Using sous-vide to sterilize vacuum sealed food

[Buck P]

I thought about how nice it would be to eat corn beef hash or a similar meal on the trail but I don’t want to bring and pack out a heavy tin-can. It occurred to me that it would be possible to vacuum seal a portion of food, then sterilize it in a sous-vide bath before leaving home.  Then you’d have a relatively lightweight meal, albeit, not dehydrated.

 

I suppose you could use a pressure cooker instead of sous-vide and achieve similar results.

[Bob K]

Looks like a temperature of 85 degree celsius will kill botulism toxin.No problem for a sous vide cooker. Killing botulism spores, however requires temps of 121 degree celsius, definitely pressure cooker territory.

 

[David Thomas]

I scavenge the Americium-241 from old smoke detectors and irradiate sealed food packages with that.

[MJ H]

Food preservation tip or Batman-villain origin story?

[Buck P]

Please note: I’m not giving advice and have no expertise in food safety. I’m looking for opinions.

[David Thomas]

More seriously (since I never achieved Batman villain status):

I think your approach has potential either to preserve, or to cook and preserve certain meals.

I doubt you could save weight compared to freeze-dried, dehydrated and traditional dried (pasta, rice).  I’d expect you’d have meals that were a fair bit heavier due to the water weight.  But for the first night or two, the pound-miles aren’t as bad as for the last meal of the trip.

You could potentially save money (versus F-D), cut down on salt and preservatives, and customize the meals to your liking.

Rather than saying “sterilizing”, the term “pasteurization” describes using heat below boiling to kill pathological and spoilage-causing bacteria without changing taste and consistency as much as sterilization (killing all micro-organisms) does.

Bob’s note that it takes a lot to kill botulism is especially relevant for foods that have contacted soil.  Mushroom packaging has improved in recent decades, but I’m old enough to remember many recalls on canned mushrooms due to botulism.  Carrots, onions, and potatoes also grow in the ground, so corned-beef hash gives me some pause (less so, the more you’ve washed and peeled the root crops).  I’ve gotten well-meaning gifts from local friends with onions, garlic and herbs in oil (very anaerobic) and I just toss it after leaving it on the windowsill as a decoration for a while.  Also, whatever still survives your pasteurization, takes some time to reproduce and to produce toxins, so I wouldn’t fret about something prepared and heat-treated a week prior, but a month later, if there was any gas formation I’d toss it and figure on tossing it, regardless, after a few months, unless you kept it frozen until departure (not a bad plan, anyway).

I know pasteurization has evolved in recent decades towards higher temperatures for shorter periods of time yielding longer shelf lives without changing taste or nutrients much.  As such, maybe you should consider a higher-temp, short-time treatment.  Or, just do the final cooking in the sealed package – once you’ve added the last ingredient, seal it up and finish the cooking.

[Bob K]

The weight of a can isn’t that much. I pulled a 500 ml can out the recycling bin. 77 grams, including lid. That’s less than my Toaks Ti cup of similar capacity.  Not bad for critter-proof, sterile storage.

[Jerry Adams]

lower temperatures will produce less weird chemicals leaching out of the plastic

if you’re a food manufacturer, pasteurizing at higher temp for shorter time is cheaper.  If you’re doing it at home, the extra time isn’t a big deal.

[Sarah Kirkconnell]

NOOOOOOOOO! For the love of your gut, do NOT try this. The only method that is considered safe is to can it. In a mason jar. And if it has things such as meat or dense things like potatoes, it must be done in a pressure canner.

Manafacturers do it in a commercial method, in bags that are approved for this. With methods we don’t have on hand at home.

You can of course freeze food in said bag and carry it for first night.

[Author]

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