Have you ever heard water activity? You might not hear about it. Water activity is a proportion of water that microorganism can use water to increase themselves. It depends on water activity about movement of microorganism, and it is avoided to increase them when water activity decreases.

It can’t breed if the number of water activity goes under 0.5. Also, there are lots of molds that can’t breed themselves when the number of water activity goes lower. It might be able to keep food longer if you understand these systems.

There are some ways to decrease water activity, and those are to get lose water for dry, and let water to bond water with using sugar and salt. Today, we’ll introduce 7 ways to keep food longer at your home.

There’re 7 ways to keep food longer at your home

1 Make fruits jam

Jam was for preservative food in the past. Old people wanted to keep fruits longer, so they used lots of sugar to keep fruits. And that is still ate by us as a fruits jam. When you make fruits jam, you have to use lots of sugar, and sugar makes stop to move microorganism. That is why jam is good for keeping longer.

Recently in Japan, there are lots of jams with less sugar, but there are jams in the US with over 65 sugar contents, and in the EU with over 60 with sugar contents. You should try to make jams when you receive lots of fruits and you can’t eat all of them at the same time.

2 Make dried fish by using fresh fish

Dried fish is one of the ways to keep fish longer. The reason of why dried fish keeps longer is to dry fish for decrease the number of water activity, and it makes keep fish longer. Cut fishes, and dry fishes in all daylong are common ways. Also, it can be more delicious when fishes are dry.

There are some ways to dry fishes such as dried-salted fish, dried sardine, dried toasting, and dried-sweet cooking rice wine fish. It might difficult to do at your home, but you can make it easy at your home too. So please try it.

3 Make Pickles by using vegetables

It is also be able to keep vegetable longer that is because water activity is low. Pickles are made of salt and vegetables. Vegetables loses water when you make pickles, so the number of water activity is going to low. That is why you can keep vegetables longer.

But, you might not keep them longer when you buy them at supermarket because it loses salt sometimes. There are some people who don’t want to make pickles at your home, but you can eat tasty cucumber if you pickle them. So you should try to make it.

4 Make foods boiled in soy sauce

There are lots of ingredients of food boiled in soy sauce such as clam, small fishes, laver, dried kelp, and mushrooms. It is good for rice. This is also the thought of old people. It is used salt a lot, so the number of water activity is going to low. Then you can keep it longer. You might think that it is difficult to make it.

So we have a recipe about making mushroom boiled in soy sauce.

Ingredients
Mushroom 4
Sugar Tablespoon 1
Granule soup Teaspoon 1
Sweet cooking rice wine Tablespoon 1
Sake Tablespoon 1
Soy sauce Tablespoon 1

1. Cut mushrooms for easy to eat
2. Put 1, sugar, granule soup, sweet cooking rice sauce, and sake into a pot and stew them for 2 minutes
3. Stew them until there is no cooking liquid
That’s all!

It’s easy right? Please make it with using extra mushrooms or some seafood.

5 Let food curing

Jam is sugaring, but it is also effective that curing. You can use curing for meat, fruits, and fishes. Not only for vegetables. It is famous in Italy that poke curing ‘pancetta.’ It is not only for keep longer, taste is more delicious. Also, you can curing lemons to make your eating table fresh.

And you might be able to use for sweets or snacks to curing herb or beefsteak plant.

6 Dry vegetables

It goes bad when it rains or you need to go to travel. You should dry vegetables to lose water at the time. It is good for keeping, and tastes good. Also, you can dry any vegetables at your home.

There are some points that you should dry surface area of vegetables, you need to choose a day for good dry, you need to skim the scum before you dry the vegetables that have lots of scum, and you should boil leaves vegetables before you dry them to get dry faster. You can use dried vegetables for dry carry to make it more delicious.

7 Make smoked food

It loses water of food, protects from carrion, and keep longer that smoked food. Also, it antisepticises food when it gets smoke. You can eat more because of the smell. You might not think that you can make smoked food at your home, but you can get the goods of making smoked food at your home recently.

And also, you can make it with using pan, so you should try it.
Did you get about water activity a little?

Food gets fungus or goes bad when food has water because of microorganism. And then, try to keep food longer with using sugar, salt, and drying. It is such a wasted when food goes bad.

Also, you can use these ways for food when you need to leave your home for homecoming visit in the year-end and New Year holidays or Bon.

Summary

There’re 7 ways to keep food longer at your home

1 Make fruits jam
2 Make dried fish by using fresh fish
3 Make Pickles by using vegetables
4 Make foods boiled in soy sauce
5 Let food curing
6 Dry vegetables
7 Make smoked food