Answers to the Most Popular Long Term Food Storage Questions - For Your Prepper Pantry

today i'm going to answer all the questions i received about long-term storage containers including the questions you sent me about silica gel packs and oxygen absorbers and how all of this fits into your prepper pantry hi sweet friends i'm mary and welcome to mary's nest where i teach traditional cooking skills for making nutrient-dense foods like bone broth ferments sourdough and more so if you enjoy learning about those things consider subscribing to my channel and don't forget to click on the little notification bell below that'll let you know every time i upload a new video well i've received so many questions about the series of videos that i've been doing on long-term storage containers as well as the silica gel packs and the oxygen absorbers and the mylar bags and on and on and on but i've done my best to try and answer them in the comments but i also thought i would do a video to answer them here as well and also i've got comments coming in as i'm making this video so hopefully i can stay up to date and cover everything that everyone is asking me now before i get into all the questions and the answers i first want to just review where you can find various sources of information that go above and beyond anything that i'm sharing here and there if you open the description under this video and you can do that by depending on what device you're on by clicking the word show more underneath the title of the video or clicking on the actual title of the video itself or sometimes there's a little upside down triangle or like a little down uh word arrow if you click on that under the video that'll open the description it all really depends what device that you're working on but if you open up the description i'm going to have a link to the blog post a direct link to the blog post over on my website that will correspond with this q a video and in that uh blog post i'll also have links to all the other videos that i've done about food storage containers and about silica gel packs about oxygen absorbers about mylar bags and also all of the various links to my entire prepper pantry series that covers how to stock your prepper pantry with real food how to stock it on a budget and about five dollars a week and so on and so forth so there's a lot of information and i will put all of that into my blog post and in that blog post i will also have links to all the authoritative sources that i use to educate myself about the long-term storage of food in a prepper pantry or an extended pantry as i also call it and some of those sites include the latter day saints organization which is a religious organization but they are considered an authoritative source on long-term food storage and they have a wealth of information that they share with the public i'll also have links to utah state university's extension service which also is an authoritative source on long-term food storage plus i'll also link to the download they have of a book and i think it's like an ebook and i think but it's free and it's like maybe like 85 pages long and it's all about long-term food storage so it's incredibly helpful i'll also link to the page on the foodsaver site the machine that sucks all the air out of various storage things that lists all the foods on their website that they feel is approved to be used with their foodsaver devices and then i'll also link to usa emergency supply and that site gozo has a wonderful information and goes over a lot of information about mylar bags and using them with oxygen absorbers and what foods you can put in a mylar bag with an oxygen absorber what size mylar bag needs what size oxygen oxygen absorber and depending on what food you put in your mylar bag and depending on what size the bag is what size oxygen absorber you need they go into great detail on all of this so be sure to check the link for the blog post in the description under this video and because that blog post is just going to be chock full of very helpful information if you're interested in learning more about long-term food storage and just as a little aside i want to share this here because a number of you have asked me about this and some of you have said why don't you put all these links in your pinned comment why do you put the link to your blog post in the description and the reason some of you have asked me that is because you have trouble figuring out how to open the description so that's underneath the video so hopefully what i explained before about clicking on show more or the title or the little donut arrow depending on what device you're working on will help you be able to open the description now i know some of you have told me that you watch this on roku and you don't see any of these various things uh that may come across like i cards or notes or or the description and that i don't really know how to work around all i can say is just head over to my website of marysnest.com and you should see the blog post over there when you are on some type of device like a computer or your phone that'll have all the links and information that you need but you've asked me this uh and asked why i don't put everything in the pin comment and the reason is sometimes if i put links in the pinned comment that are going to go to a source that's outside of youtube i can't be guaranteed 100 that that comment will appear in youtube when they're putting comments for the public to see may not be sure where that link is going or whatever the case may be i'm not really sure how it works but it may be dumped into spam and my spam folder is very full with a lot of different things and i don't go through it um often uh there are comments with links that are going out of youtube or sometimes you know inappropriate things and youtube is very good about catching those things so in any event that's why i don't put links in the pinned comment unless it's linking to another video of one of my friends that i'm telling you to go visit or whatever the case may be that's in youtube so hopefully you can figure out how to open the description but if not be sure to just head over to marysnest.com and hopefully you'll see the blog post right over there and it'll be easy for you to access alrighty now with all that housekeeping out of the way we're going to get to the questions and i just want to mention that i will put timestamps in the pinned comment they'll be in the description but i'll also put the timestamps in the pinned comment if there's a particular issue that you want to jump