Food Storage: Grains, Flours, and More

[Music] hello friends Heidi here from rain country god is good all the time and yes I'm here for yet another food storage video and today I'm going to be talking about grains flours and more so I'll be talking about the types of grains I store why I store them and how I store them plus a few other things that are related to grains all right the first thing I would like to talk about our noodles stocking up on noodles yes I know that I mention these in my that first video that's a part of this series on food storage beyond rice and beans which I highly recommend you go check out because of all the things I cover in that but I still don't get to cover everything so this is why I'm doing some of these breakdowns but I wanted to bring up the noodle thing again for a few reasons so the noodles I like to store I like to stock up on now are the organic ones that you can get from Costco I really like these because they are not only organic they are also a product of Italy which when it comes to noodles I trust that better and the other reason why is because when you get these at Costco like this they are an excellent price it's the best price I've seen on organic noodles anywhere and they're in individual packages and each package is set over seventeen and a half ounces so that's a lot bigger than your standard package you're gonna buy in your grocery store and especially bigger than the standard organic ones because usually your standard package in the grocery store is gonna be about a pound and the organic ones are usually around twelve ounces so they're not only bigger than your your standard non-organic noodles they're much bigger than your standard organic noodles so this is the best deal I recommend this we get both this variety pack of noodles like this they have various different they have three different shapes in here and also I get the spaghetti noodles and then sometimes I'll buy these ones too with a where they have the different colors you know made with carrots and spinach and whatever else they use in there now here's the main thing why I wanted to bring this up again about the stocking up on noodles is that though yes you can easily make noodles from scratch as long as you have all the ingredients in storage because really all you need to make noodles are eggs and flour that's it that's all you need and I have a few different noodle making videos out I do plan on doing some more and I do like making noodles it is a fun process but it can be time-consuming so in a major grid down situation you're not gonna probably want to do that you're gonna want to fall back on your on your noodle stores because things are gonna get a lot busier and harder and so you're gonna want to simplify things so having a stash of noodles on hand is really I think is a really important investment on top of that I think if you were to do a cost comparison to buying noodles like this in bulk to buying and storing a good organics Imola flour I think you'll find out you're not as far ahead cost wise as you might think you are but even if you are again anything you can do this gonna simplify your life in a major grid down situation I think is important and really it's a pretty decent price and I again I said I'd do a lot of my Costco ordering online because we live quite a ways from the closest Costco so they're organic noodles both the spaghetti style in this style are ones that you can order online I can't remember if I got these ones online or in the store I think I got these ones in the store I don't know if they're available online I can't remember but you can check it out so and yes somebody asked me when it comes to ordering from Costco online you don't have to have a membership they do add a 5% charge though if you're not a member but weigh out the cost look at what you've got and then do your price per pound on the various things you're gonna buy you're probably gonna find out you're still money ahead to go ahead and pay that 5% and maybe even more money ahead by not getting the membership sometimes it's worth it because it costs money for a yearly membership if you do the decorative membership and you spend enough money there in a year you can actually earn a person enough of a percentage back to pay for your membership and then that really makes it worth it but if you can't do that then it may not be worth it it may just be worth it to purchase online without a membership and pay that extra 5% one of the other things about noodles like this is you really don't have to vacuum seal them in jars if you're concerned about them being stored in the plastic that's the only reason I would say go ahead and vacuum sealing jars but they will last for years in a package just like this I know this because I've left them in packages like this for a long time I even though I have a lot of jars right now I'm not wanting to conserve my jars for putting up other things that I'm more concerned about having with their shelf life and I know these noodles are gonna be fine just like this for years as long as they're kept in a cool dry area they're gonna be perfectly fine okay now let's talk just a little bit about beans before I go on to the grains beans are something that will store for a pretty much indefinite amount of time however there is an issue with dried beans like I have here these are from my garden from 2018 so the ones that I save up from my own garden I do vacuum seal into jars like this