15 Pantry Items to Stock Up On | Homestead Food Storage Tour

hey guys so today I'm going to be walking you through the pantry items that you should have on hand at all times because if you stock these basic items in your pantry you are going to be able to cook almost everything that you need for your family I'm also going to be showing how much I keep on hand both in my kitchen so right here we're where I'm cooking along in my back pantry my sources and where I store everything we live in a manufactured home so there's not a ton of extra storage I don't have a basement we don't have a garage I don't have an official root cellar so all of my food has to be packed into our house and we just have a little over 1200 square feet so not as tiny as it could be but it's definitely not huge so we're gonna show you all of the places and the minimum amounts that we kept keep on hand so up first number one thing to have on hand is flour now it can be any type of flour that you want I know some of you are gonna be having gluten free flour this is an all-purpose organic organic unbleached flour and I also keep bread flour on hand now we're going to talk about wheat berries in just a minute but I start with flour because if you've got flour on hand you are going to be able to use all the other ingredients that I'm going to list out and these pantry must-have items to create a plethora of homemade food for your family now I keep right here these are the ball canisters and so when you pop the lid off they do have inside there a rubber gasket I can't say that there are a hundred percent airtight but they're pretty close so this is right in my kitchen right next to my stove you can see right here next to the stove so this is where I keep the items that I'm going to be using when I'm baking right next to the oven now also is sugar which this canister is getting low I don't need to refill it quite yet but gonna be up there pretty soon and some type of sweetener is on my list as well now this is actually organic sugar so kind of like sugar in the raw but organic I get it from Costco you might be using I do also have what I do in Quito I don't do Quito all the time I get questions about that a lot I talked about it in different podcast episodes in blog post I cycle through with Quito I have low thyroid and I find if I do Quito too long usually if I try to do Quito where I'm in actual nutritional ketosis for longer than six to eight weeks I really start to notice it and my thyroid takes a hit and so I have to cycle off of it but I do keep some additional sweeteners on hand so depending on whatever it is you need I've got month fruits sweetener that I keep this is low glycemic index you know approved I get this from Costco so I just get a baguette out from Costco and I also keep a little bit of powdered erythritol on hand so this is kind of like my whole baking cupboard honey is also an excellent sweetener to have on hand I keep both honey and regular sugar because I can you'll have seen and we're going to take a trip to the canning area here in just a minute I keep sugar on hand for my canning I do not use honey and canning most of my canning is low sugar anyways the reason I don't use honey in maintaining is because you're heating it and I buy raw honey and when you heat it and when you're canning it you're destroying all of the great and wonderful benefits that are found within that raw honey and it's a lot more expensive and your waist I shouldn't say you're wasting it but in a way you really are because you're destroying those benefits of the raw honey so I don't use honey in my canning I use a small amount of organic raw sugar instead now sort of the other items that you're going to have in your pantry and so I'm going to walk you through them just because we all have a I have them in this spot is some type of leavening agent so here is baking soda here is baking powder and I keep them this one's totally full it's pint so it's two cups worth of aluminum free baking soda and powder is what I always go for and then this one I'm going to need to fill up this is a quart size so this is actually the same amount as this almost this is about two cups worth but you're going to want to have some type of leavening agent so this is gonna be great for doing some of your things like quick breads and cakes and cookies and Skip's in those types of things now we need to talk about one of the next items that can fall under the leavening and especially when we're talking about flour and that is yeast so I do have some dry active yeast I buy it in the Bibble bag from Costco and I've had that dry active yeast for well over a year and I keep it in my fridge at stores and it stays active longer that way but store by East little bit hard to find right now so take a walk with me okay you ready we're gonna dive into the fridge so here's the large bag of active dry yeast that I keep like I shared I get this from Costco but if you're unable to find yeast in the store which a lot of people aren't able to is sourdough starter so this is homemade yeast essentially you're capturing the wild yeast that lives on the grains and you're creating an environment that it can grow and proliferate along with some good bacteria to create a live culture of yeast and good bacterial actively in a sourdough culture so I just baked a whole bunch of sourdough bread