Over the last several years, Casey has become aware of prepping and more educated on why you might want to become a prepper and how to actually do so. Over the last year, I've gotten slightly more involved. I definitely see the advantages of prepping, especially given the crazy events of the dreaded 2020, but the concept of actually doing it is overwhelming to me. So, honestly, one of the reasons for this series is to break it down piece by piece for myself. Hopefully, that helps you as well. As you may or may not have guessed by the title, this will be a series of articles. For dealing with food, I will be doing this article on preparing your food for storage, follow up articles on canning and freeze-drying in detail, managing water needs, non-food related storage needs, bug out bags, and security.
Before I continue, I wanted to mention that you will see some links in my articles for recommended products. Many (but not all) of these links are affiliate links, so if you purchase these products from Amazon using the link that I provide, we do receive a small percentage of the sale for recommending the item. We do not compromise our recommendations in order to provide an Amazon item. You will see non-amazon links occasionally. Your support is appreciated.
Where to start
Even just a general search of something like "prepping food storage" kicks my anxiety into high gear. There is SO MIUCH information out there! Casey is on some prepping forums, and I have to say that something like that would probably push me over the edge. I decided to break my research and searches into much smaller categories so we can get pretty detailed without needing anxiety meds.
Let's start with the basics. These are questions you need to ask yourself and really figure out before you even start to prep. Personally, I suggest starting on the less hardcore side of prepping and then, as you gain stores and confidence, move on to the more hardcore methods, if you choose.
First, consider for what situation you are prepping. Do you expect a nuclear fallout, or do you just want to make sure you have enough supplies should store shelves run low again? Some methods can definitely be used for both situations. Maybe you want to start with some more basic, shorter-term storage solutions, or maybe you want to just jump in to store only for the long term. It's totally up to you, but really think through that question.
Next, what space do you have for storage? Do you have a freezer or space for one? Do you have shelves in a basement or some other temperature-controlled space for storage? Do you have a root cellar space? Do you plan to store prepped food in the open or in secret, like between your walls, in the ground, or at a bug out location? If you are looking to create hidden storage, then you have to really consider the size and shape of the containers you need for storage. You also want to prep those places for the food you are going to prepare.
What kind of money do you have or want to spend on food storage? If you are planning on a buried bug out shelter, then money probably is not much of an issue, so go for the gold. If you are like me, then you'll have to think about and budget what kind of money you want to spend on this venture. Between the food and the equipment and storage supplies, this is something that can add up. Logically, what money can you spend yearly, monthly, weekly, etc. in order to do what you want? This is a long game (hopefully), so it's okay to just do a little at a time.
Finally, what type of food do you want to store? Again - this depends a little bit on what type of a prepper you want to be, but it's something to think about. Do you want to store everything? Do you need to include meat, fruit, vegetables, grains, etc? Do you just want to do meat and grains and count on a garden for the fruits and vegetables? Do you want to store food that you will thoroughly enjoy or just food to get calories into your body when you need them? Maybe both?
Methods of preparing food for storage
This is where the fun begins! There are so many methods for storing food and while you've probably heard of the more common ones, there are other methods that work well and some methods that could be done even without electricity - yep back to the pioneer days! For those of you that are thinking about storage for some major catastrophe, you'll honestly want to learn these methods so that if the time comes, you can continue to harvest and preserve food.
Pantry Stocking
This is, by far, the easiest method of storing food. Many foods you buy at the store already have a long shelf life, maybe not 25 years, but can last up to 5. If you are just looking to survive a temporary supply shortage or snowstorm, then this might be the perfect method. You'll be able to store meats, vegetables, fruits, starches, and more. Something like dry pasta can be stored up to 1-2 years after the best by date on the box. Unopened spaghetti sauce is usually good for 12-18 months, although it will be good even for some time after that. Canned vegetables and fruits can last for 1-2 years after the date stamped on the can. Canned meats can last 2-5 years past the best by date. This is not going to be a good long term storage option but is a perfectly acceptable and easy option for the situations mentioned above. t's also a great method if you are without power for some time as nothing needs refrigeration and most can be eating without cooking. IJust make sure you are aware of when your foods pass the time you want to keep it so you can use up those foods and replace them.
Frozen Foods
As we know, just from everyday convenience living, freezing is a great way to preserve food for a reasonable long time, at least by modern terms! Most frozen foods are good for 6 months to a year before they start losing their best tastes.
With freezing foods, your options on what and how you freeze are almost endless. Almost all foods can be frozen. You can freeze fruits, vegetables, meats, sauces, and more. you can freeze in individual-sized servings or in larger servings. You can freeze most foods raw or cooked. You can freeze individual items or cook meals and freeze those. Really, the possibilities are almost endless.
