Ideas about food preservation.

[Euphoric 48]

And it is obviously first time you read this forum. Please, keep it in one thread : http://terrafirmacraft.com/f/topic/5319-ideas-about-food-preservation/

[Takatifu 3]

Where I live it's a common practice to put fried meat inside a clay vessel and pour olive oil until the meat is covered. The meat tastes good even after one year, believe me. Oil preserved cheese is common too.

 

The game has already vessels. Making an olive tree as a fruit tree would be ok. Olives (tree) bloom in may and olives (fruit) ripe in january. Olive oil is made from ripe (black) olives. Olives can also be pickled either ripe or green (harvestable from october to november). The average harvest per tree (standard size) is 30kg (66lb). Olives yield 25% of their weight in olive oil. Fresh olives aren't edible as they are extremely bitter.

Oil extraction is a complex process but the main idea relies compressing the paste resulted from grinded olives to make the oil come out

To simulate the oil preservation in vessels, meat would be placed at the bottom two slots and oil at the top ones. Oil should decay too but at a very slow rate and preservation effects would stop if oil's fresh weight (full weight minus decayed weight) drops below meat weight.

Olive oil could be used for meal preparation too (vegetable nutrient). It's possible to eat it alone irl but tastes really bland.

 

Olive (tree)

 

Green and ripe (black) olives

 

Olive oil

 

Oil preserved pork inside a clay vessel

[lalmei 0]

Where I live it's a common practice to put fried meat inside a clay vessel and pour olive oil until the meat is covered. The meat tastes good even after one year, believe me. Oil preserved cheese is common too.

 

Very good idea. The generic term in english is called Confit and you can also use a sugar water or a heavy syrup.

[ShichiNoBushi 1]

Now that spoilage and preserving food is an issue, it inspire a bunch of systems to try to manage it including many new methods of food preparation. I already had a few I wanted to share, but this thread has inspired a few more. Many of these could be balanced by reducing the overall quantity of the food, but is still better in the long run that would have been lost due to rot.

 

Fermenting food products is one of the main methods to preserve foods. Using barrels of vinegar has already been mentioned for this process, and I support it. I also believe that this could lead to other uses for some foods such as soy beans, you could potentially make soy beans into a whole lot of food products such as tofu, which could act as a protein equivalent of cheese. Though, I'm not certain of the real world preservation of tofu. Could also make things such as natto. Soy sauce is another option, but I figure that would only be significant if usage of condiments could raise the "tastiness" and saturation of meals.

 

Canning has also been brought up, and I have figured out a rudimentary method of a canning process.

Phase 1: Creating Cans

Step 1: place metal ingot into anvil (this could also be any metal especially non-tool metals such as tin)

Step 2: select "can" plan

Step 3: forge can (could result in multiple cans)

 

Phase 2: Storing Food

Step 1: put food in can (place both in crafting grid returning canned [food] (unsealed), also stores in units of 10 oz. or so)

Step 2: seal can (place can in crafting grid with hammer returning canned [food] (sealed))

 

Phase 3: Eating from Can

Step 1: open can (place canned [food] (sealed) and knife in crafting grid returning canned [food] (opened) and damaging knife)

Step 2: eat from can (restores hunger and gives opened can which can either be thrown away or recycled)

 

Phase 4: Recycle Can (optional)

Step 1: place opened can in crucible

Step 2: collect ingots

 

Jars could also be viable storage mediums and could just be bottles or special glass jars combined with metal lids.

[Takatifu 3]

Now that i think about it, it's a good moment for coding spices.

They're used for food preservation irl and could be used to increase the taste of meals.

[landryx 36]

Drying, smoking, jellying into jars, spicing, fermenting, freezing, refrigerating, salting.

 

I've no skill for coding this but, I know that foods decay just made his introduction to minecraft, it's so damn normal that preservations technics at the moment are limited and maybe not as cool as we would like. Devs are currently thinking about it, not worrying at all.

 

Am I right Kittychanley?

[Kittychanley 1,002]

Jelly probably won't happen. Fruit preservation is outside of TFC's timeframe due to the high sugar content.

[aliceingame 114]

Well, marmalade and jam have been around for a LONG time.... and we add sugar to them, so not sure that the sugar contents go against preservation. There is fruit conservation methods that would be in TFC timeframe for sure.

[Kittychanley 1,002]

It's the canning process that preserves the fruit, not the addition of sugar.

[aliceingame 114]

Not a jam expert, so I don't know. However candied fruits have long shelf like and do not require canning.

