pickling, etc information. The canning information is outdated, however.

http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/coo ... rowse.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I meant to thank you for this link way back when but am just getting around to it. Several of this books are really interesting!

[reddawn]

I do not know how well it is going to work but this is the plan I have. I have a chest style freezer that quit working this last year. I have a fresh water stream that runs year round with water so cold it hurts your teeth to drink it thats runs right through my property. I am going to drill some 1 inch holes threw the sides of the freezer and dig a large enough hole to submerge the freezer under water. The current of the water will keep the water circulating threw the holes and back out to keep fresh water flowing threw. I am going to put it in a shaded spot on the stream so it will not have direct sunlight. My plan is to wrap the meat in plastic bags and just submerge it in the water. I figure this should keep the meat fresh long enough to able to consume it and store till I can process it.