Fortunately, my family was raised on rice, pasta and beans so it’s a given that these easily stored foods are part of our storage plan, but I do have one exception, my son. He’s getting better, but at around the 9-year mark, he went through a stage where he will only eat foods shaped like a French Fry or Chicken Nugget. Beans do not meet those criteria, so I had to count on him NOT partaking in any meals with beans in them.

However, Vienna Sausage still meets the “French Fry” appearance qualifier, so for now I am storing extra canned weenies to help fill in the gap for his food preferences.

When you have a fussy eater in your household, the task of coming up with storable foods that they will tolerate can be very challenging. While I can’t accommodate my child’s every desire to only have fast food and sweets, I can continue to work at introducing him to new foods that do store well while also stocking up on items that I know he will eat in a pinch.

This is one of the reasons that so many of the food plans offered by books do not work for me and my family (and most likely other families as well). While foods like canned salmon may be high in protein and essential fatty acids, my husband would most likely be the only one who enjoyed a dish made from it. If you don’t like the food in your pantry NOW, you still won’t like it LATER – plus you’ll have the added stress of whatever is going on around you in the event of a disaster.

The goal is to make life easier, not harder… so my advice is to make every effort to store food that your family already likes to eat, and also begin to introduce them to the foods they normally turn up their noses to right now. Only add the new foods to your pantry when you have a substantial “buy-in” from your family on a recipe made from those foods.

One of the biggest challenges many folks face when trying to put away extra food is finding the extra MONEY! Taking advantage of sales after commercialized holidays can work to your advantage. While some of the items I list are not food, they are useful accessories and other items that come in handy in situations like power outages, etc. Even clothing goes on sale after major holidays, so stock up!

A lot of people like to hit the After-Christmas sales to take advantage of sale prices on things like electronics, appliances and other items that were over-stocked during the holiday season. For preppers, however, there is another reason to venture out after the Christmas rush- to get a great deal on items for their long-term storage.

AFTER CHRISTMAS – OR EVEN BETTER… AFTER THE NEW YEAR

A lot of items go on sale the day after Christmas, but the really rock-bottom deals and mark-downs occur a few weeks later as stores try to move out the last of their Christmas-themed inventory. You’ll find carts lined up filled with Christmas decorations, candy canes, holiday wrapping paper and much more. But the more exciting price cuts come after all of this stuff has been mulled over and there are just a few items left. At this point you can literally make purchases for pennies on the dollar.

Here are just a few items that I walked away with this past week for almost nothing, and they will be useful to me throughout the year.

CANDLES

For some reason, the big box stores get hung up on the idea of certain candles being useful only at Christmas. Therefore, at the end of the season, they take all of those long red tapers (and even some white ones….), scented candles, jar candles, etc… and put them on for 75% or more off the retail price. Every year, I replenish my candle inventory by buying up the leftovers at the after-Christmas sales at places like Walmart, Target and even Home Depot. I’ve purchased white tapers for 5 cents each, just because they were being displayed with the Christmas items. I then walked down the actual candle isle and found almost identical candles (with a non-Christmas looking label on them) selling for 50 cents each.

I love candles in a jar, especially the vanilla scented ones. I picked up several Vanilla Candle Gift Sets at Walmart for 75% off. The stores know that they will not be able to mix these products back into general inventory because there is some reference to the holidays on the packaging, so they just pile it up and mark it down to sell quickly. It’s YOUR GAIN to watch for these kinds of sales.

CANDY, SWEETS AND BAKING GOODS

Of course you can pick up all of the peppermint candy your heart desires after Christmas, but don’t overlook the chocolate isle. Our stores marked all of their Hershey’s products down by 50% because they were shaped like little bells or chocolate Santa’s and Christmas Trees. Guess what? These are still edible even after Christmas! You should also check out the baking isle for sales on chocolate chips, canned milk, powdered sugar, cake and cookie mixes, and spices. Many times the stores over-order these items to be sure to accommodate the extra baking that seems to go on around this time of year, but if it doesn’t sell out, they will need to move out the inventory. Our local Albertson’s Grocery store had placed pallets of baking flour and sugar on display in their center isle. Immediately after Christmas, they marked the price down by half, and then by half again the next week.

