For hundreds of a long time, meals on the African continent has been preserved without the need of the benefit of refridgeration. How? This article describes 4 solutions of food preservation popular in Africa.
1. Sunlight-drying
For a lot of Africans, the sun is an crucial issue in meals preservation. Shortly right after the harvest, grains these types of as millet, maize, sorghum, green gram, and wheat, as effectively as pulses these kinds of as beans and peas are spread out in the sun to dry. If fully dried of moisture, these foodstuffs can past a pretty prolonged time – occasionally many years – if stored in a cool, dry place and protected from pests.
Most homes had a granary designed way previously mentioned the floor, wherever foodstuffs were saved. In addition to drying, it was also popular to utilize wood ash to pulses like beans and peas to discourage insect infestation. The ash could conveniently be washed out ahead of cooking the pulses.
A variety of types of vegetables, tubers and fish can also be productively preserved in this way. Tubers these as cassava or sweet potato may have to be sliced into slim pieces to facilitate drying.
2. Smoking
Using tobacco is a further important approach of foods preservation. Formerly, just after the hunt, hunters smoked massive amounts of the meat for much easier transport back residence, and also to preserve it. It was widespread to smoke game meat, although domestic animals ended up typically consumed fresh new following slaughtering.
Cigarette smoking fish is still a very important system of preserving fish, utilised all about the continent.
3. Salting
Salt was frequently utilized to foodstuffs in get to preserve them, in conjunction with sunlight-drying and smoking cigarettes. A lot of fisherman generously salt fish in advance of sun-drying or smoking cigarettes it, to even more make improvements to the odds that it will not decay. Salting was also utilized to certain greens in the course of the sunshine-drying procedure.
4. Applying fat
A several communities used unwanted fat to preserve foodstuff. These were predominantly communities that herded animals, these types of as nomadic communities. For example, among the Somali, when a camel was slaughtered, section of the meat was cooked in generous quantities of body fat and salt. It was then saved for foreseeable future use. The meat remained ideal for human consumption simply because of the large quantities of unwanted fat in which it was cooked and stored, and the salt.
Numerous pieces of Africa however do not have the important electrical infrastructure vital for sustained refridgeration. Traditional approaches of food items preservation continue to enjoy a very important job in trying to keep foodstuff edible for tens of millions of men and women.
These strategies, these kinds of as sunshine-drying, using tobacco, salting and employing unwanted fat, have not only stood the test of time – they are also low-cost and sustainable without the need of requiring far too a great deal electrical power.