If this is a primary source of emergency storage for you, I suggest looking at a deep freezer over a standing freezer. I also suggest you use the deep freezer as a set it and forget it type of situation. Always label and date your foods and stagger your storage dates. If you purchase a freezer full of food today, then a year from now, you are pretty much going to have to eat your entire freezer and restock it. If you stagger your storage, then you can look in every month or two and eat up what is hitting that 6-12 month time frame and replace it. If you work it right, after a year, you won't really be spending any additional money on keeping that reserve, because you'll just be replacing what you use up.
With the freezer method, you have limited space, because a freezer only holds so much. You are limited on time, because, even in the best-case scenario, food starts expiring around a year. Yes, you can eat past that, but the flavor is going to be fighting with freezer burn. If you end up not having electricity or if you lose your electricity in general at some point, you could lose all of your food in a week. If you are thinking about this type of storage, I suggest also looking at getting a generator backup.
For some very good information on preparing food for the freezer, I suggest this article.
Oil and Honey
I bet you had no idea that oil and honey could preserve food. I didn't. You can't use it for meat, and it has to be kept in the refrigerator, but you can keep fruits for up to a year using this method. If you keep bees and a garden and/or fruit trees, this method could be a great one if there is a run on grocery store foods. It's also a way to use up foods that might be getting ready to spoil. This method will not be very helpful if you lose electricity because, again, the items have to be kept cold but to know you always have fruits and vegetables on hand and in the refrigerator might be nice.
Canning
Canning is a method of preservation where you boil or pressure cook canned jars to seal the jars and not allow bacteria to grow. Canned foods can last 1-5 years, depending on the food. You have to be very careful as far as which foods you can via boiling and which foods you must can via a pressure cooker. Anything non-acidic should be done in a pressure cooker. If you are preparing for a period of being shut in where you are, electricity or not, canning could be a great, simple, and somewhat inexpensive option. You may can vegetables, fruits, meats, and sauces, so the variety is great. Canned foods also taste great, because they are in glass, not metal, so no metallic after taste. If you have your own garden, growing and canning can be a super inexpensive way of prepping your food and a great way to store produce that you cannot use in time. The boiling method of canning can also, technically, be used over a fire to continue to replenish your stock even if electricity is gone. The other nice thing about canning is you just unseal the can and it's ready to eat - you do not have to thaw, cook, or rehydrate anything. I will do a follow-up article on canning with all the details on how to do both methods. Pickling
Pickling is a method of using vinegar and salt (sometimes sugar too) in order to preserve an item. You can keep pickled items in your refrigerator for about a month and if you use the boil bath method of canning, discussed above, you can keep pickled vegetables indefinitely. I thought this was a great article on pickling for beginners.
Cured Foods
Curring is mostly for processing meats. Some common cured meats you have eaten are ham and smoked salmon. Salt curing for long term storage is a bit of a process. It also requires lots of space and time and, in the end, unless you really work out your process, and times, as industrial companies do, it's a hit or miss process. I would recommend this method for refrigerated storage only.
To salt cure meat, you cover the item in salt - and I mean fully coat it 100% as if it is in a salt bath. You then let it hang in a refrigerated area until the weight is 65% of its original weight. That's how you know it's been salt-cured. This food lasts longer in the refrigerator but is not suitable for storage outside of refrigeration.
By combining a salt cure with smoking, you can create a great long term meat storage option. To smoke meat for long term storage, you need CONSISTANT temperatures between 150 and 220 for hours. The internal temperature of the meat should be at least 160 degrees to kill the bacteria. In order to smoke meat for long term preservation (vs just for the amazing smoke flavor), you need to cure it first. You can opt for a dry cure or a wet cure (also called brine). For a dry cure, you'll mix the ingredients and let it sit on your meat for a given amount of time. For a brine, you'll add the ingredients to water and soak your meat in the brine for a given amount of time. Do not use a metal container to do this. To create a good salt cure, you really just need curing salt and some sugar or dextrose with whatever spices you want. Curing salt is just salt that is non-iodized and contains sodium nitrate. Iodized salt will create a metallic flavor and sodium nitrate prevents botulism and extends the shelf life. You can use table sugar instead of dextrose, but dextrose is less sweet and, because the granules are smaller, it penetrates the meat better. The salt to sugar ratio should be about 2:1 and for a fresh ham, for example, you'll want 6 cups of salt and 3 cups of sugar. If you use dextrose, you'll want 4 cups of dextrose. you can also purchase premade cures
Brine is just a salt cure that is dissolved in water. The basic ratio is 1/2 cup of both sugar and salt to 1 quart of water. To make the process quick. you can add the water and sugar to 1/2 of the boiling water and then once everything is dissolved, cool it down by adding the remaining water in ice cube form.
