FOOD SAFETY & PRESERVATION

Food safety and preservation is a major focus of the UW-Extension Family Living program. Promoting healthy, well-nourished families as they learn to manage food dollars, plan nutritious meals, and purchase, prepare, and serve food that is safe to eat. Topics include:

• Home Food Preservation
• Food Safety & Emergencies
• Venison & Chronic Wasting Disease Information

Check out our Website Links - Food Safety section for more food safety resources.

HOME FOOD PRESERVATION

The UW-Extension strongly encourages everyone to review your Food Preservation Recipes and Books. In 1994, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) published their Complete Guide to Home Caning. At this time, significant changes were made to canning tomatoes, pickles, and meat processing. Also, other recipes were reviewed for safety and food quality and updated.

Click on these publications quick access.

• Using & Caring for a Pressure Canner
• Making Jams, Jellies & Fruit Preserves
• Canning Fruits Safely
• Canning Vegetables Safely
• Canning Salsa Safely
• Freezing Fruits & Vegetables
• Homemade Pickles & Relishes
• Tomatoes Tart & Tasty
• Canning Meat, Wild Game, Poultry & Fish Safety

Fresh Preservation Website An excellent virtual resource for first-time and experienced fresh preservers. Freshpreserving.com offers great easy to use guides for canning and preserving. Follow at home with step-by-step videos on fresh preserving, canning, freezing and dehydrating. The site also provides recipes for preseving and utilinzing fruits, vegetables, and meats. Visit Freshpreserving.com >>>

Maple Syrup Making
This article will give you tips on sap collection, evaporation , hot packing, storage and handling of sap to make maple syrup.

Storing Fresh Fruits and Vegetables for Better Taste
By: Postharvest Technology Research and Information Center - University of California, Davis
The flavor of fruits and vegetables is influenced by maturity and quality at harvest and by how they are stored afterwards. To maintain the freshness and flavor of the produce you buy at the market or grow in your garden, it is important to know how to store it at home.

Splenda© Use in Homemade Jams and Jellies (3 pages, 11 KB)

Ingredient Substitutions For Bread Making
From Red Star Yeast, 2002 — Safe and effective substitutions to improve health and taste of your bread baking.

Preserving Food at Home: A Self-Study The National Center for Home Food Preservation is announcing a self-paced online course for those wanting to learn more about home canning and preservation. Topics include: Introduction to Food Preservation, General Canning, Canning Acid Foods, and Canning Low-Acid Foods. More information about the self-study course >>>

FOOD SAFETY

Safely Using Produce from Flooded Gardens After flooding occurs, gardeners often raise questions about the safety of consuming produce from gardens that were under water for a day or two. How concerned gardeners have to be about using garden produce after a flood depends, to a large degree, on how “clean” the flood water was or whether it was likely to have been contaminated with sewage, river or creek water, farm run-off, or industrial pollutants. The by rule of thumb you should discard all produce that was touched by flood water. However, if flooding occurs early, with weeks left in the growing season gardeners can salvage some crops. The following publication includes tips for considering what can be salvaged and what must be discarded from a flooded garden. Safely Using Produce from Flooded Gardens (2 pages, 205 KB)

Common Food Substitutions (1 page, 7 KB)
Use this free resource to find safe and effective food substitutions for your recipes.

Steam Canners Recommendations
Steam Canner are not recommended because processing times for use with current models have not been adequately researched. Because steam canners do not heat foods in the same manner as boiling-water canners, their use with boiling-water process times may result in spoilage. The USDA and the UW-Extension does not recommend these steam canners, even though they are being promoted as a time-saving option for water bath canning.

Food Facts for You! Newsletter

A monthly newsletter on home food safety tips, current research, and current government regulations, written by Barbara Ingham, Food Science Specialist for the UW-Madison Cooperative Extension. Focus On: Food Preservation, Gardening and SPRING!

Grill It Safely!

This article from the University of Nebraska Cooperative Extension provides tips on safe grilling. Topics include shopping, preparation, transporting and grilling.

Storing Water for Short-Term Emergencies
Most people can live only a few days without water. In preparing to store water for emergencies, keep at least a three-day supply of water for each person in your household. Stocking water reserves and learning how to purify contaminated water should be among your top priorities in preparing for an emergency.

Storing Food for Short-Term Emergencies
Planning ahead for situations when you may need an emergency food supply is a good idea. How much and which foods to store will depend on the members of your household, your preferences, special health conditions, ability to use the food in an emergency, space for storage, and how far you live from a market. Planning for short-term emergency food needs may be as simple as increasing the quantities of some staple foods and nonperishable foods that you normally have on hand.

The Power is Off: Is the Food Still Safe?

If the power goes off in your home due to a winter storm or an unexpected summertime power outage, it may be difficult to determine whether the food in your refrigerator or freezer is safe to consume. This fact sheet will help you to decide whether to keep or discard food items in your home.

Egg Safety
It's spring - the season to enjoy the great outdoors and celebrate special occasions, like Easter. While eggs are used throughout the year, they are especially important for many spring activities. They are used for cooking festive delights and for decorating and hiding just before the big Easter egg hunt. If you have questions or concerns about eggs check out the American Egg Board at www.aeb.org or the Egg Nutrition Center at .www.enc-online.org

• Dry meringue shells are safe. So are divinity candy and 7-minute frosting, made by combining hot sugar syrup with beaten egg whites. Avoid icing recipes using uncooked eggs or egg whites, unless you use powdered egg whites.
• Meringue-topped pies should be safe if baked at 350 degrees F for about 15 minutes. Chiffon pies and fruit whips made with raw, beaten egg whites cannot be guaranteed to be safe. Instead substitute pasteurized dried egg whites, whipped cream, or a whipped topping.
• To make a recipe safe that specifies using eggs that are not cooked, heat the eggs in a liquid from the recipe over low heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture reaches 160 degrees F. Then combine it with the other ingredients and complete the recipe.
• To determine doneness in egg dishes such as quiche and casseroles, the center of the mixture should reach 160 degrees when measured with a food thermometer.
• Egg mixtures are safe if they reach 160 degrees F, so homemade ice cream and eggnog can be made safely from a cooked egg-milk mixture. Heat the egg mixture gently and use a food thermometer.

VENISON

Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) of deer and elk has been detected in parts of the United States. Conversion of human prion protein by CWD-associated prions has been demonstrated in an in vitro cell-free experiment; but limited investigations have not identified strong evidence for CWD transmission to humans. More epidemiological and laboratory studies are needed to monitor the possibility of such transmissions. Chronic Wasting Disease & Potential Transmission to Humans

This article on "Common-Sense - Precautions for Handling and Processing Deer 2004" gives tips on general precautions, field dressing, cutting and processing. Common-Sense (2 pages, 613 KB)

This article on Processing Your Deer will help both the experienced and novice hunter obtain quality venison which minimizing exposure to the parts of the deer carcass that could contain Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) prions. Deer Processing (4 pages, 1.45 MB)

The UW-Extension has publications available on preserving venison and wild game >>>

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