ahead to so if i'm covering something that's not interesting to you you can certainly look in the pinned comment at all the different time stamps and fast forward to the question and answer that is most interesting to you now as i had mentioned earlier about earlier about the foodsaver website and the usa emergency supply site that brings us to our first question and it's a great one because a lot of people have asked me mary can i store dried fruit in a mylar bag with an oxygen absorber or can i store dried fruit using some kind of foodsaver equipment can i store it in a foodsaver bag or in a jar with the attachment that sucks out all the air what what can i do with dried fruit and that's a great question first of all let's address dried fruit in a mylar bag with an oxygen absorber don't do it and the reason is dried fruit is a high moisture food and so you cannot store high moisture foods with oxygen absorbers because you could create an environment where botulism could proliferate and bachelor's botulism is a poison and this is not just my personal opinion this is information that i have learned from the latter day saints site and the utah state university extension service where they list all of the foods that you cannot store with oxygen absorbers and one of them is dried fruit caveat they say that if your dried fruit and they also include dried vegetables has been dehydrated so this is a little different than just dried has been dehydrated and sufficiently dehydrated to the point where it is completely dry inside and out and you can snap it you know it's crisp and you can snap it then these authoritative sources say that you can store dehydrated fruits and vegetables that are very dry they'll wind up having 10 percent or less moisture that these very dry dehydrated fruits and vegetables can be stored in a mylar bag with an oxygen absorber now what about dried fruit and a foodsaver whether it's foodsaver bags or foodsaver containers where does dried fruit fall into all of this well when you go to the foodsaver site that lists all of the food that you can store using a foodsaver and one of the various options that they offer whether it's jars or using a jar adapter on a canning jar or whether it's a foodsaver bag whatever the case may be when they list all of the foods that you can use or that you can preserve using a foodsaver device they do not list dried fruit on that main list of foods however if you dig a little deeper on their site they do discuss what they say is dehydrated fruit like we just discussed but then it's very confusing because under dehydrated fruit they use the terminology dried fruit but then they don't give you a definitive answer they refer you to the u.s emergency supply site and when you go over to the u.s emergency supply site they do not use the term dried fruit they use the term dehydrated fruit and then that brings us back to the latter day saints sites and the utah state university extension service site that says dehydrated fruit and in that in also in their case vegetables means something that is very dry 10 percent or or less in moisture completely dry inside and out and something that you can break that is crisp so based on all of that i would not feel comfortable storing dried fruit definitely not in a mylar bag with an oxygen absorber but based on what we've just discussed i personally would not feel comfortable storing traditional dried fruit like raisins and cranberries and apricots that are very moist i would not be comfortable storing them in any type of foodsaver storage container and when i say storage container i'm also talking about the plastic bags that they provide or a canning jar where you're using the jar adapter to suck out the air i just wouldn't be comfortable doing that now i know there are people on the internet who disagree with the latter day saints and the utah state university extension service and usa emergency supply and that they have their own opinions on this so what i would recommend is i've shared with you what i've researched and what i would do in my humble opinion but i would highly recommend that you research this and see what other people say and other people do uh in conjunction with what i've shared with you and then make your own informed educated decision as to what you're most comfortable doing but as i said in my humble opinion i wouldn't get involved with anything like dried fruit dried veggies jerky any moist food like that i don't want to get involved in trying to store that in some sort of oxygen free environment i don't think it's smart or air free environment instead what i think is the best way to store dried fruit that's very moist and pliable is to simply put it in some kind of jar or bag just a traditional ziploc bag from your grocery store and maybe put in a silica gel pack that helps keep some but not all but some of the moisture at bay so that you prevent uh the development of mold which is often a problem with moist foods now many times when you read the package it says once opened refrigerate so you may want to refrigerate your raisins or refrigerate your cranberries or or your dried plums or some or your apricots so on and so forth but if you're looking for some way to store these things for long-term food storage in the event that you didn't have the option of a refrigerator then either in the original package that it came in from the from the store before it's opened or maybe as i had mentioned in some sort of sealed container like a ziploc bag or a jar with a lid and maybe a silica gel pack that is not going to make it real hard you know just a small silica gel pack that'll take care of some of the moisture but not all but hopefully will tamp down the development of mold and when i'm saying that this will tamp down the development of mold and you're storing it in a plastic bag or some sort of jar with a with a lid this is assuming that it's being stored in a pantry at room temperature i would think that if you store these things in the refrigerator none of this is necessary the next question i got and i want to mention that regarding the dried fruit and the other questions that i'm going to cover today a lot of these questions i got a lot of questions but a lot of the questions were repeats so overall uh there are only a few areas that we really need to cover here but in the 100 or 200 or 300 questions that i received in comments uh they were often asking the same thing so hopefully i'm hitting on everything but if i don't be sure to leave me a comment in this video and i will try to answer you in the comment if