Once the meat is salt-cured, you'll need to smoke the meat in a smoker. Smokers are kind of their own conversation because you can get smokers that run on propane/gas, wood, pellet, electric, or charcoal and each one has pros and cons. I'm going to give a brief summary and some suggested smokers in each category.
Electric smokers are the easiest to use because they very much let you set it and forget it. They have thermostats, and there is no need to monitor them because the temperature will be exactly what you want it to be. Electric smokers will never add the smoked flavor that other types of smokers can add to the meat, which is a definite negative. They also are not at all portable because they need to plug into an electrical outlet. This would not be a good option if you want to continue smoking even if there is no electricity.
Propane Smokers are also pretty easy to use. They have thermostats, but there is a little more regulation of temperature than just the set it and forget it a method of an electric smoker. Propane smokers are relatively inexpensive and somewhat portable. They don't plug in anywhere, but they are not super light and then you also have the propane tank. The less expensive models tend to leak smoke and you might have to change out tanks in the middle of a smoke because propane tanks only last so long, but overall, these are great for the beginner smoker or someone who just does not have tons of time to put into the process.
Wood smokers are the best for the hardcore smoker. They give the best smoke flavor to the meat and allow the most control over the process. As they do not require anything but a wood fire to run, that makes them great in case you end up in the situation where you are without electricity. This is probably not a good option for someone who does not have time to give the machine constant attention because, with a fire, maintaining a constant temperature is time-consuming.
Pellet smokers give you most of what you desire from a wood smoker without all of the work. These works similar to a pellet stove for heating if you've ever used one of those. You set the temperature and compressed wooden pellets are fed from a hopper into the fire. You get a much better smoked flavor than the propane or electric smoker, but probably not as good as the basic wooden smoker. The pellet stove also has to be plugged in or be connected to a battery source to operate the hooper and other electric components.
The charcoal smoker is very similar to the wood smoker. There is no need for electricity, so it is extremely portable and usable if the power would go out. Experienced smokers will say charcoal and wood are the only way to go. I think it's worth thinking about burgers - burger cooked in a charcoal or wood grill is better than any other burger, hands down, but the flavor is not always worth the effort in the opinion of some. This smoker would require much more attention, like a charcoal grill, to make sure the temperature is consistent and maintains the level of heat you need to properly dry the meat. Another downside is that you would need to make sure you have charcoal on hand.
My personal experience is that we have a propane smoker and It's awesome for adding flavor. We mostly cook wings in it because I am slightly obsessed with smoked wings, but the flavor is good enough for an amateur like me. We have not yet done a cure and smoke for the preservation of meat, but it's now on my list of things to do after writing this article! After my research, if I was to purchase a new smoker, I would probably consider the pellet style. We have used pellet stoves for heat and I really like them because they are so much easier than a wood fireplace, but you get the same type of heat. I feel like the same would apply to me for a smoker.
Dried/dehydrated foods
Again, this is another great method to learn, so you can continue to replenish your food storage without electricity. Dried food, is simply the method of letting food dry out much of the water on low heat for a long period of time. You see this many times with fruit, vegetables, and meat. Dehydrated food can last a few weeks to a few months longer than the non-dehydrated counterparts. However, if you vacuum-seal the food with oxygen absorbers, you can extend the life by 8-10 years or more. There are machines that will do this for you and I will discuss a few of them here because they also cover different methods of dehydrating your food.
The most primitive method of dehydrating is using solar cooking. You can purchase a Sun Oven or build one yourself. In this article on DIY Solar cooking, you can build your own cooker and it also gives some great information on how you use your cooker to dehydrate your food.
To purchase a solar oven, the All American Sun Oven receives good reviews overall. This is also an American made product if that is important to you. This product is light, compact, and easy to use. When not in use, it folds up to the size of a small suitcase and weighs only 23 pounds. Setup is easy – take it outside, point at the sun, adjust brace height and unit direction and wait for heat. The only maintenance that's required is oiling of the wooden part of the frame every 5-10 years. Best for slow cooking, baking, and dehydrating, the Sun Oven works best for cooking that requires low, steady heat. It can also be used for boiling or sterilizing water, and rehydrating freeze-dried emergency foods. They also offer a Cloudy Day Cube Stove and Fuel Disks so that you can use your oven even when the sun isn't shining. If you decide electric is for you, then you can find quality dehydrators about anywhere. They range from $20 and up, depending on the features and size you are looking to purchase. You'll want one that is opaque because that helps the dehydrating process keep in as much of the nutrients as possible. While round trays are what I am used to seeing, there are options of machines with rectangular trays. Here are a few options in different price ranges to consider. The smaller one is about $65 and the larger one is about $212.
