Oxygen Absorbers versus Silica Gel Packets - When to Use Them in Your Prepper Pantry Food Storage

today i want to share with you the difference between an oxygen absorber and a silica gel packet and when to use them in your prepper pantry food storage [Music] 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 first let's talk about oxygen absorbers to begin with what are they basically their little packets filled with iron powder and it's that iron powder that because of different chemical reactions begins to absorb oxygen now this oxygen absorber is used up and that's why i'm holding it out not worried about having it exposed to oxygen but generally when you use these in food storage and we'll go over what the appropriate places are to use an oxygen absorber the most important thing that you need to remember is you need to work quickly now oxygen absorbers are measured in cubic centimeters and this is a 300 cc a 300 cubic centimeter oxygen absorber and this is an appropriate size when you're using for example a one gallon container and a common one gallon type container would be something known as a mylar bag they're those silver colored looking bags that are very common whenever you're looking for storage options for how to store food in your prepper pantry for long-term storage so this 300 cc oxygen absorber would be perfect to use in a one gallon mylar bag now in an upcoming video i'm going to go into more detail about different types of storage containers like buckets and mylar bags and so on and so forth and how to use them to properly store food long term in your prepper pantry however what i want to do in this video is to focus on when you're going to use this oxygen absorber with what type of foods so getting back to our example with mylar bags say you're getting ready to store white rice and we're going to talk about what exactly you can store with oxygen absorbers and white rice is one of those foods so say you've got your mylar bags and you've got one gallon mylar bags and you can put you can fit about five pounds of white rice into a a one gallon mylar bag so say you've got your uh you've got your mylar bags lined up you've got them filled with your food so you're all ready and you've got everything needed that you're going to use to seal your mylar bags whether it's simply simply an iron or an actual special tool made for sealing mylar bags once you've got everything ready then you can open your bag of oxygen absorbers because you want to use them and get them into whatever vessel they're going to be sealed in within 20 to 30 minutes some people will say two minutes clearly the faster the better but generally somewhere in the range of 20 to 30 minutes gives you at least a little bit of leeway now clearly the best situation is when each of your oxygen absorbers is individually sealed but generally those can be hard to find these 300 cc oxygen absorbers are often sold in packs of 10. so the ideal situation is if you can open this bag and use all 10 right away and while they're sealed like this you can see there's absolutely no air in here there'll be a little dot and it's pink and the instructions often come you know in the package when you order these is pink indicating that these oxygen oxygen absorbers are ready to be used and in good condition now once you open the bag over time the oxygen if you were to just leave your oxygen absorbers the ones that you've not used in this bag and it wasn't very well sealed that little pink dot is going to start to turn a dark color which means basically the oxygen oxygen absorbers that were left in this bag already absorbed oxygen and now they've been used up so some options you have is if you have like a food saver and you can suck all the air out in the event that you didn't use all 10 given the example that i have here where i have 10 in this bag and you could seal it up tight like that just as if it had come to you new that would be great another option is you can put them into a canning jar that has a canning lid that has this little rubber gasket and you can use the little simple adapter and the small handheld foodsaver to suck out the oxygen so that's another option as well but as i said if you can use all 10 or whatever amount are in the package that you have at that one time when you open the package all the better so as i said in that upcoming video i'm going to go over the mylar bags and so on and so forth and i'm going to show you how to seal them and all of that but for this video what i want to tell you is you're going to put this put these into your mylar bags and then you're going to seal them up and initially they're going to look a little loose but then after about a 24-hour period they're going to seem a lot firmer almost like a brick and that's because your oxygen oxygen absorber did its job and then you're ready to put that into your proper pantry for your long-term storage now what i want to talk about is when do you use an oxygen absorber with what foods do you use an oxygen absorber and this is very important because oxygen absorbers can only be used with very dry foods foods that have 10 percent or less moisture and the reason is because if you try to store moist food with an oxygen absorber and it pulled out all of the oxygen what can happen is you can create an anaerobic basically an oxygen free environment where botulism can proliferate and why is that a problem because botulism is a poison and now your moist food would be contaminated