Ancient Salt Preservation Techniques for a Healthier Diet

Imagine you are at a restaurant enjoying a meal with your family when the diners at a nearby table realize they don't have any salt, so they reach over to your table and borrow the salt shaker.

You declare war.

Wait, what? No one is going to declare war over someone taking the salt, would they??

Actually, yes. Wars have been fought over salt. Taxes on salt have begun revolts, like Ghandi's famous non-violent Salt March. People have been enslaved to produce salt.

Do you earn a salary? You should ask your employer if they will pay you in salt, like the Roman soldiers' salarium, the origin of the word salary. Don't be surprised if they ask you if you are worth your salt.

Salt is about more than just making your food taste good, although it certainly does that. It is more than a necessary nutrient. In the days before refrigeration and canning, it was the premier way to preserve food.

My buckets of Himalayan and Sicilian sea salt.

Why would modern humans with access to supermarkets, freezers, electric dehydrators, and home canners bother to preserve with salt?

For those of us interested in wholesome, probiotic, low input methods of food preservation and enhancement, salt is STILL a vital commodity.

Anyone who has tried to cut processed food from their diet knows that if you want to eat clean, you need to cook it yourself. Many of us choose to source our food locally as much as possible, when it's in season. This often requires some sort of preservation.

If you grow a garden and raise livestock for food, harvest season can be overwhelming and expensive if you have to dehydrate, hot water bath- or pressure can, or buy freezers to freeze it all.

Preserving food with salt is easy and low energy compared to modern methods, and enhances the nutrition and flavor of the preserved foods.

For instance, cabbage that is made into sauerkraut by shredding, salting, and fermenting becomes a rich source of probiotics and digestive enzymes. It has a richer flavor than the overly-sour sauerkraut made by canning cabbage in vinegar. After shredding and salting the cabbage, all that remains to be done is to pack it in its jar where it will last for a year. No boiling, dehydrating, or freezing.

Meat which has been dry cured with salt becomes utterly delectable. The texture is soft and moist, the fat melts like butter, and the taste... for lack of better words, is astronomically mind blowing. Dry curing takes good meat and makes it AMAZING.

Many traditional cultures made a point of eating fermented vegetables at least daily, if not with every meal.

Science has discovered that the bacteria which grow in the presence of salt, known as halophiles, exhibit remarkable health promoting characteristics. Health benefits of halophiles include:

• anticancer agents, enzymes such as L-glutaminase and L-asparaginase which have been shown to inhibit the proliferation of leukemia and other cancer cells

• produce glycolipids and carotinoids which have demonstrated anti-viral action against herpes simplex and hepatitis B and C

• produce bacteriocins which can inhibit pathogenic bacteria

• produce ectoin which can block inflammatory response

• can control allergic reactions like rhinitis

• can influence the gut-brain axis and help neuroloical conditions such as autism

• making certain nutrients more bio-available, such as iron and copper

We are missing out on so many benefits if we limit our food preservation to canning, dehydrating or freezing.

Methods of Salt Preservation

Salt works by drawing liquid out of food, and then selecting for halophylic (salt loving) bacteria. This can be used for vegetables, meats, and cheese.

Always use NON-IODIZED salt, because added iodine may inhibit beneficial bacteria.

Packing shredded daikon radish and carrot into a fido jar.

Fermented Vegetables

This is an abbreviated version of instructions. For more details, please see my blogs about fermenting veggies and fermenting tomatoes. I recommend the book Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning for a lot of good traditional recipes.

The trick with preserving vegetables with salt is to keep oxygen out. My favorite way to do this is to use fido jars, those sturdy glass jars with hinged lids and rubber gaskets. As the vegetables ferment, the bacteria create carbon dioxide which pushes the oxygen out of the sealed jar. Mold will not grow in this oxygen-less environment. Do NOT burp the jar, it is self burping. I recommend the brand Le Parfait.

• To make a quart of sauerkraut, take 1.75 pounds of cabbage and slice it as fine as possible.

• Put the cabbage in a mixing bowl and mix 1 scant tablespoon of non-iodized salt in it. Allow the salt to work for at least a half hour, softening the leaves as it draws out juices.