and then work through them the ones I buy i buy in big bags I keep in the gamma seal buckets and I try to work through those a little quicker and if I can't then I start canning them up like I did here because here's the issue with beans yes they can store for pretty much an indefinite amount of time however the problem with beans is that they will keep getting harder and harder and harder and harder over time too until they get to a point that there's no amount of soaking or cooking them is going to fully soften them up you're still gonna have kind of a gritty dry bean and so it's best to to try to work through them rather quickly or can them up like I did here so what I do I still have a lot of kidney beans pinto beans and black beans in store that are dry and so every time I make a big batch of chili that I want to can up for an instant meal then I will fill in any gaps with some pre soaked kidney beans or black beans or even pinto beans so that I can have those ready to go when I want to make something like the kidney beans I would use in a tamale pie or the black beans you can make a really good spicy soup with that throw in the black beans and any of your other canned vegetables that you have and make a really yummy you know canned tomatoes and stuff and make a really wonderful soup it's kind of similar to a chili but it has a different flavor I have a rest before one of these days I should do a video on it because I haven't actually made it in a long time back when I was a big because the the store-bought garden burgers are they're full of garbage in fact if you're vegan and you're buying that stuff read the ingredients you're not helping yourself out health-wise by being a vegan if that's what you're eating but I would make my own garden patties and make them all-natural by using black beans as a base to that and those turned out pretty good I never did fully perfect it to the point where they would hold together really well when being grilled but they tasted pretty good a lot of people what they like to do when they get their bags of beans or grains in they like to freeze them first for like a 24 hour period because that's what that's gonna do is that's going to kill any eggs that may be any bug eggs you know especially like weevils that may be in the beans or the grains this can happen we did have it happen with a bag of spelt because I don't I personally don't do that some of it is just a time issue and some of it to me as my concern is how do I know when the beans and the and the rice and the other grains if I freeze them and then pull them out you're gonna still have to allow them to dry for a period of time before you can jar them up and because you don't want to jar them up if there's any moisture in there because then they're gonna mold and so I just I just put my things in for the things I'm gonna have for a long-term storage I put them in the big five-gallon mylar bags and then I'll put in some oxygen absorbers Co only time I use oxygen and then I take my Flatiron that I bought years ago and I thought I would try straightening my very very curly hair and it's too much of a pain I don't bother with it but I find out that flat iron works really good for sealing those bags so get you I get as much air as I can out manually but also have those oxygen absorbers in there seal that off really good all right so now let's talk a little bit about popcorn as you can see this is a small bag it's just currently what I'm trying out it is actually one of the better deals I have found on organic popcorn now all popcorn is non-gmo but not all of it is organic and when it comes to corns and your grains it's really these are the areas that I think is really important to go organic as much as you possibly can and it's really hard to find a good price on organic corn now the best price I believe I've seen so far is as your standard I have done a few orders we do not currently have a drop point anywhere near us I don't know if we ever will I we've tried to set one up here in our small very remote town but they've turned us down I still will order from them but shipping can be expensive however when you look at the price comparison of what you're paying with shipping Plus connect item you can still end up money ahead however I'm not going to do that until I'm ready to do a bigger order because it's gonna save a little bit of money on shipping if I can order more at a time so I'm trying to restock my popcorn supply even though we have quite a bit and so I still like to hunt around and try different things and so one of the ones that beginning is this one I haven't actually tried it yet I just got this in the other day through subscribe and save now I know this as a small bag but it was a bulk purchase because you get six of these bags at a time and it was the better price that I could find on Amazon plus I could get it through subscribe and save and save even more by doing that so I'm trying this one out but that doesn't mean I'm going to rule out buying some from as your standard next time I do my order for grains because that is the my favourite place now to buy Mike raids and because they have an excellent price on all their you know all the ancient grains all of that that even when I have to pay shipping it's still I still come out money ahead getting those and I can get the ones I really want and so but popcorn is an excellent thing to store for many reasons and one being is that it has an incredibly long prayer