How to make a container of wood - a tub, they knew back in ancient Rome. And the name comes from the Latin word meaning "bucket". According to the device, the tub is a sealed container, the walls of which are made of vertically standing planks, jewelry-fitted to each other and fixed with hoops. The latter can be either metal or wooden.
The bottom of the tub is also a set of wooden boards. Unlike the barrel, the tubs do not close hermetically from above, their lid - like a pan. It would seem that in the days of glass, metal and plastic, wooden utensils are an anachronism, but, oddly enough, it has been recently that it has started to gain popularity again.
Why coil
From ancient times, a wooden tub was used for pickling . This is due to many factors. When salting, leavening, or soaking many acid-rich foods, such as tomatoes, apples, or cabbage, fairly active chemicals are formed. And they, in turn, interacting with the walls of containers made of metal or plastic, spoil the taste of the products and even saturate them with carcinogens and other harmful compounds.
A completely different thing is wood. It is not only friendly with any products, but, on the contrary, is able to adsorb elements that are undesirable for our body.
And in some cases, and this is primarily associated with the production of alcoholic beverages, the material of the walls of wooden containers saturates alcohol with unique tannins, making it a unique drink. This is how an unusual taste of such famous alcoholic products as cognac, whiskey, elite French port wine is created ...
But, without touching the elite or exotic products, it is enough to try the crispy pickles or cabbage in an oak tub to understand what distinguishes a tree from metal or plastic.
Birch twigs
However, the tree is discordant. For home canning, the birch tub is most often used. This is due to the lack of tannins in the chemical composition, a kind of natural neutrality, coupled with good strength properties of birch wood.
Birch tubs are indispensable for watering apples, pickling cabbage, pickling cucumbers and tomatoes. For a long time, until spring, black breasts, saffron milk mushrooms or thistles salted in a birch tub are stored. Even snowballs, according to the famous Soviet singer E. Khil, can be salted in such a tub.
Oak barrels are also very common, but in them, due to the presence of tannins and binders, it is impossible to store some chemically active products, for example, honey. But the birch tub is ideal for this.
Care for wooden utensils
But no matter how good the wooden tub, it is, nevertheless, not a plastic bucket, which after use can be thrown into the barn or cellar and not be remembered until the next harvesting season. This cookware requires care.
To remove the remnants of last year's pickles from the wood and the cracks between the planks and restore the tightness of the container after drying, the tub is soaked. If it is very dry and the water does not hold in it, it must be immersed in water completely for several days. After the tightness of the tub is restored, it is washed with a washcloth and steamed with boiling water for sterilization.
In the off-season, the barrels, tubs, other wooden utensils are rinsed, thoroughly dried and stored in a dry place inaccessible to sunlight.