it's something that i'm not covering the next question that i got a lot of is can you use an oxygen oxygen absorber and a silica gel pack together whether it's in a mylar bag or a bucket or whatever the case may be can you use them together and that's a great question and the answer is no and the reason is as we mentioned oxygen absorbers can only be used when being stored with foods that have 10 percent or less moisture but the little bit of moisture they have is what allows the chemical reaction to take place that makes the oxygen absorber work so if you had an oxygen absorber and a silica gel pack that might suck out all the little bit of 10 or less moisture that's there then your oxygen oxygen absorber can't work and i'll explain why in a minute but when you use an oxygen absorber it's going to pull out the oxygen and it's basically going to make your stored food a moisture free environment how an oxygen absorber works is that it is filled the little bag is filled with iron powder and what happens when iron is exposed to oxygen the iron powder rusts now i'm not a scientist and my explanation may not be very scientific but the bottom line is when that iron powder rusts because of that little tiny bit of moisture in the 10 percent or less food that you're storing it with when that iron powder rusts because it's being exposed to that little bit of moisture that chemical reaction of rusting uses up or absorbs in essence the oxygen that's in the area where that oxygen absorber is so basically the bottom line is that all we need to know is as home cooks at home and trying to store our food best we can is that the oxygen oxygen absorber needs that little bit of moisture that's in our very low moisture food and it rusts it absorbs the oxygen and then it causes the bag to seal and i've got one right here this is a mylar bag this was sealed maybe about 12 or so hours ago and you'll see this is one that i just sealed a few minutes ago and hopefully you've seen this video where i showed you how to do this but this one i just sealed a few minutes ago and as you see it's very loose and you can shake it around but you're going to leave this for you know 12 hours or 24 hours maybe 48 hours it depends what you've stored in it and and what size your bag is but this after about 12 hours as you'll see the oxygen is really being uh it's become like very hard and the oxygen is being sucked out of it by the oxygen absorber that's in the bag with it and when i say sealed with the oxygen oxygen absorber what i mean is that i put my food in here i put my oxygen absorber in here but then i seal the top of this with something hot i just use a home iron which you'll see in in the other video but yes you do you do seal it with something hot so i meant that i sealed it with the oxygen absorber in it and it will just start to crinkle up on like this on you uh after like this is about as i said 12 hours or so and then after 24 hours it's probably going to be like real hard like a brick but in order for this to happen that oxygen absorber does need that 10 or less of moisture that's in this food that's in here so no you never want to mix an oxygen absorber with a silica gel pack because then otherwise the oxygen oxygen absorber doesn't have what it needs to do its job and another question that i got about mylar bags and oxygen absorbers is that should you be putting bay leaves in here as well that's an interesting question it's nothing i've ever done and i've not really seen any information about this on the internet but i would think that it wouldn't be necessary because you're sucking all the oxygen out and you've sealed it tightly on the top here so it's really not something that bugs are going to get into and so and if there are eggs in here the fact that there's no oxygen in here would make it an incredibly unhospitable environment for those eggs to hatch now is it definitely 100 guaranteed that that egg isn't going to hatch i i don't know i don't i never want to say 100 but i think the fact that it is a unhospitable environment that it's an oxygen-free environment that it bugs for the most part i can't imagine surviving or hatching and even if they did the bay leaves aren't going to help you out because they're really just to deter bugs they don't kill bugs and you're basically already deterring bugs by storing your food in a mylar bag and then that brings us to another question that i got well mary isn't this overkill because in your food storage container video you talk about why do i have to go through all this rigmarole to do this and then put this in a bucket and that of one of the five gallon uh heavy duty storage buckets and that's a good question and the reason is yes you can just go ahead and put whatever food you want in your five gallon bucket and then with your oxygen absorbers the food that's appropriate to be stored with oxygen absorbers and put that in your bucket and put that away for long-term storage but keep in mind now every time you open that bucket you're exposing those oxygen oxygen absorbers to air and if they if you're thinking then you're going to close your bucket and your food is going to protect it that may not be the case because your oxygen absorbers may have already done their job and are basically spent they can't absorb any more oxygen so you've now let oxygen into your large container and then you're closing it up again and if you're hoping it to have a long-term storage effect it may not because you've exposed it to oxygen and now there's oxygen in it which can begin to oxidize as in damage your food so if you're storing food in one of those buckets that you go into and out of a lot you don't want to put in an oxygen absorber it doesn't make sense but i sh as i shared with you what lisa sutton over at sutton day sutton's days i think is the day of her youtube channel recommended was to maybe break up your food into one gallon mylar bag so this uh one gallon mylar bag holds about five pounds of rice and then go ahead and put this in your bucket and then every time you need rice or beans whatever you're storing uh in your mylar bag you open your bucket and then you just take out one bag of whatever it is you need and all of the other food is fine and it's undisturbed because it's stored in bylar bags and then that brings us to the other question i get that although i address this in the the video i know that not everybody gets to watch the whole video but i address the fact then some of you had asked oh isn't that overkill why can't i just go ahead and put this on my shelf and yes you can go ahead