The NESCO FD-75A, Snackmaster Pro Food Dehydrator comes with 5 trays but is expandable up to 12 trays.
The Excalibur 3900B 9-Tray Electric Dehydrator. comes with 9 trays, totalling15 sqft of drying space.
Freeze Dried I could honestly make an entire article on freeze-drying foods. In fact, I will be doing just that at a later date. Here is some basic information on freeze-drying and methods. There are several methods of freeze-drying: using your freezer, using dry ice, or using a freeze dryer machine. The basic philosophy behind freeze-drying is to freeze the food to the point that the moisture goes straight from frozen to gas and you are left with an item with no moisture. The difference between freeze drying and dehydrating is the process and that freeze-drying leaves the item in its original form with almost all of the original nutrients. The food is also shelf-stable for much longer.
Freezer method
The freezer method is easy. You just place the item you want to freeze on a tray in a freezer that is set as low as it can go. You wait at least a week, depending on the food, and that's it. Place the food in a ziplock container and store it at or below room temperature. pros: easy, no special equipment needed, inexpensive
cons: determining finished product is a guessing game
Dry ice method For this method, you pack the food in zip log bags, put it in a cooler with a 1:1 ratio by weight to dry ice on top. Do not seal the container because that will cause an explosion. Once the ice is gone, the food is done.
pros: easy, quick
cons: obtaining dry ice could be tough. Dry ice costs about $1/lb, so not so inexpensive.
Machine method This is probably how most people do their freeze-drying these days. Harvest Right is the most well-known company, although I'm sure others exist. You purchase a machine in whatever size you need. The machines are expensive - several thousand dollars. I recommend Harvest Right Freeze Dryers as they are pretty much the standard personal freeze dryer and there is TONS of support. The process is pretty easy after that, you prepare your items, put them in the tray. You can pre-freeze or not and then put them in the machine for approximately 24 hours. when you take them out, they are completely ready to store for 25 years. pros: easy and reliable cons: expensive initial investment
I will be doing another article on freeze-drying using a Harvest Right Freeze Dryer.
Once you have your items completely freeze-dried, then your best storage is in a mylar bag, sealed with an oxygen absorber. With this method, the food should be good for up to 25 years. As soon as you open it, the food will start to rehydrate, so you have a limited time to use the food.
Reconstituting When you freeze-dry food, you sometimes need to reconstitute the food. Sometimes the food is better when it has been freeze-dried (like gala apples), but other items, like meat, will need restoring to their original state. This is super easy. For most foods, you just dunk it in warm water until it has all the water back. So a piece of steak would taste just like it did when you put it into the freeze dryer. Other items, you might want to spritz with water or milk or plan to use in its freeze-dried state.
If you are not interested in purchasing a machine, many companies sell already prepared freeze-dried foods and meals, like this Augason Farms Lunch and Dinner Variety Pail Emergency Food Supply 4-Gallon Pail. Many times they are already in mylar pouches in sealed containers.
The cost is about $1.50 - $2.00 per meal when you buy in bulk like this, which is not a bad price. The downside is that they are preset options, so the variety is limited or you may get items that you would not pack.
Meals Ready to Eat
Probably better known as MREs, this option is probably most familiar to you regarding military use. MREs were designed for the military and the first delivery was in 1981. They offer 24 different menu items at this point in time. MREs can last about 3-5 years when stored at 80 degrees. When you store them under cool weather conditions, they can last up to 10 years.
If you are not familiar with an MRE, when you open the packaging, there is a main course and a heater package. You fill the heater package with water, insert the unopened main package to heat, and in a few minutes, the food is ready to eat. According to my son who has eaten them for various challenges during his military school adventures, they are actually pretty tasty. Also, some of them are gluten-free, which is nice when, like my son, someone has a food allergy or intolerance.
This 12 meal pack from Sopakco costs $199, so you can see that is over $16.50 per meal. These are not cheap and the shelflife is not amazing. The convenience is definitely there though.
What Next In this article, I brought you storage methods, mostly. We talked about freezer storage, honey and oil, canning, pickling, curing and smoking, dehydrating, freeze-drying, and MRE's. I explained how long storage lasts in each of these methods and gave you some basics on how to do each method. The purpose of this article was to get you thinking about what type of methods you want to use in order to start or continue your storage journey. I hope this information has helped you do that. I will be going into more detail in future articles on canning and freeze-drying. I will also be talking about how to be prepared to have water in various situations. Other, non-food related prepping articles will be on non-food storage needs, bug out bags, and security. If you have other prepping information you would like to learn about, just drop a comment!
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