Packaging Long Term Food Storage: How to Do It Right

hi I'm Jonathan and Kylene Jones and we're the Provident Preppers today we're going to be talking about how to package your food for long-term storage have you ever wondered how to correctly package your long term food supply so that it will be good when you open it 2530 years from now well in today's the video we're gonna teach you the best containers to use as well as the right treatment methods to make sure that your food is good when you need it let's talk about packaging our long-term food storage we want to make sure that we do it right because it is a significant investment and we want to make sure that that takes care of us for a long time to come yeah so if you just put your bags on the shelf like what you see right there that's not gonna last for 25 or 30 years when you open those bags that sugar is gonna be hard as a brick and that bag of beans could be infested with beetles and the air will also degrade it so that is not the best way to store your food storage and we're going to show you what is the best way so the first thing you want to do is you want to start with really high quality food now when we're talking about packaging food storage today we are talking about dry goods right like flour and sugar and wheat and grains those types of things that's what we're talking about so we want super high quality it needs to be less than 10% moisture so you can have one grain like you could have wheat that was a higher moisture content than the other one and the one with a low moisture content is the one that is the best candidate for long term storage you also want to make sure that it has a low oil content that's the reason why you can't store brown rice for a long time white rice will store for 30 years but brown rice has this very nutritious coating on the outside the outside brand which has a high oil content and that goes rancid and therefore you cannot store it for a very long time so less than 10% moisture and low and oil content if you want some more details about this Google the Provident prepper long term food storage creative solutions to build a critical asset and we've written a killer post there to try and help you understand how to build your long-term food storage let's talk about containers a little bit containers are obviously critically important because they are the thing that's going to hold whatever you're putting in there and make sure that it preserves the food for long term and and they're not all created equal and they are not there are some it's good better and best right okay that pack paper bag that was not good but there are some that will do the job but there are some that are the best and we will discuss that right and there is a post that you can look at there the Provident prepper long-term food storage best containers and treatment methods we encourage you to check it out yeah that is what this video is based off of today so this video just gives you a little sneak peek so if you want the rest of it make sure that you visit the Provident prepper number 10 cans are a great choice the best choice i I would agree they are a little bit more expensive but when you look at their ability to keep light out to keep moisture out keep critters out overall it's it is what allows foods to be 25 or 30 years in storage right because that steel or the steel can creates a true oxygen barrier right Moisture can't get in air can't get in it just creates this wonderful little time capsule so that is the best choice but it is more expensive because the cans aren't reusable however they can't be reusable for a variety of things that say you can surface them right and you can use the plastic caps to seal them obviously they're not going to then last for 25 or 30 years but they're still very usable for other things but for somebody who stores a lot of food storage I have more number tin cans than I could possibly ever repurpose Thank You Johnny all right so plastic buckets they come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes and that's one of the reasons why they are so versatile john loves the square ones because being an engineer they stack and there's no wasted space that's right and also as I get older they're only four gallons instead of five gallons and so it makes it just a little easier when you're carrying a couple of them around just a little bit lighter so I I do like those but there's a whole variety depending on your needs and they all do a great job and it is interesting because your personal situation is going to dictate what kind of container you use it used to be that those five-gallon buckets weren't that heavy and we had an awful lot of them but now as we're getting a little bit older we're choosing to use smaller containers because they're just more convenient for us so make sure that you you consider that and one of the things that we like to do with our buckets in addition to storing grain and in fact we should tell you that most of our food is actually stored in the buckets because we use our long-term storage on a daily basis and so we can just empty that bucket and then we refill it over and over again so there's very little waste but one of the things we love to do is to put food that's in their original packaging in those buckets so for instance that powdered sugar in the center there it's in its original packaging I just put it in that bucket and seal it up it is amazing it keeps the moisture from the storage room from contaminating the food supply that works really well especially like with containers of salt that are they're like a magnet for moisture in the storage room and so