and put this on your shelf if you know wherever you're storing it in your prepper pantry your extended pantry is a rodent-free environment because rodents can true through this and yes they can also be known to chew through heavy-duty buckets and other types of plastic containers but it is more difficult for them and they may be more discouraged so this protects them your mylar bag in that way and second mylar bags are not completely even if you get a heavy duty one they're not perfect and if say you put them on a wire shelf or a rough surface and they got a little snagged they can rip and or they can even get little tiny holes that you may not even notice that then damage your your seal in essence they're no longer going to be oxygen free and airtight like this so storing your mylar bags in some sort of protective container can be a really smart idea and some of you shared an idea which i absolutely love and i mentioned this in the video where i showed you how to seal the mylar bags and it literally takes seconds it's so easy to do this idea that some of you left for me in the comments i thought was so clever that instead of the using the five gallon buckets which sometimes maybe is not the most efficient use of space in terms of putting in these mylar bags but that you get these large um like rubbermaid type containers that are heavy duty and have a lid and then you just line these up in your in your large container and then whenever you need uh some of your food you just go ahead and pull one of these out but that because they're beautifully lined up like little envelopes that you make maximum use of your space next i had a lot of questions about all-purpose flour and or bread flour what some of you may call plain flour or white flour but the bottom line is these are flowers that have had all the bran and germ removed can they just be stored in a five gallon bucket where you're going to be accessing it on a regular basis yes and does it make sense to put in an oxygen absorber no because you're going to be opening it on a regular basis regular basis can you put in some silica gel packs if you live in a particularly humid or uh or your humid area or you're storing it in an area that that may be very moisture rich sure you can do that but you're going to really have to monitor it because a lot has to do on the climate and where you live some people say that if they put silica gel packs with their flour it does get very hard and cakey other people say it really helps keeping it from not getting a damp feeling so that again you know research a little based on where you live and what others in your area have found to be most helpful but generally white flour in one of those five gallon food safe buckets with the snap-on airtight lid or the gamma airtight lid will preserve it very well for at least up to one year others say up to two years without taking on any off flavor and many of you shared that you stick some bay leaves in your flour to discourage bugs and that that works out great but now what if you want to store white flour that's had the bran and germ removed in a mylar bag with an oxygen absorber yes you can do that and then you can maybe store it in five pound uh one gal you know it can be five pounds of flour white flour store it in a mylar bag with an oxygen absorber and then again maybe in another container where you just line them all up and whenever you're ready to bake if you don't bake on a regular basis you can go ahead and pull out your mylar bag of flour and this extends the life considerably but i really want to stress that we are talking about white flour we're not talking about whole grain flour now can you store whole grains the actual grain that has not been ground into flour but is in its whole grain form can you store that in a five gallon bucket with some oxygen absorbers the appropriate amount for long-term storage yes but you cannot do that with whole grain flour because once whole grain flour is ground it's grounded once the whole grain is ground into the flour it's a little too oily of a of a food to be safely stored with oxygen absorbers now can you go ahead and just put it in your five gallon bucket and maybe throw in some silica gel packs to help keep the moisture down depending on where you live definitely and if you're accessing it on a regular basis it should last you somewhere from six months to one year but can you put whole grain flour in a mylar bag with an oxygen absorber no it's the same situation as to why you can't put whole grain flour in a five gallon bucket with oxygen absorbers whole grain flour is an oily food and so it's not appropriate to be stored with an oxygen absorber because you could create a friendly environment for botulism and as we shared botulism is a poisoning and so we don't it's a poison so we don't want to store uh foods that have more moisture than you know as i said more more moisture than what's considered a dry food if it's got 10 percent or less of moisture you can store it with an oxygen absorber if it has more than 10 percent of moisture which is what is the case with whole grain flowers they cannot be stored with oxygen absorbers now i know in a format like this it can get a little confusing what can you store with an oxygen absorber what can you store with a silica gel pack and what type of storage container is best whether it's a mylar bag or a five gallon bucket or whatever the case may be and the information is so large that it's more than i can just share with you in a video as well as i may not know specifically what food you're thinking of storing and that's why i want you to go over to my blog because i'll have those links that i mentioned and to those various authoritative sites that will list out for you all of the foods that can either be stored with oxygen absorbers or without oxygen absorbers or with a silica gel pack or without a silicon jump back and so on and so forth so all of that information will be over on that blog post for you and this is not a question but this is something that i mentioned in my video where i was talking about all the different options for long-term food storage and one of them was talking about the foodsaver and how this foodsaver has this little device that then can be used to suck the air out of the foodsaver bags and the foodsaver jars but i wasn't sure how this could be used similar to the handheld the old-fashioned handheld saver uh foodsaver handheld device that sucks oxygen out of jars when you like canning drawers when you use the drawer adapters but i learned this one the new one that