Storing Dried Foods in Mason Jars

hello friends Heidi here from rain country god is good all the time and I thought it would be a good idea to do an update video about dehydrating and vacuum sealing into jars how I do it and a few of my recommendations because I get questions about this all the time but the first thing I wanted to talk about is some of the benefits of dehydrating your foods whether it be store-bought things that you bought and prepared and then dehydrated yourself or things that you grow in your garden and you dehydrate the top two benefits of dehydrating in this one include if you're gonna if you have a freeze dryer and there are differences dehydrating and freeze drying are two different things and they work differently and they give different results but both are very good at preserving the nutrients in the food better so then canning does and I don't just dehydrate I also like to cam my foods I love to can I can all kinds of stuff it has its own benefits as does freezing and I talked about these methods in another video that I will go ahead and link down below if you're interested don't forget to click on the other show more or that little gray arrow below the video if you're on a smart device so yes you're going to retain their nutrient value much better in your dehydrated and freeze-dried foods then you will incanting because the heating process of canning is so much higher that it's going to kill off some of the nutrients it doesn't mean the food is useless though there are those benefits to County so don't scrap that altogether but the other great benefit of dehydrating is the amount of space it takes up in your pantry or wherever it is that you're storing so for example zucchini I don't know how many zucchini is in here and I get good sized zucchinis from my garden but I I can put as much as I think at least four big zucchinis in one jar when I dehydrate it because the zucchini is got so much water in it that it really decreases in size so when you do hydrater and then if i powder the pieces I can put eight while same medium-sized zucchini medium for me is about like that from my garden you know I get some that are this big I get a few that are this big that would be considered small so medium for me is that and anyway I can fit as much as eight if I powder it up but I like to use the zucchini in different ways powders I like to use in breads like pancakes and yeast bread biscuits even it just adds more nutrients it's flavorless and it does give your bread a little bit of a green color just slightly but it's also a great way to use up some of that excess zucchini because if you're living an area like we do where zucchini just grows politically you can have zucchini coming out your ears so so yes the amount of space it takes up is way less than your then if you're gonna can I want to talk also about some different things that I have vacuum sealed in jars like right here I have shitake mushrooms so I don't gross shiitakes here maybe someday I'll give that a try I did find a good deal on them through Amazon I'm not sure if they're still available but regardless it was a big bag and I'll link down if I can find the link I'll go ahead and put it down below if you're interested it was a huge bag and I feel look up to half gallon jars of these and then I just vacuum seal them into the jar and when I need some take a few out then I reseal the jars and sis's in the jar that I get into as often as certain other jars now this jar this is actually carrots that I get from Mother Earth products so we can grow carrots it's just getting a lot to be able to preserve so I like using the dehydrated carrots in soups and in casseroles stews obviously and then also in sauces especially my Italian sauce so when I'm working through a jar of carrots like this I go through them pretty quick so I usually don't bother vacuum-sealing it again but you can still do that I recommend if it's something you're not going to use as often to just always seal it back up again but if you're if you're it's a constant almost daily thing I wouldn't worry about it the stuff sometimes it can get a little stale if it's fully dried if it's fully dried it'll still be good it just might get a little stale but if you're gonna throw it into soups and stews anyway it's not gonna be an issue I'll go ahead and talk about a few more examples of things that you can vacuum seal before and then I'll show you how I vacuum seal and I'll be talking more about the brake bleeder and some of the complications that people have been having so I showed you the peppers herbs are something I dehydrate up quite a bit I and again I'm just showing you a few and all the herbs that you'll see are all something that comes from my garden so I have pansy flowers I have red clover I have calendula flowers dandelions rose petals mr. shim flowers and I also dehydrate up nasturtiums leaves and use them separately because they have their own benefits I have a video just about nasturtiums in fact most of these herbs that I'm showing you I have herb profiles on so what I'll do is I'll go ahead and link to my whole playlist on herbs so that you can go into that playlist and then you can scroll through there and see what herbs I've done profiles on so far if you're interested in learning more about them and how I use them like I said I'm not gonna be covering everything I have vacuum sealed in two jars because I have a lot more stuff back there like nuts and coconut and sunflower seeds and more right here I have some snow peas that I grew last year snow peas are a great