I would say indefinite shelf life even if not properly stored like in mylar bags and sealed up with oxygen absorbers in fact that's pretty much pointless when it comes to popcorn because they have found popcorn that was like eight thousand years old that still popped and you know in some ancient tomb somewhere but here's the other thing about popcorn that if you really like enjoy eating popcorn which we do but you also want to have a corn that's good to grind up for making flowers and meals popcorn is your choice and it's something that you can store up you don't have to store a zillion different kinds of corn you can just store a popcorn and you can help a your popcorn for a treat and you can also have it for grinding into flowers and meals and so that's one of the reasons why stock up on popcorn however one of the other corns I do like to stock up on and that I get from as your standard is their whole white organic corn and of course it's non-gmo and because it's hard for me to find an organic non-gmo white cornmeal like I have here this is the ground corn this is after we've ground it in our country living grain mill and you can see my big jar is starting to get low so it's time here soon for us to start grinding up more corn and when we do that we're going to grind up the corn from our own garden the popcorn that I have plus the white corn because the white corn in particular is what a Patrick really likes for when I make the more hillbilly style beans and cornbread and some of you know what I'm talking about the Tar Heel Tar Heel beans and corn beause what we call it because Patrick's dad was a Tar Heel he came from North Carolina and so that's what Patrick grew up on and so I had to learn how make that the hillbilly style which is a little different than you know the type of beans and cornbread we have here in the North which I grew up with so anyway I do stock up on that because of the white corn and and then are the popcorn that I've grown the glass Jim it that makes a pretty good meal too and we've done that it turns out a little bit of a grayish purple kind of color almost lavender and but when it's cooked up it actually still looks it actually has a nice look to it you add the egg and stuff in there to add some more color and it turns out just fine right here you can see this these are my grains that are ready to grind into flour I keep them in a jar like this right next to my country living grain mill and it's a blend and right now my current blend you should be able to see even better in a picture right there that I have three different grains in here what I have in here are some Emmer grains that I bought because I wanted to try them out these are the darkest ones I have some spelt grains and then mostly hard white wheat my favorite grain for making breads with is the hard white wheat has a very mild flavor but I do like the Emmer and I do really like the einkorn and it's one of those things I'm waiting to purchase I'd only bought like a small bag of it from as your standard to try it just like the Emmer and I plan on buying more when I do my next big order from them but really when it comes down to it my two favorites to blend together are the spelt and the hard white wheat now you've got to find out what works for you I'm always trying new things but I don't like to have a zillion different types of grains stored up I just want to keep trying different grains and store up well I know I like besan and I'm going to use now a soft white wheat is also a nice grain to have but once I've worked through the the one I had it's got a nice flavor it's a great grain but here's what I don't like about soft white wheat or even the spelt when it comes to that is that it takes much longer for them to grind whether you're doing it by hand or you're doing it with a motor and I know I've done it both ways our country living grain mill is is made to be a hand-cranked but we also have it hooked up to a motor so I you know to save me some time and hard white wheat goes through the mill a lot faster it's harder to grind especially when you're doing it by hand but it goes through faster and it cleans and it keeps it cleaned out better that's why I don't like the softer greens with so that's what you're looking at when you're doing the iron corn the Emmer the soft white wheat and the spelt and this is why when I do my blend like this I always go with a much higher ratio of the hard white wheat because I find when I do that it goes through at a nice pace and if you're doing it by hand it's not as hard as doing you know start it's hard to crank as it is just doing the hard white wheat but it doesn't take us long to go through as the softer grains the softer grains you could be doing this forever it's easy you can turn the crank II easily enough it just takes a long time and so that's one reason I like to do a blend like that now some people might wonder what's the difference between a hard and soft grain when it comes to making your breads typically you're looking at your hard grains as being something you're going to use in your yeast type breads where your softer grains you're gonna use them something like your like your biscuits your pie crusts and your tortillas and stuff like that but you know what I find I like the hard white we just as good in any of them it works great for me and all of them I don't I don't really see a big difference now how I store my wheat grains my rice for long term is like I mentioned in