BAKING ACCESSORIES

Along with the baking food products available, you can also find what I call baking “accessories” at great prices. If you are not bothered by red and green decorations on your muffin pan liners, you can pick these up for just a few cents after the holidays. I got the Christmas designed ones for 15 cents each (75 per package). That was 90% off of the retail price.

Notice I also have some with pumpkins from the Halloween/Thanksgiving season. These were on sale after the season as well, but not as cheap as the prices I seem to see after Christmas.

My family doesn’t mind seeing Santa or little pumpkins on their cupcakes or muffins, and I save lots of money on an item I use all year long.

I also noticed that the food storage products, such as foil baking pans and plastic bowls with lids (I call them disposable tupperware) made by Ziploc and Hefty, go on sale if they have any resemblance to holiday-ware. The plastic bowls with red or green lids will be sold at 33-50% off, and if you can combine that bargain price with a good coupon, you can get them for close to FREE. I found these foil baking pans with lids on sale half-price today, and they will be perfect for my make-ahead dinners that go straight from the freezer to the oven (I use recipes from a book I bought online called Frugal Mom’s Guide To Once A Month Cooking). This little pan has bows printed on the bottom, so it was tossed to the Christmas decoration isle for quick sale.

DON’T OVERLOOK FRESH FOOD…

I usually talk about long-term storage items you can buy at a discount, but don’t forget to check out fresh foods like turkeys, hams, cheeses, cranberries, nuts and much more that the stores provide in large quantities around the holidays. After things calm down in January, the extra turkeys and spiral hams will be marked down a bit.. and those party trays with fruit, cheese and snack crackers will be priced WAY down for a quick sale. I purchased a wooden cutting board with a round of Gouda cheese, 16 ounces of hard salami and some thin snack crackers for $5.00. It was designed and packaged for gift-giving, so I now have a really neat little cutting board and my family enjoyed something different for a snack.

CLOTHING?

Yes, even clothing goes on sale after the holidays. It always baffles me when the stores start hanging out swimsuits and tanktops…. and it’s 20 degrees outside! However, this is a great time to hit the clearance rack and get some flannels, sweatshirts, jeans, gloves, hats… you name it…. at discount prices. Buy one of those Christmas decoration rubbermaid tubs (also on sale, by the way….) and put away those clothes until next year- then don’t eat too much of that holiday chocolate so they will still fit…. Buy new coats for the kids in a slightly bigger size and put them away. You can save big bucks on your clothes budget with these little tricks.

WATCH FOR SALES AFTER OTHER HOLIDAYS

As I mentioned before with the muffin liners, you can also pick up sale items after holidays like Thanksgiving, Halloween, Valentine’s Day, and even the 4th of July. After Halloween, I like to pick up their leftover glowsticks to use during emergency power outages (and during campouts…). Valentine’s Day provides me with lots of great candy, and July 4th fireworks will hold over for New Years celebrations… and also to scare away a bunch of crows that are wreaking havoc on your garden!

Many canned goods have shelf life recommendations of 2 or 3 years, and truth be known, most will last even longer than the expiration date.

Even so, as the old saying goes… “Nothing lasts forever” so rotating your food is the best bet for insuring that you always have fresh food on hand.

There are many ways to go about this. The simplest approach is to always put the newly purchased food to the back of the pantry and use products from the front. If you keep your shelves organized, this can be done pretty easily at first, but as your stockpile grows, the task becomes more challenging.

You will most likely find it necessary at some point to develop some type of system to ensure that you are rotating your food properly. One method is to clearly label the expiration date on each item so that you can be sure to use up the things that are oldest first. I currently use this method in my own food storage plan and so far it is working quite well.

Each can has an expiration date stamped either on the top or bottom of the can. That word “either” is the problem. If all of the cans had dates on the top, life would be so much easier, but they don’t. Another problem is that the date stamps can be a bit cryptic at times. There’s no standard dating system for food, so everyone has a different representation of the date, sometimes interwoven with other information such as lot and batch numbers, canning facility code, etc.

I’ve found that the best way for me to keep up with the expiration dates on my canned goods as well as my dried box goods is to use a black Sharpie marker and just write the expiration date on the top of the cans. I also use an initialing system to identify what fruit or vegetable is in the cans. That way I can know what’s inside by glancing at the tops of the cans instead of reading the labels.