[Aaronpie 4]

Your right in that it is the canning process/sealing that preserves it and the sugar required to reduce it, but Chutney was made with vinegar. And chutney is within the time frame of TFC.

[Kittychanley 1,002]

From the wikipedia page of Candied fruit:

 

Recipes vary from region to region, but the general principle is to boil the fruit, steep it in increasingly strong sugar solutions for a number of weeks, and then dry off any remaining water.

[aliceingame 114]

From the wikipedia page of Candied fruit:

 

Recipes vary from region to region, but the general principle is to boil the fruit, steep it in increasingly strong sugar solutions for a number of weeks, and then dry off any remaining water.

 

and dry off the remaining water

I understand this as the process to make it that take weeks, not the shelf life

 

Should be good at least 6 months

source : http://m.canadianliving.com/#!/food-cooking_school/how-to-make-candied-fruit/0340bd1cb48482afa15a55808cbf5318

[AllenWL 186]

Well, I'm fine with fruits not being preservable if I can get them year-round....

Well, butter? or is that less preservable than milk?

[aliceingame 114]

Well, I'm fine with fruits not being preservable if I can get them year-round....

Well, butter? or is that less preservable than milk?

 

butter is easier to preserve than milk, but if not stored in a fridge, will go bad.

fruit trees only give fruits for a limited period of the year, might be the same for berries

[Kittychanley 1,002]

and dry off the remaining water

I understand this as the process to make it that take weeks, not the shelf life

 

Should be good at least 6 months

source : http://m.canadianliving.com/#!/food-cooking_school/how-to-make-candied-fruit/0340bd1cb48482afa15a55808cbf5318

 

Correct. The majority of food processing currently is either instant, or less than a day (in a barrel). A system that would take in game weeks to months to process would be tedious and kind of ridiculous.

[transcengopher 349]

Correct. The majority of food processing currently is either instant, or less than a day (in a barrel). A system that would take in game weeks to months to process would be tedious and kind of ridiculous.

If it's a tradeoff required to make fruit-type food that will last for the time I spent logged off on a server, why not?

 

And you actually seem to have this idea that any sort of canning requires intricate metalworking of contemporary-ish technology. But in general you just need to boil out the majority of the germs and spores and then seal the pot with something like a clean bladder membrane or a piece of thick leather while it's hot. Steam will cool off and create a negative pressure sealing the pot even more.

I'm not quite sealing with bladders, but I hate overly sweet jams, so I'm making these with hardly any sugar aside from what is already in the fruit. And I still have perfectly edible stuffs from, what, four years ago, I think.

Of course aforementioned method is not your tin can which will preserve its insides for thirty years, nor a glass jar (which we can make in minecraft, by the way), but, if executed correctly, will make it last a descent while. I'd say a year easily.

[AllenWL 186]

But I can make jam with by simply putting some fruits and sugar in a pot the 'boiling' it for like like, 5 hours? then, I just put them in whatever jars/bottles/containers I have and they stay good for a long time. At least a year I'd say(hard to say exactly how long, as most don't last the year without being eaten)

[theubie 19]

If we're talking about time frames, though...drying and smoking meat has been done since the iron ages (check out unreal world which is set in the Finnish iron age and tries to be a close to accurate as TFC is) so at the very least those should be looked at.  String + meat should allow you to sneak right click and hand a piece of meat from the bottom of a block.  Use the sealed room mechanics from charcoal pits and make it last roughly as long as a charcoal pit.  It's not exactly as long as it takes to smoke meat, but the time trade off is good enough to be a sink to put it into the play ability vs realism area that most people would agree doesn't break immersion.  Drying would just need either a drying frame (which we really should have for leather working...it's a very important step) or the same hang from bottom of a block mechanic and cold dry weather which is already coded in.  Of the two drying would take more coding as we don't have a mechanic we could reuse code for.

 

In the end it's all about prep time vs life span.  Either you're constantly having to hunt for fresh food, or you're spending that same amount of time making the food you have last longer.

[chepelink 14]

In the end it's all about prep time vs life span.  