in the ganna sealed bucket and the large bucket in the mylar bags with an oxygen absorber and then sealed with a flat iron now for the buckets that I'm working through immediately they just go right into the mylar bag and I always toss in this goes for my oats as well because I store oats too I just throw in a few bay leaves into every bag what that's gonna do is that's gonna help prevent weevils and other bugs they don't like the smell of bay leaves and so by tossing these in there that will help to prevent any kind of issue now in all the years I've been storing grains I've only had one bucket ever get full of weevils and thankfully they stayed kin because they were in a gamma seal and I had actually been working through it and so I didn't have it all vacuum sealed and all that because I was actually working through the bag I'm pretty sure that the weevils were already in the grains when I got them so that was a situation where if I would have frozen at first you know might already had the eggs in there and then they eggs hatched and then they started populating and once it got to that point there was no there was no there was no saving it it would they were gone so all of that ended up getting fed to the chickens which was great because they got the grains and they got all the protein from the bugs they loved that but really in all the other times that I've had I've been storing grains I've never had weevils - other than that one time and so I just keep putting those bay leaves in there and make sure you seal everything very well that's going to go into long-term stores again consider the freezing thing like some people do let's talk about a few of the other types of things I store grain white cereals when I can get them for a good price tea organic cereals though I don't stock highly on these and the reason why is because organic cereals can be pretty expensive one of the things I like about this brand is this actually from what this is all from Washington State and so this is really close and I can get a fairly decent price on these compared to some other ones but it's still just a small little box now Nature's Path does make some good ones in the bigger bags that are you can get a better price on those per pound or per ounce the other reason why I don't care to stock heavily up on these I see the prepackaged cereals like this you know organic or not as being more of an extra treat because we have lots of oats I do make a hot cereal from the grains I already have I have a video on that I'll go ahead and link down below and so basically it's kind of a cream of wheat type cereal so I have ways I can make cereal with that and then there's so many other ways to make a good hot breakfast whether it be pancakes biscuits and gravy or just bacon eggs and fried potatoes that's one that we do quite a bit around here the box cereals are more just to break things up and just add more variety how her if we had to we could live without these and you know in when if money was to get really really tight then I would just forego buying these all together because that it's more of a luxury item that's the word I was looking for however if having box cereals is important to you there's always the option of uh concealing them into your jars I've done this before when I found really good deals in a bought in bulk or I could buy like a case of cereals like this and then I just took them and especially when you get it in a big bag and I realize I show this in pretty much every food storage video but there's always new people coming in and it's always good to that you know if you've never seen this before it's one way you can store up your food and I use a brake bleeder the food saver tops you can also use your regular food saver if your I didn't even notice this until the people mentioned it that theirs is doing that if your brake bleeder goes is not calibrated to the zero like it should because whatever happened I just go ahead and pump it up to about twenty if you can go that far just to make sure if it's right on the zero pump it up to at least fifteen to sixteen or seventeen psi yeah and so what that's gonna do and when you're dealing with a bigger jar like this half gallon jar it's gonna take a little bit longer to pump it up and I have a lot more air space in there because it didn't fully fill up the jar and cereal is so lightweight anyway that is going to there's just a lot of air spike space in there this is a good way to store up your cereals for a long period of time and I'm actually only doing this for demonstration purposes because like I said it's not something I typically will stock a lot okay so there we go jars sealed now you can put a band on it and put it in your storage here are some similar flour I did stock up on this just in case I do want to make pasta I thought you know also because I like buying in bulk anyway because you get a better price and so this is vacuum sealed now if you look close you can see right in there there's that's a ever tell this is just one of the things I recommend you can do a coffee filter a paper towel or even a cloth just a cotton cloth whenever your vacuum sealing anything powdery like this into a jar it's best to put something like this on top of whatever it is you have in here before you put on your lid and vacuum seal it because your powdery items are gonna get sucked up either into your hose and possibly ruin your machine especially if you're using a food saver or it's gonna