Labeling the tops of your cans also comes in handy if by some chance your canned goods lose their labels. I like a little adventure in my life, but prefer not to have “mystery food” hanging around.

With dried foods, try to label them on an outward facing side. What I mean is if you line your food boxes up in the pantry with the narrow side pointing outward, write your date on that side of the box. If, however, you place your food in bins where only the top of the box can be seen, then place the date on the top of the box. If you are not sure which way you will be storing your food- date the top and the side. This will make more sense when we discuss the “alternate pantry” in later sections.

Another great option is to use food racks that allow you to back load the newest canned goods and push the older cans to the front. Shelf Reliance has a wide variety of shelving options from the small rotation “can-solidators” that fit right into your existing pantry shelves, to the more sophisticated free-standing systems that come in a variety of sizes and configurations to meet just about any space need you may have. My goal is to move to these shelves in my secondary pantry for better rotation capabilities.

Unless you are someone who just LOVES doing your own baking, cooking beans and cornbread every other night, or canned fruits and veggies every single day, you’ll have some items that truly do stay stored long-term until needed.

I currently store a lot of flour, but rarely use much of it. I’ll occasionally mix up some bread in my bread machine, or use a little flour for gravy or breading for a cut of meat. But in my day-to-day life, I find it much more convenient to just pop in to the store and buy a loaf of bread, package of burger or hot dog buns, or even a gravy mix.

The trick here is to make sure that if times get tough and the convenient option is no longer available, you know how to make your own bread from scratch with the flour that you store. Storing flour in food-grade containers with a tight-fitting lid will help keep it fresh until you need it.

As I mentioned earlier, beans can be stored for very long periods of time if placed in food-grade containers and kept in a cool, dry environment. While you may not rotate your supply of beans as quickly as you would your canned goods, they should be just fine in long-term storage.

Cornmeal and sugar are other staple items that may not rotate as fast as other items, but with proper storage, you should be able to keep a good supply on hand with no problems.

This is a reprint from my bog, but I wanted to share it with you here. Food storage is not a science with absolutes, it’s an art with many variations based on the individuals wants and needs.

(original article: http://www.countryconsultant.com/blogspot/?p=1997 )

One of the most important lessons I have learned in life is this- for every challenge there can me many answers, and unlike our school days where there was only one right answer to a question, we have the flexibility to create answers that fit our own circumstances.

I’ve been preserving and storing food for many years now, and I’ve learned a few things that work well, and some other things that kind of work.. and then I’ve learned things that just don’t work at all. I’ve also learned that some solutions work for awhile, but as circumstances change, the need for new solutions arise. It’s kind of a universal truth, but let me explain how this has happened to me with food rotation.

In the beginning, it was all easy-breezy! I canned a few jars of jelly, which never lasted until spring, a dozen jars of cucumber slices that lasted too long and many times had to be removed and placed in the compost heap. There were always just enough jars of tomatoes to make homemade salsa, but we’d have to turn to store-bought sauces long before the spring brought us a new harvest of Roma’s. As for canned goods… well, in the beginning it was just me and the husband, and our food storage goals were small – about 30 days worth at the start. Food rotation was simple. The stuff we canned was eaten, and the stuff we bought could be rotated simply by placing the newer items to the back and pulling the older items forward to be eaten first.

But then things changed .. we added some kids.. with their own varying tastes and food needs. We expanded the garden and also began to learn new food storage techniques like dehydrating and root-cellaring. Our gardens expanded and our storage shelves were filled to the brim. Keeping up with the food rotation became a little more complicated to say the least, and on top of it all, we decided that 30 days worth of food storage wasn’t nearly enough- so we upped our goal to 90+ days.