 

I think that in reality it is harvest VS life span rather that preparation time. If you can gather fresh food constantly all year around you don't need food preservation at all. Food preservation served one main purpose "have a food stock for winter, when the food is scarce and that last long enough to the first harvest", they also helped humans to settle down because, after farming, food preservation reduced drastically the need of gathering. The thing right now is that people want food preservation because they want a way of stopping decay in order to have good stock of food for they needs (winter, large excursions, metal work focus, mining) but as the preservation system is planed that wont help too much to that purpose. What do I mean with that? Just for the sake of an example, 100oz of X food root from 0% to 100% in 3 days, if a preparation method is used that reduce the decay rate in half that food will last 6 days. Speaking in terms of gameplay, that is nothing, you spend those days easily in a mine and when you return your food is gone/lost or almost decayed. I do not know how people play right now but I delay as much as I can the harvest of my food because, once harvested it starts to decay, where in reality you want to harvest as fresh as possible so the ripen and preservation process work in conjunction to prolong the shelf life. What it should be is that after the preservation process the food stop the decay long enough to be viable (15~30 game days with 80%~90% of the food intact, from single player perspective, SMP is different and really need a way better preservation rate). If you give a really good boost for preservation you really need to increase plant's growth time to make both things worthwhile. That way, you put a great weight to exploration and gathering at the begging of the game before the farms kick in and the preservation methods worth the time you invest in them, when you start focusing in metal working and mining.

 

By the way, using the knife to remove from a piece of food reduce the decay rate but not as good as it is used here and handling food is the worst thing to do if you want it to last the longest, you only do it if it is really necessary to save your stocks.

[wintersfreund 2]

Drying realy seems the best preservation method. it works better the warmer the weather is, so in cold region we have to store the food in cellar and in warm region we could dry it.

i chisseld a prototyp of a dry-stand. the third picture shows another idea - smoking with the tool-racks.

 

both methods should decrease decay rate by 50% like salting. Salting and smoking creat Beacon(new food, slowest decay rate)

 

One Idea from my Job - i'm Baker - Dough should decay from fresh to sour about a day.

Normal bread 1* less satisfiyng than sour-dough-bread and higher decay-rate.

 

additional: removing rice-bread, it's creatable, but really diffilcult to make bread from rice, better eat raw/cooked rice.

[chaotix14 4]

Here is another way of potentially preserving food, it however relies on something that isn't in the game yet. Alcohol. I think it most of us understand the basic principle of making alcohol out of fruits and other sugar carbohydrate rich foods, so I'll just skip that entirely. Alcohol in concentrations as you'd find in beer or wine, is mildly anti-bacterial, there are even brewing processes where the fermenting stops only because the yeast that creates the alcohol has died from the alcohol. But to get into the area where it can be used to preserve food reliably you need to distill it(which doesn't require any high tech equipment, but does take a certain amount of skill) and get over the 70%, at which point it is deadly.... to a lot of bacteria and probably too strong for general consumption.

 

So at this point you have your alcohol(quality depending on your distilling) and now there are several ways to work with it. The easiest one, would be to just dump the stuff in the alcohol, seal the barrel/vat/jar(doesn't have to be as good of a seal as with fruit preserves like jam) and only opening it when you want to get to it's content. One big disadvantage you absolutely have to cook the stored food proir to eating to evaporate the alcohol in the meat.(eating an alcohol soaked beef will probably result in either trowing up or in a coma) Two minor disadvantages are, the food will be very dry(the alcohol pulls water out of your food) and as you'd imagine it tastes a lot like the stuff you dumped it in.

Most other ways to use it are a combination of techniques, like adding alcohol to brine or vinegar(which funnily enough is made from alcohol), or applying it in combination of a marinade on to be smoked meat.(partially for taste, partially for preservation)

 

 

On another point about preservation, there are some forms of food which can be stored for ages if stored correctly. Honey for example is a type of food that is very slow to decay. The form of 'decay' we usually see with it is it turning into this hard clumpy material, but by heating it up it'll usually go back to it's fluidy form and be perfectly fine. Bacteria have a really hard time dealing with the stuff, in nature it only actually breaks down after moisture in the air or general water have diluted the honey enough to allow for bacteria growth. If stored dry, it can last decades.(Or at least 6 years, from personal experience, still perfectly edible)

Another food source which can hold for a very long time naturally is the humble potato, if stored in a dark, somewhat cool and dry area these can a very long time, and may even atempt to sprout during that period. In fact potato peels are known to frequently sprout in composting bins or when the compost is spread through the garden.

These two are only examples as there are many other food items which can be preserved with little to no effort.(I believe beans were also decently preservable)

[Kittychanley 1,002]

Here is another way of potentially preserving food, it however relies on something that isn't in the game yet. Alcohol. 

