What happens when salting

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What happens when saltingSalting, like drying, is one of the most reliable methods of preserving food. But why does salt keep food from spoiling? What are the principles of its preservative effect?

It is well known that the cell of a living organism includes a membrane, protoplasm, cell juice and several other elements. Substances feeding the cell penetrate into it through the membrane. This is how osmosis manifests itself.

With an increase in the concentration of a substance in the environment surrounding the cell, its osmotic pressure increases, and it penetrates inside with greater force. The cell's water is "squeezed out", the cell is dehydrated, and the protoplasm is compressed. Naturally, in this case, the vital activity of the cell is either suspended, or completely stops.

What happens when salting
Photo by Crochet

The process of salting many food products, including fish, is based on this phenomenon. Microorganisms are everywhere, and in fish too. Of course, they cause decomposition and spoilage of fish tissue. This is when the fish is not salted. After the fish has been impregnated with salt, the osmotic pressure rises sharply, the cell becomes dehydrated, and life in it ceases.

Following the cell, microorganisms also die. True, not all. Halophilic microbes that can survive in a salty environment. However, the salt content in the cell is at the level of 8-10 percent. does not allow the product to decompose and it can be stored for a long time. Each product has its own salt concentration index, at which it is considered salty. For fish, it is at least two percent. That is, only salted fish, which is two percent of table salt. It is in such a fish that not only microorganisms die, but it itself, as it were, matures, becoming tasty.

In addition, oxygen is poorly soluble in saline solutions, which naturally inhibits the development of aerobic bacteria, for which it is vital. In this environment, it is almost impossible to act and enzymes that promote the breakdown and degradation of proteins.

When pickling and pickling vegetables the process is somewhat more complicated. There the task is to ferment sugar with lactic acid bacteria, with the formation of lactic acid, which suppresses the vital activity of unwanted microorganisms. Microbes trapped in the product die at a half-percent concentration of lactic acid in it. But the lactic acid bacteria retain their viability.

Salt, combined with lactic acid, gives the product a peculiar sour-salty taste. Salts with this method canning plays a secondary role, but at the same time it promotes lactic acid fermentation. Which is strange enough, because during fermentation, lactic acid is formed from sugar. What's the matter? It turns out that salt, "squeezing out" the juice from the cell, extracts sugar from it, and it is contained in the juice. And lactic acid bacteria are right there, immediately taken for its fermentation.

In the process of juice extraction, such a detail is curious. When canning, watermelons, tomatoes, cucumbers, as a rule, are poured with brine with 6-10 percent salt. From such a concentration, not only almost all unwanted microbes die, but also those that are useful - lactic acid. However, the cell sap, released from the cells, dilutes the brine. And at a lower salt concentration, lactic acid bacteria, one might say, are reborn, continuing to act.

Scriabin Alexander Ivanovich

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