Austerity Cuisine: Amazing Flavors Develop When You Keep Canned Goods Past Their Expiration Dates

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http://www.slate.com/articles/life/food/2013/03/aging_canned_goods_why_time_and_heat_can_make_your_canned_tuna_and_spam.html

Age Your Canned Goods
Why I now think of best-by dates as maybe-getting-interesting-by dates.
By Harold McGee | Posted Monday, March 4, 2013, at 5:20 AM

...As far as I can tell, European connoisseurship in canned goods goes back about a hundred years. It was well established by 1924, when James H. Collins compiled The Story of Canned Foods. Collins noted that while the American industry—which started in the 1820s and took off during the Civil War—focused on mechanization and making locally and seasonally abundant seafood and vegetables more widely available, the European industry continued to rely on handwork and produced luxury goods for the well-off, who would age their canned sardines for several years like wine. Today, Rödel and Connetable, both more than 150 years old, are among the sardine makers that mark select cans with the fishing year and note that the contents “are already very good, but like grand cru wines, improve with age” for up to 10 years.

But the appreciation of can-aged foods wasn’t unknown in the United States. Collins recounts an informal taste test conducted by a New York grocer who rounded up old cans from a number of warehouses, put on a luncheon in which he served their contents side by side with those from new cans, and asked his guests to choose which version they preferred. Among the test foods were fourteen-year-old pea soup and beef stew, and twelve-year-old corned beef and pigs’ feet. The guests preferred the old cans “by an overwhelming majority.”

There must be many such minor treasures forgotten in kitchen cabinets and basements and emergency stashes all over the country. My own supply still being fairly young, I consulted the eminent Sacramento grocer Darrell Corti, who very kindly shared a few items from his storeroom. I compared a new can of French sardines in olive oil with 2000 and 1997 millésimes. The brands were different, and so were the size and color of the fish and the quality of the olive oils. That said, the young sardines were firm and dry and mild; the older vintages were fragile to the point of falling apart, soft and rich in the mouth, and fishier in a good way. A 2007 (70th anniversary) can of Spam was also softer than the 2012 (75th), less bouncy and less immediately and stingingly salty, though the aromas were pretty much the same. Some Corti Brothers mincemeat aged for a year under a cap of suet was delicious, its spices and alcohols seamlessly integrated. A five-year-old tin of French goose foie gras: no complaints. Two vintages of Corti Brothers bergamot marmalade: the older noticeably darker in color and surprisingly reminiscent of Moroccan preserved lemons. And 3-year-old Cougar Gold—still moist and not as sharp as open-aged cheddars—was deeper in color and flavor than the yearling version, with a touch of caramel and the crunchy crystals that are the hallmark of hard aged Goudas.

The trouble with aging canned goods is that it takes years to get results. However, we can take a hint from manufacturers, who often accelerate shelf-life tests by storing foods at high temperatures. A general rule of thumb is that the rate of chemical reactions approximately doubles with each 20-degree rise in temperature. Store foods at 40 degrees above normal—around 100 degrees—and you can get an idea of a year’s change in just three months. ...

[MadHound]

1. Also a great way of giving yourself food poisoning,

Not to mention that your food takes on the flavor of tin, steel, aluminum, or that wonderful plastic lining that now covers the inside of some cans.

[Retrograde]

5. If it were written by anyone other than Harold McGee...

McGee is a well-known food scientist, and I have more confidence in his ability to detect spoiled food than the average person on the street. Given how canned food is processed, once it's heat sterilized and sealed properly microbes aren't a problem (unless somebody's verified spontaneous generation without telling me).

Leaching of metals, OTOH, is definitely going to be a factor. McGee should know enough to test for metal content, I hope.

[FarCenter]

2. Still Tasty: Your Ultimate Guide to Shelf Life

http://www.stilltasty.com/

[NightWatcher]

3. Forget that. I just wish I'd listened more when grandma talked about squirrel

How to hunt, clean, and prepare the delicacies of Deep South Depression Living.

I bet we'll all wish we paid more attention when it comes to how our ancestors survived the First Depression as we brave the next one.

[Tempest]

4. Trust me on this one item

Do not ever eat currant sauce that is past it's expiration date.

All kinds of bad things happen to your digestive system. It was almost as bad as the time I got giardia from drinking contaminated water.