with botulism and it wouldn't be any good to you and something important that i want to mention is that under that terminology of moist foods is also included oily foods now i want to read a list of the foods that you cannot store using an oxygen absorber and this is from the latter day saints organization it's a religious organization but they are considered an authoritative source on food storage and i'll be sure to link to their website over on my website so if you'd like to read more because they have extensive information all about food storage already so i want to read this list to you of the foods that you cannot store using an oxygen absorber and it's going to be because they have too much moisture or they're oily or a combination of both and the first is barley dried eggs is next you cannot use an oxygen absorber to store whole wheat flour and you can't use an oxygen absorber to store other whole grain flours you can't use an oxygen absorber to store granola or dried meat such as jerky that's just way too moist you can't use an oxygen absorber to store nuts or brown rice or brown sugar or vegetables and fruits that have been dehydrated unless they do add a caveat unless they are dry enough inside and out to snap when bent so you would need to make sure that they were really dry now in talking about the whole grain flowers an interesting thing to note is that you can store rolled oats using an oxygen absorber and you can also store whole grains that have not been milled into flour using an oxygen absorber the only in essence whole grain on this list that wouldn't be appropriate for using an oxygen absorber is the brown rice as well as the barley now when you can use an oxygen absorber it's a terrific way to store food because not only does it keep out all the oxygen it keeps out moisture which also helps between the oxygen and the moisture being absent it helps protect against the presence of insects for example your white rice stored in a mylar bag with an oxygen absorber would be a very difficult and unhospitable environment for a bug to survive in now you may be wondering about possibly freezing your food before you go to store it you may hear people say oh we'll freeze your grain your whole grain for example for 14 days and any eggs that have not hatched yet bug eggs that have not hatched yet in your food will be killed and now you don't have to worry about the infestation of bugs and that's certainly true but it's a matter of having the the freezer space first of all to freeze all of that grain and my concern that if you then moved on to the next step of storing them in containers in which you were going to use oxygen absorbers you would need to be very sure that your grain was completely dry before trying to maybe for example store it in one gallon mylar bags so my concern in that regard is the moisture can you be assured that as your grain defrosts can it thoroughly dry and sufficiently dried will you know that it's sufficiently dry before you go to store it but the good news is if you don't really have the freezer space and you really don't want to take the risk of wondering if your grain is dry or not dry by storing this in some type of container like a mylar bag that's going to allow you to extract all of the oxygen is going to make an unhospitable environment for those eggs and so in essence freezing the freezing step really isn't necessary so i think when it comes to oxygen oxygen absorbers the most important thing to know is what you can't store when you use them what you can store is really going to come down to knowing what is a dry food with 10 or less moisture and i'll share more information about that over on my website but it's really something that you'll want to research as well because the list can almost become a little unlimited it's really going to be a matter of just doing some research for example can i store x with an oxygen absorber and whatever food you're thinking of will definitely come up on the internet and then it will give you a good answer and and you may find this as i mentioned with the at the latter day saints site or the uh utah state university i believe it is which i'll also link to their website has some wonderful information as to what you can and can't store using oxygen absorbers and there are a host of other resources where you can learn more about the specific food that you're looking to store using an oxygen absorber and whether or not it is appropriate and also as you research using oxygen absorbers you will find resources that will tell you what size oxygen absorber you need for the container that you're using so for example as i mentioned in the examples earlier if you're using a one gallon mylar bag you're going to need a 300 cc oxygen absorber now say you're using one of those big food gallon food gallon five gallon food safe buckets and you want to go ahead and put all of your food in there then you're probably going to need about 2 000 cc amount of oxygen absorbers and they're often sold in 500 cc sizes and so you would put four into your bucket but do you want to do that and the only reason i mention this is having an a very tightly sealed oxygen free environment is really what your oxygen absorbers are made for so when using a five gallon bucket you may want to think about lining it with a mylar bag that is the appropriate size to fit a five gallon bucket then putting your food into the mylar bag then into the mylar bag putting your four cc