yesterday so I am putting my starter to rest because I usually do the majority of my baking once a week for one hour those of you who went through that live web class with me know my host secrets there so this is going back into the fridge to take a little bit of a rest until later in the week so if you do not have a sourdough starter or you haven't had such great success with one in the past the only two things that you need to create a sourdough starter is water and flour you can do gluten free sourdough starters you can do ancient grain you can do regular store-bought flour you do not need potatoes and you do not need sugar and you do not need honey and you don't need any store-bought used in fact if you use those items it can actually throw off the balance and create an unhealthy starter or one that doesn't thrive so beneath this video I have got a link one to all the different stuff that I'm talking about I've got links and resources but my free sourdough video series as molesky NORTHCOM forward slash learn sourdough so you can go there and learn how to make all kinds of sourdough starters with the different flours you may have on here with just water okay so that brings me to our next few items on the list in relation to flour I also keep wheat berries on hand so here is the corner of my kitchen where I've got my green milk and I have the video on how to make your own wheat flour at home with grinding and showing you my nose so you can check that out I'll pop that in below but this is where I keep my hands on amount so I know this looks like a fairly small amount of meat berries but I keep hard white wheat on hand this is what I use for my bread flour so anything the majority of my sourdough sandwich breads artists and loaves biscuits anything like that I use my hard white wheat fork and this one's organic then the other type of wheat berry that I keep on hand and use a lot is spelt spelt is an ancient grain but it's what I use for my pastry items so sweetbreads light sitting right here I told you I did my baking yesterday for the week so this is a chocolate sourdough loaf along with some homemade mini hand pies or aka homemade pop-tarts so for things like sweet bread like banana bread or this chocolate sourdough discard bread which I have a video and the recipes on my blog I'll link to that too that is what I like to use spelt fork it's an excellent piece treat type flour I do so I keep these right above my mill because those are the two that I use the most when I'm grinding my own flour and those types of fresh ground flour texts so I keep them right here I do have right up above me there because I don't use it as often is mine I'm corn so this is ancient grain I'm corn it's an excellent excellent grain it is more expensive than either this spelt or the hard white wheat and you have to adapt the recipes more if the recipe hasn't been formulated for an kernel I'm corn already so I don't use it as much but I do use it some so that's why it's up a little bit higher so you'll notice that I keep small amounts in the kitchen that I'm like using from all the time but then I've got my storage amount so I go shopping from my own pantry in the back so I'm going to show you that and then I'll also give you the amounts that I keep on hand or my goal of what I keep on hand for everything okay guys so this is my back pantry storage area and I brought you back here because the next up item on my list well we've got a couple of them but the first is fat sources so fat source we butcher our own Pig so I have my own large source I have my own tell us or from our beef however I'm only butchering once a year and that is not enough fat to take us through the entire year so I purchased quite a bit of our fat sources from the store first up butter real grass-fed butter I get mine from Costco and it stores awesome in the fridge well does store awesome in the fridge but this is Texas technically my freezer sorry so I've got this so whenever I go to Costco right now they're putting a limit on things because of the you know double pandemic thing and I haven't been to Costco in over a month but whenever I go I always stock up and butter handles beautifully in the freezer so it will last for months in the freezer when it thaws out you won't notice any difference whatsoever so I always keep this on hand in the freezer I think I have a minimum I'll have to count I think I have a minimum of like 25 pounds of butter now up next because you might be dairy-free and I like to have lots of different fats on-hand for different things with cooking so one of the other items that I keep on hand for fat and again I do get this from Costco is the organic virgin coconut oil this is the cold-press unrefined so coconut oil is a great I like to use coconut oil for baking it lends itself really well when I'm doing things like cakes or muffins or cupcakes that cook in a pan coconut oil tends to spread though so I don't use it as much for when I'm baking cookies use coconut oil basically a place of a lot of recipes in place of shortening either coconut oil or butter because we don't use shortening at all here in our house the other fat sources I keep on hand besides coconut oil and butter is olive oil and avocado oil so I don't use canola oil or vegetable oil you're noticing a trend here I don't use shortening either because I try to stay away from