they have this piece comes off very easily because if you have this piece on it just doesn't work very well with the jar adapters but if you take this piece off there's this little nub here and you just put that in the hole on your jar adapter and it works very well for sucking out the air but i could not figure out for the life of me how to do that with this little new piece that comes actually connected to the foodsaver and so many of you chimed in and i really appreciate it because i was thinking gee am i going to have to unscrew the bottom and they were like no no don't unscrew the bottom pull off this entire thing and that's how you do it now i was afraid to break it because it's stiff but if you give it a good pull there's the little nib see and it's very similar to the other handheld foodsaver a device the new one and then you just put this into your jar adapter and then you can suck the air out of your canning jars so that was very clever you know for whatever uh a food you're storing in there that's appropriate based on the foodsaver list and then you just can pop this right back on and you'll hear this actually as i said this was not as easy to get off as the other one and you there we go see you hear the click and then you're all set so thank you for sharing that tip with me another question that i got was how long does it take for bugs to be attracted to your store stored foods that's a great question but i really don't know i think it's really a matter of how well you've stored your food and where you've stored it and if you've taken any pre-precautions as to kill eggs such as freezing it in advance or putting it in an oxygen free environment and so on and so forth so that's a tough one to give a definitive answer on but in that question was also the question is can you reactivate the oxygen absorbers in the microwave and i am so glad i saw this question because you can definitely not reactivate your oxygen absorbers in the microwave your oxygen absorber as i said earlier is filled with iron powder iron is a metal and you never want to put metal in your microwave and as to just reactivating oxygen absorbers in general i don't think at least i've not been able to find any information on this but just from a practical standpoint and thinking about it i can't imagine that that would be possible because the iron power powder has already rusted and done its job and the next question is a very good one too it says can you reuse mylar bags and that's a great question and yes you can use reuse mylar bags when you open this bag you're going to basically cut this across the top and be able to access your food in it and then you could always reseal it if you wanted but you need to put in a fresh oxygen absorber so it doesn't really make sense so you really want to store your food in bags that are appropriate to a size that you feel you'll use like you know within whatever the normal shelf life is six months to a year so on and so forth but you're going to cut this off and you're going to be able to access your food you could transfer it to a food storage container that you like to use in your working pantry or you can just fold over where you've cut and use one of those nice big clips you know food food storage bag clips or something like that but when you're all done using the food in here you know whether you leave it in here as i said with a storage clip once you open it or you dump it into a different type of container you're left with this bag and yes you can reuse it now it's going to be a little smaller because you will cut this this off or actually you can turn this around and there's a little notch here which i showed you in the food storage container video and you can just cut it across that way too it's really up to you what you want to do but i think uh either way yes once you open this you can reuse it uh you can you know once you it's it's empty you have a mylar bag that you can reuse but you will need a new oxygen absorber and one that's an appropriate size uh based on the chart over at us usa emergency supply that is appropriate to the size of your bag now this is another great question that i got and the person says can i store for example rice in a mylar bag and that's actually what i have in here i have jasmine rice in here white rice can i store for example rice in a mylar bag without oxygen absorbers i store some rice with oxygen absorbers but the bag seems to have some air in it is that safe that's a great question say you store your bag like this and even after 12 24 48 hours it pretty much still looks like this and it doesn't look like this one that's gotten a lot harder and definitely appears that oxygen has been pulled out of it well what that might mean is that it could be that the oxygen oxygen absorber for some reason had already been spent maybe it hadn't been stored appropriately and wasn't able to do its job so it wasn't able to pull out the oxygen the other possibility is that the oxygen absorber that you used wasn't the right size and so then it did some of its job but it could only take out so much oxygen and some was left third could be and this is not something i've experienced but that i've seen other videos on youtube where people have talked about this that even after 12 24 or whatever 48 hours whatever time passes their bag doesn't look like it's changed very much and they say in their video that you have to keep in mind that the oxygen absorber is only removing oxygen that's i don't know if you heard that that's my dog ovi's collar she's shaking her head and that it's only removing oxygen it's not removing all the air and there is also nitrogen in air and there's a lot more nitrogen in air than there is oxygen uh from what they're saying in their video so it could be that there's just the nitrogen that's left and so the oxygen absorber did the best that it could but there was just a lot of air in your bag before you sealed it and so there's just some nitrogen in there so there are some reasons why the bag may not look the way this bag looks and so she goes on to ask is that safe and as i said this has not happened to me but what i have found in my research and watching others they feel that the food is safe because basically it's stored uh in a somewhat air tight container there is air in there so it may not be perfectly stored in terms of uh preventing some oxidation of the food from the air but that for the most part yes it's safe to eat and it's just a matter of it may be coming a little more stale quicker than it might be under circumstances like this if there's