 

Alcohol and vinegar are both already in the game

 

http://terrafirmacraft.com/wiki/Barrel#Alcohol

[chocmerc 29]

Hello all,

It has been a while since I have posted on food preservation, so in the interests of revising old ideas and adding new ones, I humbly present some ideas that I feel will add to TFC and the experience that it delivers

Pickling

Now I believe I posted about a year ago about pickling, but just to bring it up to speed...

Pickling / canning is a method of food preservation that utilizes antimicrobial herbs, an acid (vinegar), brine, pressure, heat, and the basic mechanics of boiling liquids.   Lets have a look at some of these elements;

• Antimicrobial herbs: things like Dill, Rosemary, and a few other pickling herbs are added not just for flavor, but also make the pickling liquid (brine) very hostile to them.  I would love to see various herbs added to the game(Culinary herbs that is), but if development resources cant be diverted to adding them, they could be skipped with minimal loss of verisimilitude.

 

• Acid(Vinegar): The Acid component, filled by vinegar at this point in time, is used to create even more of a bacteria-hostile environment, and to also change the chemistry of the product to inhibit bacteria and decay.

 

• Brine: Brine is simply a liquid (usually water) mixed with copious amounts of salt.  this should be fairly easy to accomplish, either adding salt to water, or just harvesting salt water.  The salt changes the chemistry of the product to inhibit bacteria and decay.

 

• Pressure: The pressure component is used to make the finished container sanitary(along with heat) as well as when the container is loaded, it is used to help cook and force any bit of air out of the container.  This can be implemented through a specialized cooking vessel, a Pressure Cooker.  Now pressure cookers dont have to be fancy like our modern devices, but could be as simple as a very stout metal pan filled with water with the pickling containers, having its lid sealed with a clamp, or even heavy stones, and then using a great deal of heat over time to create a well preserved vegetable, fruit, meat, eggs, etc.

 

• Heat: Heat, along with pressure, are the main portions of the pickling and canning process, cooking the food, boiling the liquid to create steam for pressure, sanitation, and forming negative pressure in the final container.  Heat is fairly simple to implement, utilizing a modification of our standard heat system, and ties in with pressure.

 

• Principles of Boiling: This is the effect of heat on liquids, and it produces both the pressure necessary to pressurize the final container through steam pressure and the heat necessary to kill the existing pathogens within the food / container.

 

The way I would see this going down is you would create a pressurizing vessel using metal, perhaps tier 2 bronze or tier 3 metals and higher.  Once that is created you should then create the actual container that will hold the pickled / canned goods.  such containers would be made of glass for the jar body and a flexible metal lid, something like tin or copper, Perhaps some sort of glue / sealant, but this can be waved away as an unnecessary extra.  Once you have made some jars, next thing you will need is some pickle-able consumables.  Some things are rather difficult to pickle, so I would leave them out, things like green beans, tomatoes, and other low acid produce.  Typically the procedure for vegetables or eggs at this point should be sanitizing the pickle jars in boiling water for an hour or two, then mix the water, salt, herbs, and Vinegar and then boiling these in any container for a few minutes, to produce the brine.

 

 After this, throw in your pickling produce of choice in, seal the jar(could be like barrel sealing mechanics), and then place (up to 4, possibly more with higher level metal pressure cookers) your jars in the pressure cooker, add a bucket of water, then place on top of a firepit and light the fire.  Temperature only has to reach boiling for a minimum temperature, Very Hot should be sufficient.  Keep that temperature going for an hour or two, keeping the firepit stocked with wood.  Once this time has elapsed, take the pan off the heat, and let it sit for an hour or two to cool and let the pressure stabilize.  Carefully removed from the cooker, these jars are now good for storing for 6 months to a year!  

 

  As for fruits, this would be less pickling and more making jams/preserves/jelly, yadda yadda.  The procedure for preserving fruits would be similar, sanitizing jars, acidulation, pressurizing, and then de-pressurized and stored

 

 

Summarized Steps

Vegetables and Eggs

 

• Sanitize Jar
• Create Brine (water, vinegar, antimicrobial herbs, and salt.  Boil brine)
• Combine brine and produce in jar, seal jar
• Load jars in pressure cooker, add water, seal cooker
• Boil for two hours, let rest two hours
• remove jars from cooker, store for 6-12 months

 

Fruit

• Sanitize Jar
• prepare brine (vinegar, water, salt, boiled)
• place fruit and brine in jar, seal jar
• load jars into pressure cooker, add water, then seal cooker.
• boil for an hour, let rest an hour
• remove jars, store for 6-12 months

 

Note:

This is a simplified version of actual pickling canning, and some elements have been changed for fun factor, but is fairly realistic.

