The Complete Guide to Preserving Meat, Fish, and Game: Step-by-Step Instructions to Freezing, Canning, Curing, and Smoking

For more than 8,000 years humans have been preserving meat and fish through canning, curing, smoking, and freezing, use techniques that remove the moisture and make it possible to keep meat for much longer than its natural shelf life. However, improper preservation of meat leads to more than 40% of all reported cases of food borne illness according to the Center for Disease Control, meaning it is necessary for everyone to carefully, effectively practice safe storage practices and ensure the meat is well preserved.

This book will show any potential meat preserver how to go about the process of storing meat for long term use in a variety of methods, while constantly keeping an eye to the possibility of food borne illness and the loss of freshness. You will learn everything you need to know to start the process of setting aside and preserving your meat, fish, and game. Starting with a series of charts and basic details about different kinds of meat and fish, from venison to beef to salmon, you will learn which animal products store best with which methods, which methods must be avoided, and which diseases are the greatest risk when you store meat. With this information in hand, you will start learning how the freezing, canning, curing, and smoking processes work. You will be given detailed outlines of each process starting with what equipment you will need.

Experts in meat preservation have been interviewed and their insights have been included here to provide a detailed and full overview of everything you can expect in the process. From these interviews, you will start the process of understand what you need to effectively preserve meat products. You will learn what can lead to failure for all four methods, what the best possible storage locations are for each, and what materials should be avoided at all costs. Learn how smoking works and the timelines for every form of storage from the moment the animal is butchered to the moment it needs to be preserved. No matter what kind of animal you are preserving, this book will provide the details you need to effectively store the meat for later use.