air in there now nitrogen is a different situation it does not oxidize the food apparently it doesn't have an effect on the food so if there's just a lot of nitrogen in there then maybe the food will stay fresh but i highly recommend that if this is something that you're experiencing when you're sealing your mylar bags to do a little research on this to learn uh what others have experienced and what and they'll and they share their thoughts on this and then you can make a better informed decision if you feel the food is fresh or safe or whatever the case may be another question that i had was can you make a video about using plastic soda and juice bottles with oxygen absorbers for long-term storage and that's a great request but i don't have plastic soda bottles or juice bottles so it's not something that i generally use to store food however that said the links that i mentioned that'll be over on my blog specifically the link to the latter day saints site and the utah state university extension service site do talk about how to properly store food for long-term storage in plastic soda and juice bottles and what you need to look for and what type of bottles they need to be and so on and so forth so i highly recommend uh looking at that blog post and clicking on those links you i think you're really going to find those links in valuable resources because those of you who have clicked on them and specifically the one from the utah state university that has that downloadable like about 80 some odd page download that's all about food storage you have said that that's just fantastic and i agree that's that covers everything so definitely head over to the blog and get those links now the other thing i want to mention is that some of you mentioned to me that you found me uh because you were visiting with denise over at her youtube channel this and that with denise denise is my friend and so definitely if uh you are not familiar with denise be sure to head over to her channel as i said it's this and that with denise and i'll put a link to her channel in the pinned comment and she's been doing a lovely prepper pantry series you know the month of september is preparedness month and so that's why so many of us have been doing prepper pantry series so i highly recommend heading over to denise and checking out her prepper pantry series of videos and another friend of mine that i want to share with you is heidi and i know many of you already know heidi she has the channel of rain country homestead and she is a wonderful resource for all things prepper pantry preparedness whatever you want to call it even though september is preparedness month it's preparedness month every month over at heidi's so be sure to check out her channel because she has so much information on how to store food and she's been doing a wonderful uh series of videos over the last couple of weeks on how to store all different types of food and i think that you'll find it really interesting and also while you're at it another friend of mine her name is robin she has a wonderful site a youtube channel called faith and flower as in bread flour and she's been doing somewhat of a prepper pantry series as well and if you need help being neat and organized and efficient when it comes to putting together a prepper pantry she's your go-to gal she is so organized it's amazing most of the videos on her channel have to do with cleaning and organizing and whatnot she's a true inspiration and so be sure to check out robin and tell her i say hi when you're over there because she's just a wonderfully sweet lady as is denise too they're both delightful and robin is very good at showing you how to be incredibly organized and efficient i think you're going to be very pleased with her series of prepper pantry videos and one other friend of mine that i want to mention uh who is just terrific and he's more got a gardening channel but he does some cooking and so on and so forth but the reason i want to share uh his channel with you it's called essions and i'll put a link into it because it's an unusual spelling but ession's family garden and he and his him and his wife and their two sons but he during this preparedness month has been doing pressure canning and a lot of you not specifically with these videos but in other videos i have you have been asking me a lot of questions about pressure canning now i have a lot of videos on water bath canning and i have a whole playlist which i'll definitely link uh in the description and in the pin comment and if i remember in the i cards too but if you're interested in pressure canning a rob has a great video on pressure canning but he kind of takes it one step further and that's why i'm kind of mentioning it in this q a on uh storage and prepper pantry storage and so on and so forth because he takes you on a tour of his prepper pantry showing how his wife stores her canned goods her pressure canned goods they may have water bath canned goods too but he he shows how she does it in an organized fashion and they think it's very clever and she and how she um labels everything and makes it very clear in the video he's funny because he jokes that she feels that he's very forgetful i don't know about that i think he's joking but that he's very forgetful and so her labeling system makes it very easy for him to know what's what and i really like the tip that she shares because it's a very clever system that doesn't require you to label every single jar individually she has a little bit of a different system with a a specific type of signage that she assigns to her uh pressure canned goods so i'll definitely link to that video and check that out where he take the part where he takes you on that tour uh of all of their pressure canned goods and how they store them in their prepper pantry and getting back to the questions and answers this was a very interesting this was a comment on my which video is this this is the oxygen absorbers versus silica gel packets uh video and this was actually just a very interesting comment that i wanted to share with all of you in the event that any of you have young children where i talk about how the silica gel pack and the oxygen absorber are not to be eaten so be very careful when you store them with you know especially if you have young children and this person made a very good point that i wanted to share with you that the silica gel isn't necessarily poisonous to eat but it's a choking hazard because uh you know just like you would with um you know that if you've taken care of infants and you see that basically