get sucked out through the sides and and then it's not gonna seal anyway I I made that mistake trying to vacuum seal a bunch of cacao powder into jars in the past and just didn't even think about it but anyway having something in there as a barrier to keep that from going up there is gonna make a huge difference so paper towel coffee filter or better yet I think if you're like me and you save up a lot of little squares of cotton cloth for using to cover your vinegars and whatnot then that's something you can put in there and that way you can always reuse it you know the paper towels and the coffee filters aren't as reusable and I'm not sure why I didn't think about this when I vacuum seal this in here but this is actually from 2018 I haven't made noodles in quite a while though I do have another jar of the flour somewhere and then for rice somebody was asking me about where do you find organic rice that's grown in America I actually don't know I don't know if I've ever seen Organic white rice from America it might be out there somewhere the organic rice I've been getting is actually from India and I can get it sometimes on Costco for a pretty decent price and whenever I see it available online I buy some more and we do have quite a bit of white rice and storage but the anyway that's the one I'm liking and I'll go ahead and show you a picture of it right here that's what it looks like it used to be in a different looking bag it's the same rice as now in a different bag but anyway it seems to come and go quite a bit at Costco but another rice I don't stock up a whole lot on but I like to have some one hand is a wild rice blend and this is the Lundberg rice and I get this from Amazon through subscribe and save if you're interested I'll link to that one down this is the one I like to use to make the stuffing for my turkey a wild rice stuffing it always seems to go over well which is also a good option for people who are gluten-free and I have a recipe video on that that's a two three years old that I'll go ahead and link to down below and then the oh it's the oats you can again that's something you can get from as your standard especially have a drop point you can get a good price there organic non-gmo or the ones I'm trying out right now they've been getting are the the great river milling they have some really good grains that you can get through Amazon it's not cheap but it's not too bad of a price especially if you go through subscribe and say that's gonna help and I've been using some of their stuff often on their various grains that's where I got my soft white wheat grains was from Great River milling since we're talking about grains the other thing I need to mention is stop stocking up on things for leavening your breads uh now I did stock up on baking powder this is actually several years old it's still good this is the second bag I have another bag like this and so this is something I do store in mylar banks and somebody asked me on my one my last food storage videos why don't you use my lower back so what I do I just don't use them as often as jars but the nice thing about mylar bags is they can be stored flatter and you know whether they're full or not you know they're not going to take up quite as much room you can put quite a bit in them they have their own issues there's certain things I like better about glass and there's certain things I like better about my life knowing what I know now one of the things I'm starting to do and I still have a lot of baking powder to work through is that you can make your own baking powder and having the ingredients to make the baking powder is actually better because then you can make just a little bit at a time instead of having a big batch like this because apparently it's supposed to be more shelf stable having the ingredients separately and that's going to be some kind of starch I always try to stay away from cornstarch because it's another one that's hard to find organic so I usually have either arrowroot powder or tapioca starch or both on hand and then you'll need some cream of tartar one of the reasons I like to buy frontier brown or star west of anything is they already come in mylar bags so I just store them like this I store them in the bags that they're in because they're already in mylar so all their spices and stuff I get through them I keep them in the bags until I go to open them up and then put them in the jars that I'm using where I'm working through them right away so cream of tarter is something I've been stocking up on because of that and then also you have to have baking soda cream of tarter in the baking soda these are things that will store very well I'm working on building up the cream of tarter supply so that when I'm done with this then I'll just start making my own baking powder with the ingredients I have on here so that's that's the benefit there that's why they say it's better to stock up on the ingredients needed to make the baking powder then the baking powder itself is is all about shelf-life so but like I said I've had it for years still good still good I've never had baking powder go bad on me that well at least not that I can recall I've had yeast go bad you know yeast that I stored but I always store my yeast once I I store it back in the pantry as long as the packages are still sealed vacuum sealed in their own little mylar bags but once I open them I store the yeast in little glass jars in my freezer and work through them that