The success of a hunting or fishing trip is not determined solely by the harvest, but having meat or fish to take home with you is certainly an added bonus of these activities! We don’t always end our Her Wilderness trips with a harvested animal, but when we do, we receive a lot of questions about how to safely get these goods back home. As a result, we’ve researched and compiled the following recommendations for preserving your catch or wild game to protect the quality until it’s time to eat it.
FRESH FISH
Once you’ve reeled in or netted some fresh catches, it’s time to think ahead to when you’ll want to feast on your fish. By being strategic about your storage and transport methods, you’ll have better luck preserving the fresh flavors and textures of your fish fillet. Before the fish is even dead, it’s important that you think ahead. The quicker the fish is killed, the less stress it will experience. Fish that die slowly—sitting in a cooler or on the floor of a boat—will experience more stress, which reduces the quality. Once your fish are dead, follow these steps:
1. Prepare It
In all instances, you’ll want to clean a fish as soon as possible after catching it. If you’re going to keep on fishing for a while, put your first catches on ice until you do your cleaning. Ideally, you would gut it and then immediately cool it down. Once you’ve cleaned the fish, rinse it with clean, cold water and pat it dry with a clean towel. Next, wrap it in waxed paper. Alternatively, plastic wrap or foil can work too.
2. Ice It
The key to keeping fish fresh is keeping it cool. From the time of death to when you’re ready to eat it, keep it on ice as much as you can. For instance, if you aren’t going to immediately clean your fish, transport it from the water to home wrapped and on ice. Doing so helps maintain that freshly caught taste and texture.
Now, it’s not as simple as tossing it in the cooler—you’ll want to put in a little more care than that. Try to get crushed or cubed ice. You want to be able to surround the fish with ice, so that as much surface area as possible is touching the ice. A good ratio to keep in mind is two pounds of ice for every pound of fish. Also, if it’s a saltwater catch, try to get saltwater ice.
While your fish is on ice, make sure the drain plug on your cooler is open and keep adding fresh ice as it melts. Allowing your fish to sit in the melted ice will result in a mushy texture.
3. Freeze It
Freezing fish is the best way to preserve it, often for 3-12 months. However, you can also preserve your fish by smoking, brining, canning, pickling, or drying it. If you only need to keep it for a few days, then putting clean, wrapped fish in the refrigerator will do the trick.
When it comes time to get your fish ready for the freezer, avoid as much air contact as possible. That means vacuum sealing it or placing it in a plastic bag and removing as much air as you can. Overall, vacuum sealing is the best protection against freezer burn or dehydrated fillets.
The second best option for preparing fish for the freezer is by glazing it, which creates a thin, protective layer of ice. To glaze fish: dip the fillets in cold water and place them in a shallow pan or sheet tray. Put the pan in the freezer, and once the water has frozen, dip and freeze them again to create another layer of ice. By repeating this process, you’ll want to achieve a ¼-inch glaze before bagging and freezing the fish for the long-term.
Overall, keep in mind that larger fish or pieces will keep longer than smaller ones. Also, leaner fish store better than fatty fish.
4. Thaw It
When you’re ready to eat your fish, don’t throw away all your efforts by thawing it improperly. That means don’t thaw it out in a microwave or at room temperature. Instead, place it in the fridge overnight or put the wrapped fish in cold water. Once you’ve thawed the fish, it’ll taste the freshest if you eat it within one day.
WILD GAME
Congratulations on your harvest! Now, the real work begins. Breaking down or butchering a harvest can take a lot of time and effort, but done right, it can result in many delicious meals to come. Keep the following practices in mind throughout your processing:
1. Break it Down
Once you’ve taken down an animal, it’s time to dive into field dressing it or getting it to a cold storage unit as quickly as possible. When field dressing your harvest, be careful to use sanitary tools, which include clean gloves, knives, and coolers.
If you’re butchering your own animal, avoid attempting to chill or freeze large cuts of meat, as they require much more time to freeze completely. Instead, prepare meal-sized cuts or quantities for storage. That way, you don’t have to thaw more than you’re going to eat. After all, you want to avoid thawing and refreezing meat.
2. Wrap It Up
Throughout processing your wild game, your goal is to avoid air exposure. This comes down to using a quality wrapper that is meant for the freezer, whether that’s heavily waxed freezer paper or freezer specific plastic bags.
Vacuum sealing these plastic bags is the best option to avoid spoilage or freezer burn. When doing so, squeeze out as much air from the bag as you can before using the machine to finish the work. Make sure you achieve a complete seal on the bag—you also want to avoid having to reseal any meat down the road.
For ground meat, consider buying the tube-shaped polyethylene ground meat bags, which make portioning easy. Otherwise, while using your own freezer bags on ground meat, flatten the meat rather than leaving it balled up. Flattening serves three purposes: it makes it easier to stack in the freezer; squeezes out more air; and will thaw more easily when you’re ready to eat.
As a rule of thumb, it’s recommended that ground meat or stew meat is eaten within two to three months of freezing. Roasts and steaks can usually be frozen from eight to twelve months. Once thawed, be sure to eat your meat within two to three days.
3. Organize Your Freezer Space
Save yourself a lot of hassle by labeling your packaged meats. At a minimum, include on these labels at least the contents of the package (or cut) and the date. Nothing deters a steak dinner like thawing out burger meat instead. It’s not the end of the world, but it may interrupt your dinner plans.
Then, keep your freezer organized. This means don’t overload it and disperse the packages throughout to encourage air circulation. However, if you have a freezer full of meat from various animals, organize the freezer by harvest so that you can eat first what was added to the freezer first. While arranging your freezer bound packages, be gentle. Even though the wrapping is heavy duty, you’d hate to unknowingly tear the package or destroy the seal on a freezer bag.
Finally, avoid placing your freezer next to anything that produces heat—near a stove, water heater, or in direct sunlight. You want your freezer to maintain a consistently cool temperature.
Written by Samantha Simma