what it is is the silica gel that's in the diaper and how that expands when it absorbs moisture well it's the same thing happens with those silica gel packs that we use to protect and preserve our food and if you eat that they will absorb the moisture and swell up and obviously in your throat would create a choking hazard so be very careful about those and another question i got was can the silica gel packets found in vitamin bottles be reused excellent question i don't think so and the reason is those little silica gel packets that you get in the vitamin bottles generally don't have any kind of indicator as to when they're fresh and when they've absorbed all the moisture they're going to absorb and so you really have no way of knowing what state they're in and secondly if they don't have some type of indicator on them from the manufacturer you have no way of knowing if there's something if they are the type of silica gel pack that can be basically reused by being reinvigorated more or less basically dried out in the microwave certain silica gel packs that are sold with indicators they may be one color when they're dry and another color when they're wet the manufacturer will include directions with those type of silica gel packs as to how you can dry those out in your microwave and then reuse them now some silica gel packs do not come with those indicators and the manufacturer says do not try to dry these out do not reuse the reuse these now there is information on the internet about how people go against what the manufacturer says and dries out their silica gel packs that don't have those moisture indicators in the oven but as i shared in this particular video where i talk about the difference between silica gel packs and oxygen absorbers is that the information on how to dry out silica gel packs in your oven uh the information that's available on the internet about this when they don't have that moisture indicator with directions from the manufacturer on how to do it properly in the microwave the information that's shared on the internet is kind of all over the place it's very confusing some people make it sound very easy some people make it sound very difficult and some people give a real word of caution about the whole process so it's not something i would ever be comfortable doing and it's not something i would ever recommend so my answer would be the gel packet found in vitamin bottle be reused or can it be reactivated i would just say i think it's best to discard it another question i got and this actually just came in a few hours ago before i started filming this video and this is an interesting question she asks is using an oxygen absorber the same sort of process as using a vacuum sealer and no it's not the same process the different reactions when you use an oxygen absorber you're pulling out just the oxygen as we discussed and there's left behind other air like nitrogen now with a food saver i think you're pulling out all of the air if i understand the process correctly and is it going to is an oxygen absorber for example in a bylar bag going to give you the same sense of food security in the sense that you're really preserving your food very well if you're pulling the oxygen out of it and storing it in a foodsaver bag and or a foodsaver container and or your own canning jar in which you you've used the adapter i don't know and i have not really found definitive advice on this on the internet and i've and i've not called this is an option something maybe i'll do uh call the 1-800 number uh at foodsaver and ask them or send them an email and ask them their thoughts on this but what i have seen on the internet is that seals can break on the when you use the jar adapter on your uh canning jars with the canning lid that over time the seals can break uh with the bags sometimes you know the seal doesn't hold and can leak and air can get into it and the same with the containers there's all sorts of information about this on the internet where people feel the seal has failed versus something like this that is pretty unlikely to fail and again what exactly is the process you know what are we pulling out are we just pulling out all this air you know it's it is a little unclear and so that is something that i'm not 100 sure about and i'm i'm going to have to research this more but i definitely recommend that if this if this is something that you're thinking about definitely look around on the internet and see what other people have to say but yes the process between the two is different because i think your oxygen absorber well i know your oxygen absorber is just pulling out oxygen and whereas the foodsaver i think is just pulling out air in general and what is the effect of these two different ways of preserving food for the long term again i tend to lean more to mylar bags and for storing appropriate foods that can be stored in mylar bags 10 or less moisture i always feel very conscious to stress that with your oxygen absorber but yeah definitely look around the internet and see what other people have to say in terms of whether they preferred using the foodsaver or the mylar bag now that said i think the foodsaver bags can work pretty well uh if you're freezing food you know to put to prevent freezer burn uh on your meats or your chicken and so on and so forth that that seems to have worked quite well but for other types of food storage for long-term storage uh in a prepper or extended pantry that i think i definitely need to do more research on and it's not something i don't use a foodsaver equipment to store a food for very long term extended storage because i do worry about seals breaking or things like that another question i got was from someone who said that you know they find mylar bags or something that they really can't afford and don't want to purchase and can they just put their white rice right into a five-gallon bucket and preserve it and definitely yes white rice is very easy to keep fresh it's basically considered by many to be almost a forever food it has the bran and the germ basically removed from it and so there's very little in it to spoil so you can put it in a five gallon bucket and you can basically yeah open the bucket use it as you want so on and so forth and it's going to stay fresh there's really not a lot that you need to do in the long run with white rice if it's not something that you want to store in mylar bags and so on and so forth now if when you're putting all your white rice in a bucket and you're thinking that you're not going to access it for a while you really just