Food rotation still worked, but it became more challenging. To help us keep up with the age-old technique of using oldest food first and putting newer food to the back, I purchased special shelving to help rotate canned goods. I also purchased tubs that could easily slide in and out of shelves to store more vulnerable foods like flour, sugar, potato flakes, baking mixes. A series of check lists and spreadsheets (yes, I’m a computer nerd..) became necessary tools to make sure we were storing enough of each item and restocking items when necessary. No longer was the “eye-balling” inventory technique working for me. There was just too much stuff to keep a running tally in my head. Even so, I was able to stay on top of things pretty well… until……

Things changed again. As we began to witness the economic decline in our country kick into high gear, it became apparent that we should be doing more– more food production, more food storage, more long-term food storage. It didn’t take long to hit critical mass. Storage space became a luxury I just did not have anymore. I continuously found myself unable to properly rotate the newest foods to the back of a shelf that was never designed to house this much product. Time was not my friend, and things began to snowball out of control. When I finally got the courage to inventory the food and try to come up with a new plan, I discovered an overwhelming amount of expired foods, damaged foods, and things that had been stored but never eaten because we had mistakenly thought it was a good thing to buy in the beginning (you know I’m talking about those cans of Spam.. right?)

Every book I’ve ever read says, “Keep inventory of your goods, place newer foods to the back, and push older foods to the front”. Due to the sheer volume of canned goods and dry goods we had accumulated, this just wasn’t working anymore.

SOLUTION TO THE FOOD STORAGE MADNESS

I decided it was time to toss the textbook food storage rotation plan to the wayside and try a different approach.

Basically, I spent an entire day rearranging my food storage by YEAR instead of by PRODUCT. No longer was there a shelf of tomato products, and a shelf of canned vegetables, and yet another shelf of pastas. I divided the pantry into years, placing the food I had found that was still around with expiration dates in 2010 and placed them all together on a single shelf right by the door. Labeled with a 3×5 card so that all family members understand.. These foods MUST be used before going further into the pantry! If the item you need does not exist on this shelf, then you are allowed to move on to the 2011 shelves.. and then the 2012 shelves, and so on and so forth.

The foods are still divided into categories like tomato products, pastas, etc…. but now there is an additional category of expiration year to help divide things up and make the rotation process easier to handle.

Just remember, the advice you find in books is great, but as things evolve in your prepping plans, so must your methods. And that doesn’t just ring true for food storage. There is no “wrong” way to do things, as long as it works for you.

That is why most people start out with a food storage plan that involves buying pre-packaged foods from the grocery store that can be incorporated into simple meal planning such as dry pasta, flour, sugar, salt, canned goods, etc. It’s a noble plan that cannot be faulted, especially if this is the way you are presently eating on a daily basis.

One of the inevitable pitfalls of storing non-perishable food is the very thing that makes that food appealing for long-term storage- preservatives and preserving techniques. So the question that must be addressed.. is it possible to have a healthy diet while using our long-term food storage items?

Let’s start by addressing some of the most common foods included in our preps:

White Flour and Pastas

Processed Foods

To keep processed foods from going bad, food manufacturers add preservatives. Two common preservatives that are used in foods to keep fats from going rancid are butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) and butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT). Both of these preservatives work to protect fats from damage due to exposure to oxygen (oxidation). BHA and BHT are often added to common long-term storage foods. BHA can be found in dry breakfast cereals, chewing gum, snack foods, dehydrated potatoes, and even beer. BHT serves a similar purpose, being added to shortening, dry cereals, instant oatmeals, dried soups and many other foods that contain fats and oils. However, it is also used in a conjunctive fashion to preserve food odor, color, and flavor. So what’s the big deal about BHA and BHT? While some studies indicate it is safe, other studies demonstrate that it causes cancer in rats, mice, and hamsters.

The US Department of Health and Human Services considers BHA to be “reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen”. Even so, the Food and Drug Administration still permits BHA to be used in foods.

Canned Goods

There’s a lot of conflicting information on the topic of nutritional values of canned goods. One would presume that canned food would have less nutritional value than fresh foods, but many studies contradict these theories, providing evidence that canned foods retain their vitamin content when harvested and processed soon afterward and with minimal additives. Also, with the high standards for canning foods, cans are one of the safest ways to preserve food. However, there are some losses in flavor, texture and eventually over time even in nutritional value, no matter what claims can be made of the food under optimal conditions. Of course, this is true of any food including tomatoes picked from your own garden, in which the nutritional value begins to decline the moment you pluck the fruit from the vine.

Some canned foods are found to possess the chemical BPA (bisphenol A). BPA, a key ingredient in hard plastics and resins used to coat metal cans.

