It’s just about fall, and that means it’s the season to preserve food. In our house, we’ve already started. Bags of blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries line the freezer, and raspberry jam sits in rows. Soon we’ll have apples, and that means applesauce. Delicious!
The fall can be an intriguing science experiment as well. As you’re preserving your fall foods, take a few bits that don’t fit into your jars and bags and let the children do experiments on them.
Without food preservation we would have far fewer pre-packaged foods. We’d also have few out-of-season foods. Take away international shipping and the modern fridge, and you’re back to where we were two generations ago. You eat what’s in season and you save the rest through food preservation.
This late summer and fall, experiment to see what happens when food is not preserved and what you can do to preserve it. For each of the experiments below, the children can use a control. The control is the unpreserved food. Place that food in an old bowl next to the preserved food and watch it morph into something a little different over time. These experiments are an opportunity for children to watch something decompose: always a fun slimy science activity. Watch what happens to the preserved food and determine what makes it stay edible. What exactly is the preservative and how does it work?
The first experiment is fermentation. You can do this with salt and cabbage. Chop the cabbage into fine pieces and add salt to taste. Pound the cabbage until abundant juice starts to emerge, and then place it in a jar. Place another jar or a clean, heavy weight on top of it. Wait a few weeks and you’ll have sauerkraut.
Next you can try vinegar. Buy miniature cucumbers or pickling cucumbers from the store. Wash and boil a jar. Place the cucumbers into the jar with a solution of pickling vinegar. Follow a recipe if you wish, or use just a few cucumbers if you want this to be an experiment only. After 4 weeks, look at the control cucumber and the pickled cucumber. What has happened to each one?
Next, make applesauce or a sugar-based canned fruit. Sterilize the jars in boiling water, then place the sauce inside. Heat seal the jars in a canner. Wait for a week and watch what happens to the applesauce or fruit that is left out in the open. What happens to the sauce that is left in the open?
You can also try experiments with dehydrated foods and frozen foods. Why does dehydrating or freezing preserve foods?