way because once you've opened it it will eventually get to a point where it's no good and you won't be able to get a rise out of your bread but there's also other things you can do for yeast you can do sourdough or you can do like I have videos where I did mess around a little bit with my fermentation starter and managed to get a few pretty good successful loaves of bread it's a little trickier it takes a longer time so I still like to fall back on the dry yeast but at least I know I have ways of making a yeast bread if I never have access to a dry yeast so I'm I'm totally cool with that so anyway think about your leavens and the things that you need and of course as I've mentioned before salt is going to be important thing to have on hand so stock up on your your salts like your Himalayan pink salt your redmond real salt and a couple others that I like to have on hand a whole video just on salts the salts that I like to stock up on because there's at least or that I do there's two main ones and then there's two others I like to have on hand and so I'll link to that video down below if you're interested more about salt and why I stock up on these different ones and how I use them because they all have their own various uses I do stock up on unbleached organic white flour I think that you know even though I do like grinding our grinding the grains and making our own flour that way I do think it's important to have some some regular unbleached organic white flour on hand can get a good good one from Azure standard and also Costco has been carrying one of my favorite browns of the organic unbleached white flour they actually are carrying in the store I can't get it online but when I go in there and it's a really good price I think it's the best price I've seen on that kind of flour so do that to get your gamma seal buckets put it in there your mylar bags and then as you can see here I have these buckets here these are the ones that stay and my cupboard right down here that I'm always working through those and then I refill them when they get empty I go back to my pantry I refill those bring them back out here so that's what's going on here but I do like to do blends of the wheat the whole wheat flour with the white flour there's just some things that are going to turn out a little bit better and and you're able to work a little bit better when you've got your white flour to go with it but using this the whole grain flours from from the food store you know from the ones we grind ourselves I've done that too I've made these spreads with just fully whole grains and they turn out really good it just depends on what I'm making now one of the things I wanted to say about grinding your own flour and why it's important to have a grain mill and have grain stored is that your grains are your whole grains are going to they're going to have hold all their benefits they're going to store longer and better and they're going to have all the good stuff in it that you're not going to get from your your store-bought flowers even if you buy a whole grain flour there's still stuff missing from it because they have to remove the healthy fats so that they will store for a period of time at least until you can buy it they can't put it on the Shelf like that they have to take the fat out or that will go rancid so when you have your grains you're going to be able to get that healthy fat you're gonna have a better more nutritious flour and then you just grind the flour up as you need it and whenever I do that if I grind more than I need I either stick it in the freezer the ground flour or I stick it in the fridge depending on how soon I think I'm gonna use it to prevent it from going to rants it but anyway you just grind up what you need and this is why this is important to have whole grains stored up and not just flour because of the the length of time and the benefits you're going to get from those all the nutrients that you lose when you when you get your store-bought flour so and also a lot of people who have had gluten problems found simply by switching to not this is I know this doesn't apply to everyone but simply by switching to bind the grains whole and organic and grinding them themselves they found they stopped having issues with the gluten or with with grains in general so that's something to consider there if you're one of those I realize that's not going to solve everybody's problems some people find then going the next step of soaking and drying the grains and then grinding them up has helped and then some people go yet the next step and they sprout them and then dry them and then grind them up into flour so it's all all the steps are gonna depend on what you need okay well I hope you're enjoying my series on food storage or my newer series so any thoughts that you'd like to add to this anything I may have forgot or left out or maybe I don't do any tips or pointers that you have for other people you'd like to share go ahead and put those in comments down below and also share with us what are your favorite grains to store up do you like to store oats wheat grains corn what is thanks for watching take care and God bless

Channel: Rain Country

Views: 46,992

Rating: 4.9423909 out of 5

Keywords: traditional, old-ways, Health, Garden, Frugal, Homesteading, Self-Sustainability, Cooking, DIY, Homemade, natural-living, herbs

Id: PYWXGhBKAl0

Length: 33min 7sec (1987 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 20 2020