oxygen absorbers and then sealing your mylar bag and then it's going to just become this very tightly sealed environment and then go ahead and put that into your five gallon uh food safe bucket and then you can store that away and that food that you've put into your mylar bag will stay very fresh now you might be saying mary such overkill why am i putting the mylar bag in the five gallon bucket why don't i just take the mylar bag and put it on my shelf somewhere now that it's all sealed up and that's a great question it really depends on where you're storing your food mylar bags are not rodent proof they can easily be chewed through so that it's often a good advice to put it into uh one of the five gallon buckets now are they 100 rodent-proof no people have reported that rodents were able to not only truth of truth or mylar bags but they were able to chew through the plastic buckets as well so you just have to think about where you're going to store this to do your best at guaranteeing that not only that it not only does it stay fresh but that it stays safe and we'll go we'll go over all this in in my upcoming video where i actually go over all the different options uh for storing food for long-term storage but now what i want to do is talk to you about the silica gel pack and now what exactly is this now before we go into detail detail about the silica gel pack i just want to mention that when you shop for these and i'll put links in the description below to the brands that i like but when you shop for these make sure that they have food safe outer coverings because especially if they're going to be touching your food now that said they will be labeled technically food safe but that doesn't mean they're safe to eat so if you have young children be very careful about these as to where you store them because they're not edible and they will often have a language on them to the effect of do not eat so be very careful where you store these so what is a silica gel pack it's basically filled with silica and what is silica it's a moisture absorber and for any of you who have taken care of infants you know that it's very similar basically to what is in a disposable diaper now these silica gel packs come in different sizes this is a five gram size and the size that you need is going to be based on how much food you're storing it with and there's plenty of charts available there's it's often on the packages or the website where you may be buying your silica gel packets from but generally here in the united states our food and drug administration recommends that you don't need a silica gel pack uh that's very large it needs to be too well but because it really depends on how much food you're storing it with but basically it's going to be less than two percent in size to the amount of food that you're storing it with basically what you need is about one gram of silica gel per every 16 ounces of food so this is a 5 gram silica gel pack i also have 10 gram silica gel packs and they really serve me well but they come in all sorts of sizes so it's really going to come down to how much food you're storing in which you need to pull the moisture out but the general rule is about one gram of silica gel per 16 ounces of food so when would you use your silica gel pack and why would you want to use it well the reason is that if you have foods that are somewhat moist they can be susceptible to developing mold and other problems but when you use a silica gel pack to pull out some of that moisture it will prevent the development of mold and other food borne problems good examples of where you'll see the use of a silica gel pack will be with foods like jerky and dried fruit other options for using silica gel packs is with foods that tend to sprout so if you're storing potatoes or onions silica gel packs can come in very handy also storing a silica gel pack with white sugar and salt is very helpful as well the silica gel pack will help them from developing into really hard cakey type bricks almost but now what about that brown sugar because you can't use an oxygen absorber so should you use a silica gel packet to store your brown sugar no oxygen is actually the enemy of brown sugar but it needs the moisture that's in it so you can't use the oxygen absorber because it's too moist to food but you don't want to use a silica gel pack because you don't want to pull out the moisture so for something like brown sugar the best way to store it is simply to seal it in a plastic bag or some type of container in which you put something that helps keep it fresh and often you'll see these little terracotta food safe shapes sometimes they look like little bears or various other things and you can put that in some people will put a slice of bread in into their brown sugar there are different you know wives tales about what will work and what won't work but the bottom line is what you need to know here is that you can't use either of these but the bottom line when storing brown sugar is that air really is its enemy so if you can store it if you want to store it long term storing it in whatever packaging that you got it in from the grocery store is your best option but once you open it just transfer it to something that is airtight but at the same time is a cool moist environment now you may have seen me use silica gel packs in some of my make-ahead mixes and i do like to stick one in to the jar that i store my make-ahead mix in whatever mix it is because