thing to dehydrate up they they dehydrate up beautifully and they're actually pretty good right out of the jar I like to take my tomatoes and then process them up in the blender and then dehydrate them kind of like a fruit leather and then flake them up and I use this to thicken my sauces or even out to soup if I want to make more of a tomato soup now you can also powder it down instead of just flaking I just don't like taking the extra step but powdering it would mean it would take up even less room because you could put more in the jar then I've got here with the flavor another thing I have here are some organic figs that I got from Costco because I think it's gonna be a while before I see any of my own figs and I'm loving figs and so I was grateful that I bought a bunch stocked up on him and jarred them up because the last time I tried to get more they were gone I have some stinging nettle this is what I've got so far from this year I've got a lot more to cut and dehydrate I also will vacuum seal up my beans once they've dried on the vines or in the shells and then I usually like to lay them out after I take them out of the shells let him let him sit for a few more days just to make sure they're fully dry and then I'll put them in the jars and vacuum seal them in there another thing I do is vacuum sealed vanilla beans so as I'm I've been getting bind vanilla beans again I actually have a packed full jar from about five years ago when vanilla beans were at their lowest price and then I have another jar that looks a lot like this one you'll see spaces in there and that's the one from about five years ago that I'm working through and then this is the one I'm currently actually this is the one I'm working through forgive me this is 2015 now every time I take some out to make some more vanilla extract I always reseal the jar because it's such a long time in between but anyway I have a die set it backwards so I have a jar that looks a lot like this that I'm currently filling up for 2020 with fresh vanilla beans right here I talked about this in a more recent video on that is the ground beef that I dehydrated up now when you're doing something like ground beef you Brown it first you rinse it really well in very hot water then you dehydrate it up so I I actually forgot to do the rinsing step I can't believe it because I was just kind of so excited about dehydrating the ground beef that I forgot that step because this was my first time actually dehydrating ground beef and I wanted to say this I did actually try some in some sauce some Italian sauce I made the other day and boy it turned out really good I think I liked this better than any then using the ground beef from the canned ground beef or taking ground beef and browning it up fresh and putting it in I think I really liked this much better and how much less room it's going to take up and storage and not having to keep it in my freezer so I'm going to be doing more of this I'll just make sure to rinse it well next I did two jars like this just because I was trying it out I'm gonna go ahead and try to work through them quickly just in case because of the fact that I know is still in there because as I said in another video I've made beef jerky and if you look I don't know if you can see like right there is fat so a lot of my jerky still has fat on it after I marinate it and then I dry it usually this is something I'll do on my wood stove so it's it's one of those kind of things I wait until the winter time to do because the wood stove works really good doing it on top of the wood stove but then once it's fully dry completely drying I put it in the jar and vacuum seal and this one is from 2016 there's no mold in there at all I actually opened a jar the other or about a month ago that was from 2015 and it was a pint jar and they it was good it tasted as good as the day I put it in the jar and then here's another example of something you can vacuum seal this if you like to stock up like you know we do a lot of home-cooked meals or breakfast and we do oatmeal's pancakes biscuits and gravy and just all that kind of stuff I even have my own hot cereal recipe that I make from the grains that we save up but I do like to stock up on some organic cold cereals of different kinds and I like to keep different things on hand just so he doesn't get food fatigue this is one thing I've done several times as if I get a good deal on the box cereals that I like that I know he likes then I'll put them in jars like this in the half gallon jars usually one of those smaller boxes will just fit in a half gallon jar and then vacuum seal so again that's just a few examples so any of your herbs any of your green I've got so many videos on drying herbs I've been doing basically a weekly video trying to do a weekly video on what I'm drying this week what I'm dehydrating this week from my garden just to kind of give people ideas of some things that they might not think of such as grape leaves or strawberry leaves dandelion leaves plantain raspberry leaves blackberry leaves you name it there's just so many things that you might not even realize are edible and very healthy for you that you and dehydrate up and don't forget the tops on your other on your root vegetables such as beets and turnips carrots and and rutabaga you can dehydrate up those tops as well and then put them in a mixed greens blend like I do that you can use in almost everything here's another thing that's nice about about dehydrating when it comes to kale and things that might you know people may not like the flavor of because it's