want to put it away for long-term storage you can go in and put in the correct amount of oxygen absorbers seal up your bucket and put it away for long-term storage and you're fine you don't need to go uh to the level of this where you're you know putting it all in mylar bags and so on and so forth so uh it was cute because she said oh did i totally mess up no you didn't totally mess up it's fine in a five gallon bucket now this is more of a comment you know than a question but it's something that i wanted to share with you because depending on where you live and where you're storing your food you know especially if maybe you're in a very rural area i thought this was a terrific comment and this was actually from a gentleman who's a hunter and he found that uh in storing his food even you know doing the mylar bag doing the five gallon bucket that if he has his food supply in his prepper pantry extended pantry he calls it his his cash as in c-a-c-h-e you know his stash of food that he has found that undisturbed you know just leaving the food undisturbed for a long time given enough time that rodents have been able to chew through almost anything and so i found that fascinating because i think a lot of us who aren't in really rural settings and may be having a situation where we're having to put food maybe in a shed or something like that but that given enough time the rodents will chew through anything including those heavy-duty uh five-gallon buckets or other big type heavy-duty plastic containers and what he found was he took his plastic buckets and he put them into metal lockers now he doesn't share like where he got these metal lockers and whatnot but probably like you know almost like those foot lockers you know that the kids have when they go to college but in metal and he put his plastic buckets into metal lockers and they are 1 8 inch steel so not not super thick but that's a pretty good thickness 1 8 inch steel metal lockers and he said that prevented 100 percent rodent entry so that's a good i think that's an excellent tip for any of us who may be storing long-term uh have our long-term food storage and be in an area where uh rodents are prevalent but it seems as though one-eighth inch steel metal lockers he says defeats all road rodent entry so excellent and that was from matthew thank you matthew i think we can all benefit from that tip the next question i got was uh will silica gel packets in a jar filled with beans kill any larvae or bugs and chances are no if you want to be guaranteed that you're going to kill bugs you would need to dust your dry foods whether it's beans or rice or whole grains not whole grain flour but whole grains with diatomaceous earth and as i shared in my video about different containers and how to store food i don't really like using diatomaceous diatomaceous earth you have to be careful with it because if you inhale it it can be very damaging to your esophagus and your lungs and even though it's food grade or food safe as it's called and can be mixed with food i'm just not comfortable with it i would prefer just to use bay leaves and try to keep bugs at bay but it doesn't kill the bugs nor do silica gel packs yes they draw out moisture but not to the extent like diatomaceous earth does diatomaceous earth will scratch the exoskeleton of the bug and then dry out the exoskeleton and it's going to kill the bugs and the larva and anything else that's in there but no just using your silica gel pack it's unlikely that that's going to help you deter bugs but i think anything that you can do to store your food as properly as you can whether it's a food that can be stored with oxygen absorbers or whether it's a food that can be stored with silica gel packs and you're storing it in a proper container that you're going to be able to do as much as you can to prevent bugs you know using bay leaves as i mentioned and so on and so forth the better you get at taking care of your food and storing it to the best of your ability and over time you're going to learn what's worked and what hasn't worked for you but often it you know it can be a little bit of a trial and error and a lot can depend on where you live what type of bugs you're dealing with what types of rodents you're dealing with what level of humidity you're dealing with so in the beginning there can be some trial and error so it makes a lot of sense that as you're storing your food check it periodically see how it's doing yes if it means that you may have to put in a fresh oxygen absorber or something like that it may be well worth it for you to just check on your food the first couple of months so that you begin to learn what works what doesn't work what you can continue doing or what you may need to change or what different things you may need to consider like diatomaceous earth and on all the different videos regarding storage containers and whatnot for long-term food storage many of you have asked for me to share the link for the latter day saints site that talks about what are uh the best foods to store long term and how to store them and so on and so forth and i definitely do have all of those links over at my website for the latter day saints for the utah state university sites and for the usa emergency supply sites so i've got all those links over on my website so be sure to check that out and now if you want more information about all of this including what are your best containers to use how to store your food all about silica gel packs all about oxygen absorbers more than we've covered here how to stock your pantry with real food how to stock your pantry with real food for five dollars a week how to make homemade items to stock in your pantry all sorts of things be sure to click on this video over here where i have a complete playlist where i've compiled all of this information in one place for you and i'll see you over there in my texas hill country kitchen love and god bless

Channel: Mary's Nest

Views: 44,944

Rating: 4.9421964 out of 5

Keywords: Answers to the Most Popular Long Term Food Storage Questions, Long Term Food Storage Questions, Long Term Food Storage, long term food storage prepping, long term food storage mylar bags, long term food storage pantry, long term food storage containers, food storage, food storage prepping, prepper pantry, food storage containers, mylar bags, oxygen absorbers, silica gel packets, marysnest, marys nest, mylar bags and oxygen absorbers, oxygen absorbers for food storage

Id: BH7L8fOft-k

Length: 64min 28sec (3868 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 30 2020