hydrogenated and GMO crops so avocado oil I use in place of vegetable oil in baking recipes that require an oil like this for I don't want to use melted coconut oil or melted butter I love this it's very flavor flavor less for the most part which is actually really good because if you've ever tried to bake a cake with organic extra virgin olive oil it doesn't taste so hot so I like to use the avocado oil and I love to make homemade mayonnaise with the avocado oil as well because it doesn't impart a huge amount of a different flavor so it really lets the vinegar and the salts and the egg and the other things in your homemade mayonnaise shine through so these are I've got one size of all of this in my main kitchen in the cupboards but I keep a backup of at least one backup so when I get out run out of in the kitchen with what I'm cooking with I know I have a full one in back ideally I have two so that's my goal is to have two of every fat source at least in the back I have more of butter especially in times where it may be hard to get to the store and stock is limited but I've always tried to run my pantry in my kitchen that way living so far out as we do and we've had different closures and things in the past it's kind of how I've always tried to stock it now the next item because most of us don't have a way of making or this at home at all is salt so I use Redmon's real salt I get it in this 10-pound bucket because it's much much cheaper to buy it this way and then I've got a lot on hands for when I'm doing my different herbs salts and obviously baking and cooking and my preserving I use this for all of my ferments as well so I buy this in the 10 pound bucket and then I just keep the saltshaker that I use in the kitchen that I just keep refilling from this one back here so this I actually get off of Amazon I'll have the link as how the links for everything beneath the Pope's so you can just go through there and grab everything that you need up beneath the video but 10 pounds of salt I try to keep that on hand so minimum at all times now this is an area that you guys know so here is where I keep I try to keep on hand twenty to thirty pounds of the organic unbleached flour this is where I've got my on corn wheat berries so I've got a couple of bags here which is usually about ten pounds I know this is a little bit hard to see there's not a lot of light in here and then this is where I keep my sugar and I try to keep between twenty and thirty pounds of sugar I don't use a ton of sugar a lot of the stuff that I cook is and bake is low sugar and with my canning but I do use some so that's where I keep these and I just keep them in the bags that they come in from the store now my wheat berries so here is a five gallon food safe bucket actually have my canning race here so this is a food safe bucket and inside is some of my organic you can see there is a moisture in there a little do-hickey I forget the name of those things but you know what they do they absorb the moisture for you so this actually when I ordered it came in the bucket just like this so I have just left it in here like this I've had this one going on close to a year I've almost used all of it up and you just put the lid right down on there so you can use any five-gallon bucket but a lot of times what I'll do and I'll show you that in a second but we got to take a little trip because this is I can't fit in here anymore of my wheat berries so well I could fit more in the bucket but I should say here inside this pantry so I'll show you what I do with the rest of the stuff but the other item that is on my list that I wanted to draw your attention to is vinegar so this is my homemade apple cider vinegar and of course I always have that on hand and I've got a link on how I make that as well so you can check that out but I also buy organic apple cider vinegar from the store and the reason I say to have both is because for canning you cannot use homemade vinegar for canning it has to be 5 percent acidity so I always buy some vinegar and make sure I have it on hand for my pickles that I make with canning and anything else I need to add acid to and using the vinegar when I'm canning for safety and so see right here 5 percent now this is an area that you guys know pretty well so this is my in the side of my kitchen where I keep a lot of my home preserved goods and a lot of my overflow that I'm cooking from well one of the other items that are on the list is dried beans now these are my homegrown dried seed saved also uses a dry Bain October bean but this is all I have left from last year's harvest aside from my seat bean so I keep my seed stock separate than my dried beans even though I could use these to plant with just so that I never accidentally use all of my beans I've always got my seat being separate those are set aside I know how many we need to plant to take us through but I used more dry beans than I thought I had in years past and especially in this time when we're doing even more even for us more cooking at home and trying to make less trips to the store so I know that I need to plant more October beans this year so I have more dried beans so I also have some dried pinto beans and these are from the store I've got us a few black beans and a couple varieties of dried beans that we don't grow here ourselves at lentils is another one but some type