if you put those kinds of things in there and then you just seal them up it it's just fantastic one of the things that it won't do is you can't treat this like we'll talk about treating in a minute but it will contain if you have an infestation in that pasta it will contain it to that bucket and it won't spread to your entire food storage right another thing to think about with these is when you put those things in there it also protects them should you get a rodent in there probably wouldn't protect from a rat fur but for the most part the mice aren't gonna chew through the bucket unless they're desperate - and then maybe you should move hey one of the other things if you notice this metal bucket opener make sure that you have a really good quality bucket opener because they sell some plastic ones that will totally break when you try and pry that lid off so I love this metal one make sure you that you do have something that that will help you - one of the things mylar pouches okay they are not an optimal package to store something but what makes them really cool is that you can store your own food at home with these because all it takes to seal them up is a straight iron like what you straighten your hair with or a clothes iron and then you are able to seal up those bags so you can buy them online and then package all your food storage so you've got oxygen absorbers that you can also buy online rekt yeah but this is really good but mice will chew right through those and they're just not as sturdy you could put them inside of one of the five-gallon buckets and therefore make them really nice and sturdy and and we Rita and we've done that quite a bit and that it does work really well yeah the peat bottles these are a very good inexpensive source if you if you need something and you can't afford to buy buckets any time there would be a party we would save all of those soda bottles and clean them out really well and fill them with grain now be careful that you clean it's super super well my method um I take off the cap and sometimes there's a little insert in that cap and I pop it out so that I can make sure I get really clean and underneath there and I I rinse them out super well and then I put them in a bleach solution a sanitizing bleach solution so it's a really weak solution but you just soak it in there you want about 30 minutes of contact time and then you can air dry them I air dry them for several days to make sure that they're completely dry but that should kill any bacteria that might be harboring harboring in there for storage reasons sometimes all those bottles are kind of awkward to store and I found that I could go to the supermarket and at free Apple boxes like the boxes this they bring apples to the supermarket in and they fit the bottles fairly well and it enabled me to stack them and they just work better in the food stretcher glass jars are an excellent thing obviously the size limits you somewhat but for short-term uses they work very well that there is not air infiltration obviously there is light infiltration but as long as they're being used in a relatively short period of time or they're in a cupboard where it's dark you shouldn't get any food degradation from light and these are my favorite I use these all the time would I have my whole food storage in them absolutely not but I buy a lot of different things in bulk and you can tell from these yeah I've got old peanut butter jars old mayonnaise jars I'll use spaghetti jars because they all clean up really nicely glass is a fantastic thing and it's such a tragedy to throw it all away so this way I'm able to utilize that repurpose those for for higher cause and not go to the extra expense of buying more jars and then we also when we're not using our glass jars our canning jars especially those get filled and put in our storage so that we keep that water supply they store just the same size full of water or without so it's you just as well have that water yeah so if you look at this is actually a storage room that Jonathan built me just for my beautiful jars but if you look in the corner there on the right you will see all those are filled with water some of them are counting jars and some of them are the other jars like peanut butter jars but he did a fabulous job creating these shelves and of course they do store some of my wet goods too right for the things that I've bottled but on the left-hand side you can see how many dry goods I store in in those jars right in this room is dark and so it it provides an optimal environment there's no windows so it's a good place to store these kinds of things okay so now we're gonna move on to treatment methods because now we've talked about the container the containers important and you can you can select the kind of container that you want but each one of the containers and it's a little bit different treatment method now see if these creators share these are weevils in some wheat we don't want that when you open up your food storage you do not want to see anything like that insects come in various life stages and a requires special handling to destroy each stage if you go to the Provident prepper 8 food storage enemies and how to slay them we go through all of all eight things that could really damage your food storage and the best way to make sure that you extend the life of your food storage oxygen oxygen absorbers are a pretty important part of the canning process and these actually do a better job of pulling out the oxygen then methods where they suck out all the air these ads item packing they have vacuum packing these actually tie up all the oxygen which isn't all of the air