kind of strong or they just don't like the flavor period you can dehydrate those up and that will just really tone down the flavor but you can still preserve those nutrients and then add them to various dishes so like I do with my mixed greens it goes into just about everything I make for as a meal so the other night when I made that spaghetti sauce I put a big pinch of mixed greens into my sauce when I do a meatloaf I'll put mixed greens in there when I do any kind of casserole mix greens in there any kind of gravy any kind of sauce anything soups stews and so on and it's just a good way to get a lot of those nutrients in there okay then one more thing I do want to mention that is right here I have some smaller flour for making pasta and I did buy a bunch of it so I could really and I reserved this only for pasta making and now I want you to look in there in this particular one I put a paper towel I don't know why I put a paper towel because usually I'm using cloth but the reason I did this is that when you're trying to vacuum seal anything that's powdery like flour or cocoa powder or anything like that what happens is as you're sucking that air out of the jar is the powder wants to come up underneath the lid and even up into your vacuum sealer whatever you're using and so by putting something down there like a little piece of paper towel or napkin or a coffee filter or to be a little more frugal and something that you can use over and over again you can put a little square like this this is a little I would actually cut this in half and then lay it on top and kind of tuck it around the edges and that will prevent that powder from coming up under the lid and into your vacuum sealer and then also enable you to a better seal I realized that years ago when I was VAT I was buying a bunch of a cacao powder and wanting to seal it up into jars and I kept losing my seal or it wouldn't sealed at all because the the cocoa powder kept coming out and it took me a while the fund you figure out Oh put something on top of the powdery stuff so it doesn't do that if you're like me and you sew a lot and you have a lot of just plain cotton pieces or if you just have some old cotton sheets that are you know they're not good for anything wash them up really good then tear them into little squares and there's so many uses they have such as even covering your vinegars because I always use fabric when I'm covering my vinegars I mean coffee filters are a great idea but I like something that's reusable so I use the little fabric squares because I always have extras from my skirt and apron making alright so now the next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to show you how I do vacuum sealing into jars and I do not use a food saver anymore I gave up on that a year ago I I'm just fed up with them because every two years I've had to replace my food saver because something goes wrong and it just quits working and on top of that because I'm trying to get away from preserving my foods in plastic as much as I can I've switched to going jars even when I'm freezing because of that for almost four years now I've been using a break leader you can buy a brake bleeder for a fraction of the price of a food saver and for me at least it's lasted so far twice as long as any food saver I've had and but I did go ahead and buy a backup one just in case just to have it on hand because for that price you think of the cost of a food saver you could buy you know four or five break bleeders and have them on hand if you and not that you need that many but I always like having a backup the first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go ahead and vacuum seal this jar because it's not currently sealed because it's one that I'm working through so what you want to do is you want to make sure the the rim of your jar is clean and all around the lid is clean and one thing I don't always remember to say is yes you can recycle lids that you've already used for candy whether it be pressure canning or hot water bath counting to vacuum seal within fact usually the use lids tend to work better than the than the brand-new lids so just make sure it's good and clean and this jar obviously it's not going to be a problem as far as it being full especially when you're talking about let's say uh something like that that was actually really full and I'm surprised it is vacuum sealed as well as it did I always put the band's back on but it's sealed you do have to be careful though with some things if you get the jar too full and if it's pressing up against the lid it will prevent it from sealing so make sure you check that don't get it too full so what you do is you take your proper attachment now these are food savers I will go ahead and make sure i link to these individually they went out of stock for a while on amazon but they've just now been coming back in stock again at least the individual one so just make sure you get the proper one whether it be the wide mouth this is a white mouse sauce one main use or the regular mouth for your jars like this and make sure the little rubber gaskets in there slip that down over your jar make sure it's on there tight and then you're gonna take your brake bleeder now some people will take the FoodSaver hose that comes with their kit and use the actual thing that that snaps in here by jamming the two hoses together and not worrying about this tip but i just use this this is the tip that came with the break leader I put it into that hole but here's the trick since it doesn't snap in there like the FoodSaver tip does you