of dried bean if you've got this on hand then I can quickly turn this into homemade refried beans I can do rice and beans I can do bean enhance soup which is one of my favorites with cornbread off there's nothing better even make obviously your chili it's your soups like there's just so many things that you can do with dry beans to really stretch a lot of other ingredients they're also a great source of protein and calories for vegetables these are on the higher end in comparison to a lot of other vegetables so ideally I keep about right now I'm trying to keep about 20 pounds of dried beans on hand knowing that we're going to be planted but I won't have mine planted full the harvest and then ready to be Sheldon dry till October that's what we call them October beans they're not ready to go until October here so that's how much I'm keeping on can I have that then the other item that I don't grow here on the homestead I like to keep on hand is rice for one of the same reasons you can stretch rice it stores fairly well and I can stretch it into so many different dishes that can use it I use it in my cabbage rolls as part of the stuffing of course just rice itself I like to cook it with broth and add in some unnamed vegetables in me if I don't have enough for an entire meal chicken and rice casserole chicken and white rice soup I mean just so many different things that you can do with rice Phillip did you stir fries add it to stir fries now I have white rice white rice doesn't go rancid as fast as brown rice now still have some brown rice on hand because I grind that up and use it for some of my gluten-free sourdough starters so whatever rice you want to have on hand is fine I found for us a 25 pound bag of rice last us our family of four for well over a year last for a really long time so thank you back here now one of the other items that I keep on hand we're gonna take a walk back to the flour cupboard and that's popcorn so here in Fleming jar of popcorn which I'm about halfway through now don't worry I've got more in the back but I love popcorn it's kind of a comfort food but it stores really well you only need like a cup and it makes enough unpopped I don't even actually usually do a full yeah about a cup is on top makes a huge pot of popcorn I always pop by on the stove I don't need some microwave popcorn maker and it's just delicious we always popcorn on movie night at least once a week sometimes twice a week and I just would not I know it doesn't really turn into a lot of meals I mean you can make popcorn balls and fun things like that but it is one of our favorite snack foods and we'll even have it a place of dessert on some nights so I try to make sure I have around 20 pounds of popcorn on hand now where the other items is chocolate chocolates not a necessity well I don't know I kind of think it may be so I like to speak chocolate on hands now I've got this is the darker chocolate it's 72% um all my chocolate chips are organic that I buy because of the soy Levison I try to avoid soy unless it's organic because that means it's non-gmo at the least and then this is just a regular semi dark-eyed really ever buy milk it's usually always dark or semi dark and I will tell you the best price that I have found for organic chocolate chips believe it or not is spread Meijer they have a simple I don't have any unknown open bags oh I do actually back in the other pantry I'll show you my overflow area for restocking these types of things I think it's simple truth it's a Fred Meyer brand but they will give coupons and they'll go on sale usually once about every three months and so I won't buy like seven to ten bags whenever they go on sale usually once a quarter so that I always have a ton of chocolate chips on hand because chocolate chip cookies you can melt them down with some cream and make ganache like so many things are just better with chocolate right and if we're talking baking you got a half chocolate now my other thing I'm chocolate that I keep on hand besides the chocolate chips and that will take another lock that you saw in my organizing this cupboard with all my loose in jars so this is my herbs and up here of my teas and medicinal herbs and then my coffee is this lovely espresso machine right here but this is where I keep my cocoa powder now in the back I buy usually I will buy ten pounds is what I try to keep on hand of powder because if you have a fat source and sugar and cocoa powder I could technically make any of my chocolate that I needed to and I use cocoa powder every day when I make my homemade mochas so cocoa powder is like another necessity you know what and I didn't list coffee originally when I did a podcast episode on this but coffee is if you drink coffee it is that it is a necessity so I have got my coffee beans right here my coffee I get from Camano Island coffee and I've got a link which will give you 50% off if you want to test them out now the reason that I use them and that's a referral link so I do get a commission so thank you so much if you decide to use it I appreciate it but here's the reason that I love them many of you guys know if you've been with me for any amount of time is I had my upper stomach and esophagus biopsied for cancer almost 10 years ago now and I've been able to get off prescription medications that I was taking for GERD and stomach ulcers up to actually at 