because that leaves the nitrogen and other things in there the nitrogen doesn't allow any growth of microbes or critters but that oxygen is all tied up and so these oxygen absorbers do a wonderful job of helping you preserve your your food another method is the dry ice method obviously that's frozen co2 this actually displaces and we use this in our buckets this displaces the air in there so you put three or four inches of grain in the bottom of a bucket you put this dry ice and you probably want to wrap that or maybe put a little paper towel over it just to prevent it from burning the green right right just to to keep the grain good and then you can finish filling that bucket then that dry ice and the co2 that that creates the dry ice is heavier than air so as it sublimates or turns into a gas it's going to push all the oxygen out at the top of the bucket and then you're left with a bucket that has no oxygen in it for the critters to grow in yeah so it's really important you don't seal that bucket right away you want to wait thirty to sixty minutes at least or else you've created a dry ice bomb which is a felony so don't do that um but you might wonder why you shouldn't just put oxygen absorbers in there and there's a really good reason it's because the plastic buckets are permeable do you remember how we talked about the number 10 cans won't allow any oxygen in their true oxygen barrier so anything that will create a true oxygen barrier like the mylar bag or like the glass jars those are great for oxygen absorbers but the plastic actually air will infiltrate in eventually and so it doesn't create a true oxygen barrier in the buckets the oxygen absorbers don't work nearly as well because those buckets will allow some infiltration of air and so that's why we prefer to use the co2 the dry ice and push all that oxygen out and then those buckets can be sealed and there won't be opportunity for the for the creatures down to hatch but if you put the oxygen absorbers in you create kind of a vacuum so you're making a situation where it the oxygen wants to come into the bucket when you use the carbon dioxide there's no vacuum created and so there's it's like this happy balance that just stays put diatomaceous earth comes from marine diatoms fossilized remains of marine diatoms and this comes as a white powder this is harmless to humans but it's got microscopic little sharp microscopic spines that is deadly to exoskeletons so this actually works really well you can mix one cup with 40 pounds of grain and obviously you don't want to breathe the dust probably won't hurt you it's very very fine very fine very fine and so it's better not to to breathe the dust you may want to wear a dust mask yeah and I this is totally it doesn't have a taste it's completely harmless but this is not one of the ways that I actually treat this is not one of my chosen methods and you do need to make sure you get the food grade there are other varieties out there but make sure you get a food grade diatomaceous earth and it will do a good job alright so now you know your long term food storage you first of all you've got to start with high quality food right low and moisture and and low end oil and then you're gonna choose your container depending on your circumstances and then we're going to treat it appropriately for the container that you have chosen now we've got some other resources for you if you go to the Provident prepper and Google ingenious places to store your food supply that one was a really fun one and we have lots of pictures of different people's food storage and some of the really creative ways that they have found space to be able to store food another one is three month's supply of food amazing peace of mind we recommend that you have a three month supply of food just everyday foods that you eat all the time and in this post we really help you get started and give you some good ideas there also Google the Provident prepper food storage how old is too little too old and this is a pretty insightful article that will give you some ideas sometimes we've talked to people who once that can of food hits its expiration date it gets tossed in the trash and so people don't feel like they can store food because they just end up wasting a lot in reality that isn't the case and there's that food is good for a long time if it's stored properly and this gives you some guidance on how you can know how old is too old so hopefully that sums it up but if you have any more questions visit long-term food storage best containers and treatment methods by the Provident prepper and you will learn everything you need to know it's all in their written down for you we hope you have found this to be very educational and something that you can take on and do yourself as you can see it's not that difficult to package your own Drive goods in your own home you just have to know a few things so now for the question of the day what's your favorite way to package food for the long haul have you had great success or perhaps some failures that you'd like to share our audience failures okay that's how we learn so we appreciate your willingness to learn and your willingness to be a part of the solution yeah thanks for being part of the solution [Music]

Channel: The Provident Prepper

Views: 366,052

Rating: 4.8847699 out of 5

Keywords: emergency preparedness, long term food storage, plastic buckets, #10 cans, PETE bottles, Mylar bags, oxygen absorbers, dry ice treatment, the provident preppers, insect infestation, food storage, shtf, prepper

Id: 9J31WXxAEwY

Length: 18min 4sec (1084 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 08 2019