• Pack a quart fido jar with the vegetable. Pack it in tightly with your fist or a wooden stomper. Be sure to pour any juices into the jar that were drawn out by the salt. If the cabbage was dry (which tends to happen after being in storage for months) you may need to add a little water up to the top of the veggie line.

• There should be at least an inch of head space in the jar to prevent juices from bubbling out during fermentation.

• Allow it to ferment in a room that is between 65 - 73F for about two weeks.

After fermentation is complete, it can be stored for at least a year in a cool basement. Once you have opened the jar, keep it in the fridge. It can go for months in the fridge without spoiling after being opened.

Cured Meats

Curing meat needs to be kept cold until the salt draws out sufficient moisture. When it is fully cured, the meat becomes shelf stable. Please buy the book Curing and Smoking Handbook by The River Cottage for more explanation of chemical free meat curing.

Lardons, or salt pork.

You can dry cure meats by adding salt in a manner that allows juices to run off the meat, wet cure by holding the juices close to the meat as the salt works its magic, or brine cure by submerging the meat in a brine solution. Follow exact recipes and guidelines to avoid ruining your meat.

See these blogs to read more about my methods for making bacon, lardons, and dry cure. Here I will share an abbreviation of my recipe for cappicola, my favorite cured meat.

Ingredients:

1 coppa, between 3 - 5 lbs

3% the weight of the meat in non-iodized salt

1 tsp sugar

.5 tsp black pepper

1 tsp ground juniper berries

.5 tsp nutmeg

1 tbs paprika

.5 tsp red pepper

A coppa coated in the mixture of salt and spices.

• Weigh the meat in grams, multiply that weight by .03 to calculate the amount of salt to use, then weigh out that much salt.

• Mix the salt with the other spices and apply them to the surface of the meat.

• Put the meat in a bowl in the fridge for two days while the salt draws out juices. Dump the juices.

• Remove the meat from the bowl and place parchment paper on a refrigerator shelf. Lay the meat on the paper.

• Turn the meat once a week until it has aged for 5 weeks.

• It is now shelf stable and ready to eat in thin slices. Because it tastes best at room temperature, I recommend keeping it out rather than in the fridge while you eat it. I like to hang it from a steel hook.

Cheese

Cheese will rot rather than age without salt.

My alpine cheese.

The amount of salt greatly affects the character of the finished cheese. For instance, in order to grow proprionic bacteria that produce the flavor and eyes associated with Swiss cheese, you must add no more than 1% salt. Cheddar cheese requires about 2% of its weight in salt. The high amount of salt in blue cheese, 5%, selects for desirable blue molds. Feta cheese, which was traditionally made in a warm climate, needs a whopping 8% salt.

For instructions on how to make raw milk cheeses, see these blogs: labneh (yogurt cheese), feta, and alpine cheese.

Best Salt for a Holistic Diet

One of the lies they told us when I was a kid is that salt is bad for you. Salt is very good for you--in fact, it's essential. Dr. Berg says that adults need 1 to 2 teaspoons of salt a day depending on their activity level. Salt is used in many vital body functions including making hydrochloric acid in your stomach, adrenal function, staying hydrated, and the sodium-potassium pump which powers your muscles.

Table salt is a refined, processed food. They remove micronutrients from it. It has anti-caking agents which may contain aluminum. Some table salt even has added sugar. Maybe this is what they meant when they said that salt is bad for you.

I recommend sticking with natural, whole sources such as sea salt or mined salt.

Sea salt is made from evaporated ocean water and will contain whatever pollutants were in that water, including microplastics. Dr. Berg says that Celtic sea salt is the safest choice.

Mined salts like Himalayan and Redmond are a safe choice because they come from ancient oceans that evaporated into salt deposits before humans had a chance to pollute them. These salts have coloration from the many minerals they contain in addition to sodium chloride.

Using salt to preserve my food makes me feel connected to my roots. I like to know that the same methods that worked to store food thousands of years ago still work today. I love that they make food healthier than what you can buy at the average grocery store.

Now when you hear that someone is the salt of the earth, you know what that means. It only takes a few good people mixed into society to not only preserve, but enhance the character of the whole population.