People throughout the world have been making great effort to preserve foods for quite a long time without affecting their flavor. Preservation of food might appear to be a practice of ancient times.
However, it is still a very common practice. People at supermarkets and homes use different ways to preserve food for many days. In the past, food preservation was mostly done by drying the food items or fermenting them to enhance their flavor.
Apart from keeping the foods for longer, food preservation also helps to decrease food wastage and saves money. Moreover, it allows you to enjoy your local as well as seasonal products throughout the year. Several methods are used these days to preserve routinely used food items, for example, curd, cheese, fruits, salami, pickles, beans, vegetables, etc.
Supermarkets keep the foods in the cold rooms to preserve and store a lot of food items for many days. You can contact cold room suppliers in the UK to get a cold room for your supermarket as it is a basic need of any grocery store. Now follow the below-given five ways that supermarkets use to preserve foods for longer.
Freezing
Freezing is a very commonly used strategy for the preservation of foods. It involves the lowering of the temperature of foods to hinder microbial development. After slaughtering, the meat is generally frozen at 0-degree Fahrenheit or −18 degrees Celsius as soon as possible.
To freeze the fruits, they are kept inside a sugar syrup or dry sugar pack to remove any air and avoid oxidation as well as dehydration. At commercial levels, freezing is usually done either by blast freezing or contact freezing.
Canning
One of the most widely used methods to preserve the food products is canning. It keeps the foods preserved for quite a long time. It involves heating the food products at a particular temperature for a specific period. After this, food products are vacuum fixed in high-quality glass containers. This process requires high-quality glass jars and is incomplete without them. Many foods such as vegetables, fruits, meats, and fish are usually canned for keeping them for longer.
Curing
Another method used to preserve food products is curing. It seems to be a somewhat complicated process and it also needs particular skills and knowledge. It is employed particularly for meat products and fish. During the process of curing, solute concentration in the foods rises and consequently reduces its water potential. As a result, the food is not attacked by harmful microorganisms. Curing involves various methods such as drying out, smoking, cooking, and spicing. Moreover, it also includes the addition of different sugars, nitrite, and nitrate.
Cold Storage
Using cold storage units is a very basic method of food preservation. It is suitable for a lot of fruits, vegetables, and other food products. Supermarkets have set up several cold storage units. They employ this method quite commonly to preserve their foods and keep them fresh for many days.
Freeze-drying
This process permits the meat products to regain numerous essential properties when hydrated. Freeze-drying is very beneficial for different other food products too. Moreover, the foods preserved by freeze-drying hydrates rapidly and are more flavorful and nutritious.