According to the World Health Organization, laboratory studies of cells of animals have linked the chemical BPA to cancer, infertility, diabetes and obesity. So, of course, the recommendations are to eat more fresh foods and opt for foods in jars instead of cans.

So what does this all mean?

It means that the way we eat today has hidden consequences, and if we are storing food for future use, those same hidden consequences are still present. The way to assure a healthier diet is to consume fresh foods that are not heavily laden with chemicals or processed for optimum shelf life. We need to know how to grow our own fruits and vegetables, or purchase those foods from others who produce them organically. It is also to our benefit to learn to store our own fresh foods to avoid chemicals like BPA . Learning the art of home canning, dehydration and root cellar storage techniques can help us store a more healthy selection of foods. Learn how to read labels to search out better choices in commercially packaged foods to avoid substances like BHA or BHT. Make choices in foods that may not store as long, but are a healthier choice. And lastly, be sure to properly rotate food storage items to assure optimum freshness, vitamin content and safety.

I used to live and die by ‘the list’, but I’ve kind of gotten past the point of searching out lists of things that other people think I should have in my food storage. However, I must admit that when I first started out, I had no clue what I should be putting away for long-term food storage, so other people’s lists came in handy as I developed a better feel for my own personal needs. So, here we go…. my first list for you, and I’ll be bringing you more lists… but I must only ask that you not get so attached to any list that you forget to think for yourself and make your own decisions about the things you will need in a food storage plan.

If you are looking for some help with what types of foods to store and how much, I have found a very good list of the basic storage foods in a book called Cooking With Food Storage Made Easy by Debbie G. Harman.

When you are first getting started with your food storage plan, you may find it difficult to figure out what types of foods to include. Over the years I have read a number of articles and books, which helped me to devise my own basic storage plan. I think my life would have been a WHOLE LOT EASIER if I would have found a resource like this little book! Harman brings together an organized book of suggestions that you will find so useful as you make your storage preparations.

Here are the recommendations given to help the reader get a good start on the basics for 1 year (all amounts are Per Adult):

Harman also gives advice on how to actually accumulate this amount of food over time while rotating each item to ensure that your food storage items remain as fresh as possible.

In my own food storage plan, I currently do not store whole wheat and I include olive oil along with the vegetable oil. I also include wheat flour, flaxseed, and some ready-mix products like Bisquick and pancake mix.

HEAT

I always start with heat because I live in a hot, southern climate. Therefore, heat is a big deal for my long-term food storage pantry. Heat can have many negative affects on food including:

• Discoloration
• Flavor
• Food Texture
• Nutritional Value
• The Growth Rate of Microbes
• Reduces Water Content and Dries Out (evaporation) and Creates Moisture Inside containers (condensation)

On the other side of the equation, not enough heat (freezing temperatures) will lead to container breakage as well as some of the same issues with heat such as damaged food flavors and textures.

MOISTURE

As I mentioned above, excessive heat sometimes leads to condensation, or too much moisture. While some foods require a bit of moisture, once it creeps above an optimum level damage begins to occur from yeasts, bacteria, molds and insects. Too much moisture also contributes to the breakdown of fats. Containers begin to fail due to corrosion.

LIGHT

Exposure to natural and artificial light will cause discoloration, damage flavors, textures, increase the possibility of mold growths, rancidity and destroy vitamin content.

OXYGEN

Oxygen allows for the growth of yeasts, molds and bacteria. It leads to oxidization of fats in foods, leading to rancidity. It also affects flavor, coloring, and vitamin content.

RODENTS AND INSECTS

Mice, rats and bugs can wreak havoc on food storage. They are destructive to the packaging, carry diseases, and the last thing you want to find in your rice and beans is rodent droppings. The most obvious step to keeping your food storage pest-free is to make it as inaccessible as possible.

Even if I overlooked the variations and just tried to calculate the needs for 4 adults, there were too many factors, so I’d just put the book down and promise myself I’d get back to it later.

However later never comes, and disasters do not wait until you are ready for them. So I decided there must be an easier way to get started, and worry about the nitty-gritty details later on. Here are the steps that I took to get started and eventually hone my own personal food storage system.