6 times a day when it was at its worst and I've been completely healed from that but I can't drink regular coffee if I try to drink regular coffee every day then it will kick up and really start that acid production again the only coffee I've been able to drink every day without issue is this and the reason for that is one its organic but two its shade grown so shade-grown coffee has quite a bit less asset I want to say like over 60% less acid then non shade-grown coffee and coffee is a heavily pesticide in crops so it were down because I'm us the great thing is is they roast it and they ship all over the United States they roast it and then they ship it to me the very next day so I'm already on a mail-order program I don't have to go anywhere to get it they I keep track of how many pounds I use in a month so this is when I keep fresh I do keep a backup a couple of pounds just in case something happens with the mail that I don't run out of coffee but this is what I have set on like automatic subscription and like I said you can check that out below grab that link and get 50% off if you want to try it out too and you can you can it's really fun but enough about that let's move on to our next items okay so what next I was talking about my medicinal herbs there but we have to talk about spice stuff because if you have got some spices and herbs then you're going to be able to cook almost everything and add so much flavor and I don't buy now my husband let me clarify I don't buy things like taco mix or taco packets or dressing salad dressing packets or things that you can buy in packets taco seasoning chili salad dressing gravy mixes I don't know there's a lot of things you can find packets I don't buy any of that stuff but my husband loves some of these and he buys them so you see them in my cupboard it's totally fine however because I felt the need to preface that with you so here's the container of the Redmon's real salt but I just continually refill I've had this container for years now that I've stocked on the 10 pound so for a lot of my things I just use my mason jars so this is onion powder this is garlic powder this is cumin the label gave it away I know chili powder I've got tumeric what else do I have oh and I might still see back there so this of course came from our own garden and I'm almost almost gone because it's time to start growing dill again like two or three weeks might should be popping up so as you can see I keep a large amount of this because I'm using these to season and make up all kinds of different things my cinnamon and my baking was like well cinnamon I kind of use first it otherwise sometimes I use that on spicy things like chili and but a lot more for baking so nutmeg ginger and cinnamon I keep in the other cupboard but here I keep these and I cook them in here now I wait until I've used this all down before I refill it but I always make sure that I have behind it so here I've got my organic garlic powder here I've got my chili powder blend so I keep these bags behind here because I will refill them up but I want to make sure I use everything that's in the jar first because this is the oldest before I top it off but I don't have room definitely I don't have room to store all of my back stock here now I know some of you're gonna say well where do you get them from it's a pen some of them I'll get in bulk if they have it like it or local co-op they have a big book food bin and I go and get baking powder for admires in their whole food section they have the same thing but for online I really the frontier brand is a brand that I trust that when sold on Amazon and I've been doing a lot with a sure standard what you're gonna see in just a minute lately and so that's that's another source but I'll show you because I don't have room to keep it all here either back up okay so we're back we're back at this spot but what I was going to show you is this is my other overflow so this is where I keep up my backup cumin seed this is from Mountain Rose herbs with another online course that you can order from so I have different sources that I order from because sometimes they're out of stock especially right now you're gonna find things are out of stock and so I have to have multiple places that I can get things from and then I trust this is that this simple truth organic from Fred Meijer I was telling you about chocolate chips so this is the back this is my back stock so when my canisters get empty I can come for my back stock here so when those canisters get empty and I start to go from my back stock back here to fill them up that's what I know I need to purchase more I don't ever let my stock run completely out okay guys so you're in my bedroom and this is where I am keeping my extra back stock of all of my different wheat berries other than the einkorn and some of the hardware wheat that you actually saw in my back pantry this is the stuff that I just got from a sure standard and I'm super excited about it and I'm going to show you my items on hand but brace yourself because we're about to go underneath the bed so this is where I'm keeping my back stock for right now I don't have any other spot to put it so I have left it sealed in these bags now here where we live where it's cooler I have never had an issue of bugs in my grains or in my flour some people like to put them in the freezer for