 

This method provides you with a good long term storage method for fruits, eggs, and vegetables, though once the jars are open the food begins a reduced rate of decay, similar as if they were stored in jars(this is due to the brine creating a hostile environment for pathogens).  This mechanic will be a fun useful way of preserving crop harvests, for eating or for trading.

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                                              Critters and their effects on food

 

One problem that is still faced by restaurants, food storage facilities, and even at home is a problem that humanity has had for a long time, and that is various pests and their effects on our food storage.  I think that it would be an interesting new mechanic to have to be wary of pilfering pests in our food storage.  
 

What I propose is not necessarily coding in new mobs to be pests, but more along the lines of having a mechanic added that simulates their effects, without having to create new mob AI.  Such a mechanic would simply act on a few parameters.  

 

• Pests like food that they can easily reach.  Keeping vessels and food off of the ground, preferably higher up, such as in an alcove in a wall, or perhaps with the implementation of shelving.  Other ways to pest proof your food would be implementing special storage blocks that are tougher for them to knock over, break, or dig through, such as glass, metal containers, etc.

 

• Pests can be driven away or killed through the use of pesticides, whether natural deterrents(orange peel oil, etc) or through poisons (such as borax).

 

• Tame a cat, which with the help of some more programming, can reduce or eradicate pests in an area .

 

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                                                      Desiccation and your food!

 

A time honored method of food preservation is food desiccation, commonly known as drying or dehydration.  It works by reducing the water levels in the food to make it less hospitable to bacteria.  There are many ways to dehydrate food, most generally revolve around sun-drying, as long as your climate supports that (sun is in the sky for half the day, warm dry climates, etc.) careful application of a heat source (fire), or salt packing.

 

• Sun Drying would involve a clean surface, and a warm climate with sunshine filled days, pretty much anywhere in the equatorial region, or within 10-20 degrees of said regions.  The heat from the sun will drain the moisture of vegetables or fruit over a week or two when placed on a special drying rack, returning a much shrunken product (half the weight removed or more) that will have a greatly reduced decay rate.

 

• Drying can be accomplished through the careful application of fire as well, if your climate doesnt support sun drying, or you dont want to take the time to sun dry your products.  This can be accomplished by keeping a low heat fire burning for a few hours, keeping the food over the fire pit in a vessel or perhaps by laying the food out on the ground near said firepit.  The product of this fast method will not only be shrunken due to water loss, but also due to burning, giving you half as much product as what would normally be provided by sun drying (half from moisture loss at least, and then half again due to burning, only giving one quarter of the original weight as final product)

 

• Salt Packing was really popular for old time fishing vessels, it basically revolves around taking meat and packing it in a barrel full of salt.  This cuts the weight of the meat in half through moisture loss, but massively reduces decay rate of said meat, lasting at least 4 months.  I realize this kind of overlaps with the current mechanic of salting meat, though this method would require alot more salt, requiring at least 64 to 128 pieces of salt, which then can convert 10 - 15 or so 160 oz pieces of meat.

This method will provide a good method of preserving your crops and meat with the proper allocation of time.

 

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                                                       The power of wood smoke

 

Wood smoking is another time honored method of meat preservation, as smoke deposits a layer of sticky accretion called Pellicle.  Pellicle is formed through brining and smoking, where the wood smoke deposits particles that create a hostile environment for microbes.  There are two types of smoking, Hot and Cold smoking, I would suggest that if these do get added, only one form of smoking should be added to prevent convolution of the mechanic.  

 

• The first step of smoking is Brining.  (Technically you can smoke a food without brining, but you dont get the benefit of Pellicle, therefore it does little to slow the rate of decay)  Brining involves soaking the meat in a mixture of salt and water (and possibly some antimicrobial herbs... ;D) for a day or two, probably in a barrel.  After this, we move on to smoking.

• Hot Smoking is a process where you burn wood in a closed container (with a small opening) at 140 degrees or higher, cooking the meat above the wood in addition to applying pellicle.                                                                                                                                                  -
• Cold Smoking is a process where you keep the temperature of the wood fire low, and the meat away from the wood so that the smoke is cooled down sufficiently to not cook the meat, which remains raw and must be cooked to be consumed.  This provides Pellicle as well.

 

Smoking gives another method of keeping meat preserved, though this only slows the decay rate between a quarter and a half.

 

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Well, those are my suggestions, let me know what you think

 

Regards,

Chocmerc

Edited 24 May 2014 by Kittychanley
Duplicate Suggestion, merged into older existing one.

[soulion 9]

i like this