Assess Your Current Food Supply

Before you ever make that first trip to the store, it’s important to check out what’s already in your pantry or cabinets. If you are like me, there are items that have been pushed to the back of the shelves and long forgotten that need to just be disposed of. My first recommendation is to take a thorough inventory of your current supply of food.

You may find that you actually have a lot of food on hand, although it might not match up into your favorite combinations for meals. The truth is, you probably wouldn’t starve to death if you had to stay home for a week or so.

To get a clear look at your current stock, take all of the food items out of your pantry. Try to group like-items together as you go like pastas, tomato products, canned fruits, canned vegetables, pre-packaged foods like potatoes, mac and cheese, etc…. This will just make it easier to take inventory and also to decide how the food needs to go back into the pantry.

Now it’s time to take inventory. Grab some lined paper or a spiral notebook and write down all of the items you currently have on hand.

As you inventory your items on hand, place them back into the pantry in an orderly fashion. At this point, you may discover that some shelf organizers would be beneficial—but don’t feel that they are a necessity at this point. Stay on task and don’t get caught up in the prepping, losing site of the primary task—stocking up on food.

Once you have a good look at everything in your pantry, it’s time to put on our thinking caps and decide what kind of items need to be in our long-term food storage plan. I decided with my own plan that it would make more sense to start out buying foods that I already purchase regularly, and then work to supplement the deficient areas as I went along.

For instance, my family loves all kinds of tomato-based meals, so we buy a lot of canned tomatoes and sauce. We also use a lot of rice and pasta, which are easily stored for long periods of time. By selecting items for your food storage plan that you already eat on a regular basis, you’ll be sure of 2 things:

1. You’ll have food on hand that you already like and know how to cook
2. The food in your pantry will be rotated on a regular basis

In one of my earlier email correspondence with readers, I presented some information that tested many folks’ way of thinking about store-bought food. I suggested that maybe… just maybe….. the people who distribute our food want to make money, just like every other business…

“It is in the food seller/distributor’s best interest to keep people buying. Expiration dates encourage people to throw out “old” food and replace it with “fresh” food. The dates also ensure that the quality and taste of their products in optimal. And in the event of that rogue Twinkie that does manage to get shoved to the back of a store shelf for 2 years and grow a mold, well… that date might save the company from a lawsuit. But never for one minute entertain the idea that businesses provide dates because they care about the consumer. Business is business. So once a Food “Expires”, should it automatically be thrown away? Not necessarily. The dates on most food items is merely a guideline provided for both product sellers and the buying public to assure that food is properly rotated.”

I don’t want you to think that expiration dates are totally useless wastes of our time, or even that they are some type of plot devised just to make you buy more stuff.. they do serve a purpose for both the seller and the consumer. The seller can use their own expiration dates to be sure that they are providing the consumer with the best quality, best tasting, freshest food. The consumer can use the expiration date… well…. for the very same purpose. Part of having a good long-term food storage plan is making sure that the food you purchase gets properly rotated. This simply means that the oldest foods get pushed to the front to be eaten before the newly purchase items. This assures that you are not leaving an item in food storage so long that it does lose its value in terms of freshness. However, the time that food can be safely used is based on more than a date stamped into the top of a cardboard box or imprinted on the bottom of a can.

So how do you know when using food a few days (or a few months.. or years) past the printed date is OK? Here are a few guidelines to help you out. There are actually several different types of expiration dates that you will see on food items. Knowing the expiration date “lingo” can help you make a better food storage plan. I found a great chart at Gourmet Sleuth.com and have provided a link to their very informative article at my Sources Page (see link below).

*The chart mentions fresh/perishable foods, meats and specialty foods, but I will be discussing those in more detail in another article.

Expiration Date Guideline Chart

Sources Page

I keep a lot of items in my freezer for daily use such as corn and peas, and while this is a form of food storage that can help you stretch the length of time veggies are available for cooking, it can have its shortcomings.

BENEFITS OF DEHYDRATED FOOD STORAGE OVER FREEZING

• NO NEED FOR POWER – Freezers need power. Without electricity (or a generator with plenty of fuel) the food will soon thaw and spoil. Dehydrated food easily stores at room temperature.
• SPACE SAVER – Freezer space is limited by the size of your freezer and the amount of other stuff you have in it. You can get really creative with storage space for dehydrated food.
• PORTABILITY – Frozen vegetables are not portable, dehydrated vegetables are.. plus they are much lighter in weight.
• SHELF LIFE – Frozen foods last about a year. Dehydrated foods last 10+ years

Here are some things to remember when dehydrating food.