moisture really is the enemy of whole grain flowers and in a lot of my make ahead mixes i try to make them a little healthier so they do include whole grains so i want to keep down some of the moisture that may otherwise be attracted into the jar and spoil my whole grains and thereby shorten the shelf life of my make-ahead mixes now what about the fact that i usually use sukinat which is a whole sugar uh not unlike a light brown sugar or a dark brown sugar it's a whole sugar it's simply the dried cane juice that you know has been dried and has all the molasses and various other nutrients in it so how does what happens to that because that's part of my make-ahead mix and now i'm putting in an oxygen absorber with something that may want the moisture but what i have found from trial and error is that because the sugar and the flour and the other baking soda or baking powder whatever i'm using oats you know all the different things that may go into any one of my make ahead mixes i find that with it being all mixed together that the sugar holds up well and doesn't harden and the little bit of help from the oxygen absorber keeps any moisture out from causing the flower to clump or to go rancid earlier than i am planning on it going generally those have a shelf life of anywhere from six months to a year depending on how they're how they're stored so i do find in that case that everything holds up relatively well so i haven't had any problems so far using that when i have a whole sugar but one that's mixed with other ingredients now oxygen is the enemy of grains as well once they've been milled so your whole grain flowers do start to degrade being exposed to not only air but oxygen but also moisture but unfortunately because they are considered an oily food as we mentioned earlier you can't store them using an oxygen absorber so all you can do is try to control the moisture and hope that you can extend the shelf life as long as possible given the nature of a whole grain flour and something i want to mention about the silica gel packs similar to the oxygen packs once you start to expose them to air they are starting to absorb moisture so the quicker that you work with them the better and i would recommend just like we discussed 20 to 30 minutes with these and as i said some people say two minutes when it comes to oxidant absorbers you probably have about the same amount of time 20 to 30 minutes when you're working with a silica gel pack but something i want to mention about silica gel packs is that in many cases these can be reused some silica gel packs come with an indicator that will tell you that sometimes it'll have one color when it's completely dry and then it'll have another color when it's been it's absorbed all the moisture that it's going to absorb and silica gel packs that are made with those indicators often can be reused because they will give you instructions on how you can dry them out in your microwave now some people will say that smaller silica gel packs like this that don't carry those indicators can can also be dried out but what i have found there's so much conflicting information on the internet as to how to safely do this because they're recommending it being done in the oven and some will have a very simple explanation on how to do it and some will have a very detailed and cautious explanation on how to do it so when it comes to these smaller ones that don't have the indicators and are not made for being reused i tend to not recommend reusing them and not recommend to try to dry them if you want ones that you can reuse then look for those that do have the color indicators and then you can follow the manufacturer's instructions for safely drying them in your microwave now oxygen absorbers and silica gel packs aren't your only options when you're storing food but in my upcoming videos i'm going to talk more about not only the containers you can use but some other methods for preserving your food such as using diatomaceous earth now if you're subscribed to my channel be sure to click on the notification bell if you haven't already done so because this is the beginning of a series of videos that i'm going to be doing all about various storage storage options when it comes to how to store your food properly in your prepper pantry and if you're not subscribed if this is the type of thing that interests you you can subscribe and click on the notification bell and then you'll be notified when those future videos come out now if you'd like more information about the prepper pantry how to stock your pepper pantry with real food how to stock it on five dollars a week how to make homemade food that you can put in your prepper pantry and lots more be sure to click on this video over here and i'll see you over there in my texas hill country kitchen love and god bless

Channel: Mary's Nest

Views: 20,730

Rating: 4.9820361 out of 5

Keywords: Oxygen Absorbers versus Silica Gel Packets - When to Use Them in Your Prepper Pantry Food Storage, oxygen absorbers, oxygen absorbers for food storage, oxygen absorbers vs silica gel packets, oxygen absorbers vs silica gel packs, silica gel, silica gel packets, silica gel packs, silica gel packets for food storage, food storage, long term food storage, prepping, prepper pantry, prepper, oxygen absorber, silica gel packet, silica gel pack, preparedness, marysnest, marys nest

Id: dn0uESzlOvo

Length: 26min 50sec (1610 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 25 2020