a couple of weeks and then store them I've never had any experience with that because I've never had in any need to do it I've never had bugs and migraines and flour I don't know if I'm just lucky or what so normally what I would do is if I had the other space in those five-gallon buckets or a bigger container I would leave the grains in the bag and then put that bag inside the sealed by gallon bucket and seal that up I know how fast I relatively quickly I go through different grains so for right now I am fine with this grain being like this in the back but this is the spelt grain organic and it's a 25 pound bag I've had to look for a minute like how big was this so I'm trying to keep a 25 pound bag on hand of the spelt greens and then 50 pounds which I don't want to drag it out but there it is underneath my bed I've got the smoked grains as long as some of my extra bolt sleeves of canning lids for this summer I ran out of space so those are under here and then I've also got some of the pinto beans and my organic popcorn yeah you you're you are truly looking underneath my bed right now some of the things I never ever thought I would be putting on YouTube but here we go I also have under there which I didn't pull out and show you it is a 25 pound bag of bread flour organic unbleached red flour as well and that I got from after standards I like really well now why do I have some store-bought ground flour when I also have a grain mill the reason for that is I have discovered that when my husband and the kids are cooking they don't want to use the mill and they don't want to convert a lot of their favorite recipes that they're used to doing to fresh ground flour because you have to convert it using fresh ground flour and a recipe that has not already been calculated for fresh ground flour or formulated for fresh ground flour if you just tried to sub in fresh ground flour in place of regular store all-purpose or bread flour you're not going to be very happy with the results I've got a podcast and blog post episode on my tips for cooking with fresh ground flour so you can check that out below as well but I found for doing things like pie crust which is what this is right here and biscuits that they don't get as flaky if I'm using all fresh ground flour I've tried lots of different formulations and lots of different things but I have found to get the texture that I want I use some of my store-bought flour so that's kind of the reason there are some recipes that I will do a hybrid so I'm using half fresh ground flour and a half store-bought and I feel like that just gives the texture that especially my picky eaters in my family who really don't care if it's healthy or not that they like and that they prefer and to me that's the ultimate goal so that's why I keep a mixture of both wheat berries to grind into my own flour on hand as well as store-bought flour now one of the last items that I keep on hand and storage wise because I have nearly the shelf life that most the other items I've shared with you but that's dairy we don't have a dairy animal yet here on the homestead so I still buy my milk and my cream my butter as you know and my cheese now powdered milk is fine you can use powdered milk if you want to have a backup some of the non-dairy milks will store just fine on the shelf and here's what I've discovered cheese if it's grated freeze is great if you freeze it and block form and then try to slice it later I find it's really crumbly so I will freeze shredded cheese but I don't like to freeze up the blocks I find it just doesn't thought very well but softer cheese's like mozzarella they freeze really well so I will freeze logs of mozzarella and then let those thaw and use those later on so if you've got all of these pantry staples then you don't need to buy bread from the store you don't need to buy tortillas like there's so many things crackers you don't need to buy any of that from the store because you've already got all the ingredients you to make everything like croissants and oh my goodness just all the things the sourdough sandwich spread that doesn't use any store-bought yeast that was one of my recent videos you can check that one out as well all of those things if you just keep these on hand in your pantry you can eliminate and you'll notice there was no box mixes of cake mixes or muffin mixes or any of those types of things because you can make it if you've got these items on hand you can make all of those things pretty much almost all of your meals obviously we're going to be adding in some meat and some vegetables but so many of your meals and your dishes you can make if you've got these basic items on hand okay thanks so much guys I look forward to reading your comments below

Channel: Melissa K. Norris - Modern Homesteading

Views: 221,780

Rating: 4.9123182 out of 5

Keywords: food storage, food storage pantry, long term food storage, prepper pantry, emergency food storage, food storage for beginners, emergency food supply, shelf stable foods, emergency food storage corona, pantry tour, 2 week food storage, food storage tour, food storage containers organization, emergency food storage ideas, food storage no pantry, pantry canned food storage, pantry tour 2020, pantry items to stock up on

Id: -JZxOZhe7Xw

Length: 33min 59sec (2039 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 22 2020