CHOOSING A DEHYDRATOR

Currently I have 3 food dehydrators. Two are Nesco American Harvest FD 1010 Plus (FD-1018P) Food Dehydrators, but my favorite one is my Excalibur 9 Tray Dehydrator. With the American Harvest dehydrators, I have to remember to rotate the trays to make sure that all of the vegetables dehydrate evenly. However, with the Excalibur, I am able to just load up the trays and walk away. Since the heated air circulates across the trays evenly, there is no need for tray rotation. I also like the ease of cleanup and of removing the dried food from the trays.

PERFORM DEHYDRATION PROCESS IN A CLEAN ENVIRONMENT

Any time you are preparing food for food storage (whether it be canning, freezing, smoking or dehydrating) the key to successful food preservation is cleanliness. This includes clean hands, clean surfaces and clean utensils. I recommend using a bleach solution (1 tsp of chlorine bleach to 1 quart of water) to wash all surfaces. Wash hands with soap and water, and make sure that your food dehydrator is cleaned per manufacturer’s instructions.

WEAR FOOD HANDLING GLOVES

Wearing food handling gloves is a good idea. This helps to guard against food contamination during the preparation stage, and also helps to keep moisture from re-entering your dried veggies as you package them for storage. Disposable gloves are most convenient and can be purchased at stores like Sam’s Club, Costco, or online at Amazon.com

BUY FROZEN VEGETABLES ON SALE

Since there is no hurry to process frozen vegetables, I like to watch for good sales (sometimes combined with coupon deals) and just puth them away in the freezer until I have enough time and food items to process a full load in my dehydrator. 9 trays of frozen vegetables is about 9 pounds of food. Choose the vegetables that you like the most. Our family loves corn, peas and carrots, but my kids are not that crazy about green beans. So I buy more of the things that we will all eat, and less of the others.

STORING DEHYDRATED FOOD

There are a number of ways to store your food once it is dehydrated. I prefer to place the food in vacuum seal bags which are available at Amazon.com and also at DC Sales Enterprises. I have two vacuum sealers, but the one I use the most is the FoodSaver brand. My model is so old that it is no longer available, but you can find FoodSaver Equipment At Amazon. Now that I am doing more food dehydration, I would like to get a professional model like the Pro-2300 Vacuum Sealer 430 Stainless Steel w/Cobalt Lid.

I’ve created a video to introduce you to the food dehydration process. There was a lot more information I wanted to share with you, but rather than create multiple videos, I tried to edit this one down to just the basics.

QUESTIONS FROM THIS POST:

After putting food in sealed bags, where do you store them? How long will they last in a bag? Do you store in mason jars also? Do you replace the oxygen absorber each time the jar is opened? Just learning how to dehydrate. Thank you.

 

For long term storage, I was fortunate to find a local restaurant that gets some of their products in 4 gallon food-grade plastic containers.. they save them up for me and I pick them up once per week. I put my dehydrated food inside these containers once I’ve vacuum sealed them.. I’ll try to post some photos for you this week.

For shorter term, I move packages of dehydrated food to my pantry and place them in wire baskets where I can more easily get my hands on them. I use the packets to refill my mason jars, or I just use some of the items directly from the bags since I have some products sealed in single-serving sizes.

How Long Does Food Last?
I’ve only been dehydrating for a few years, and I rotate my food (first in – first out method) so my food hasn’t really had a chance to test its longevity in storage. It’s my understanding that it lasts a REALLY long time. Some people say 10 years, some say 30 years, some say indefinitely.

RE: Mason Jars
I use mason jars for the dehydrated vegetables and herbs that I use on a regular basis. I keep some handy in my kitchen cabinet. I don’t replace the O2 absorber every time I open the jar, but it probably would be a good thing to do. I usually judge the need to put in a new 02 absorber when I don’t hear the “hiss” that happens when you unseal the lid from the jar. One tip on using the mason jars.. keep them in a dark place to keep them fresher and more “colorful”.