Aging Canned Goods

A reader sent me a link to an article on aging canned goods. The gist of the article is that some canned foods can take on different (or better) flavors and textures as they age. I thought the whole article is interesting, but here are a couple of points of interest to the prepper:

Standard canned goods aren’t generally deemed age-worthy [i.e., worthy of being aged like wines or cheese]. Food technologists define shelf life not by how long it takes for food to become inedible, but how long it takes for a trained sensory panel to detect a “just noticeable difference” between newly manufactured and stored cans. There’s no consideration of whether the difference might be pleasant in its own way or even an improvement—it’s a defect by definition.

Obviously, then, the "best when used by" date on products is not necessarily when the food becomes inedible (although my experience with saltine crackers is the "best when used by date" is generally overoptimistic).

And for those wanting to experiment:

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.

But it’s possible to go further. At 120 degrees, you get a year’s worth of change in six weeks; at 140 degrees, three weeks; at 180 degrees, five days.

Of course temperatures that high are cooking temperatures, and their heat energy drives reactions that would never occur in normal storage. But if we’re interested in the evolution of canned foods, which have already been extremely cooked, then why not treat them to a little additional simmering and see what happens? (It’s safest to stay a little below the boil, to avoid building up steam pressure in the can.)