have to kind of press down firmly you know it doesn't have to be super hard but firmly and hold it in place as you're pumping it up now if you have a food saver tip you don't have to hold that in place you just snap it in there and then you can let go and so what you're gonna do I want you to look my my brake bleeder is no longer calibrated at zero and there seems to be no way to get it back there normally I go up to either 400 or a little past 15 but now that it's a it's kind of off I go up to about closer to 500 on the or 20 and I was saying that was psi but now I'm not even sure if that's pounds per square inch I don't think that's how its measured out I don't really understand the number but the numbers on your brake bleeder should be the same no matter what brand you get if it's calibrated at zero like it should be then you should only have to pump it up to either 15 or 400 whichever number there's outside numbers and inside numbers but again for me I'm going because so it's so far off I'm actually going up another five points or a hundred points if you're going by the inside numbers so you just start hand pumping it like this until you get it to where you want it right here is normally where I don't know if you can see that but that's not really where I'd stop that census off a little bit and the more you do this the more you can kind of feel when it's to that point sometimes you'll even hear the lid ping not always but every once in a while the lid will be but I can tell by the feel will start getting a little more difficult to pump and there we go now the carrot jar is totally sealed and I you don't have to put the bands on there I just like to do that as a backup measure I want to show you something about the regular mouth just so you can be prepared for what happens to me and everyone else that has the same one so once you vacuum seal it now when you go to pull this off expect that to happen sometimes it will stay in place however it's not a big deal I don't know why it doesn't do it the wide mouth but it always does it with the regular mouth or almost always you just make sure that you put this back in place you'll see on the gasket one side is solid and one side is open the open side is that is a side that faces out so the solid side is actually going to point down into the top itself just put it in a place it goes back in there really easy and then you're ready to go it doesn't affect how well it seals it still works it just for whatever reason every time you pull it out it wants to come out of there so again if your brake bleeder ends up going off the zero just look at where it's at and then pump it that much farther last year fifteen or four hundred numbers that you have on your gauge and that should work and again you should be able to tell just by the feel the more you do it you might not even have to look at the numbers anymore because you'll just know by the way it feels--oh have a certain difficulty once it gets that point where it is sealed and then you're you're done now I've had some people say that I've had two different people actually saying that using their break leader they could only get it up to twelve and then they couldn't get it to pump up any further now I don't really know what the problem would be with that as long as it's sealed though it should be fine but I would recommend leaving that jar if it's only pumping up that far they even that jar out for a few days so that you'll remember to check it to make sure it stays sealed because if it isn't a really good seal you may lose that seal within within a few days if after a few days it's still sealed then I'm sure it's fine now another thing I was thinking of when it comes to the sealer that could possibly be a problem if you're pressing and holding it's if you kind of if you start to ease up and you're not continually pressing straight down into that food saver top and holding it firmly it will stop vacuuming the air out it'll just you'll just be vacuuming nothing really so you've you got to make sure you're pressing that down and holding it the whole time it's easy especially when your hands get tired to kind of find yourself sort of getting you know and you're doing a whole bunch of jars back-to-back like I've done and I found myself getting a little lazy and not realizing I'm like why is this going nowhere oh oh I got to press it down and then once I remembered oppressed me realize that I was easing up on that then I just pressed it down and continued to pump and then it was fine and told it went up to where it was supposed to go so that could be the problem just make sure that you're firmly holding that in place now before I finish up this video there's a couple things I want to make sure that I clear up this is only four fully dried things you cannot do this with foods or foods that are still wet and then put them on a shelf they will spoil they will mold and they will spoil they will have to they have to be fully drunk now you can vacuum seal some things into jars and then freeze them I've actually started doing that I've been freezing stuff in jars for a while now but a lot of things I was concerned about vacuum sealing first because I depending on what it is like you don't want to do that with a liquid I've only recently started getting brave enough to vacuum seal my produce into the jars you just want to make sure there's plenty of air space so I did that with the stinging nettle I packed it full knowing that there was a lot of airspace in there with that fresh stinging nettle then I vacuum sealed it and stuck it in the freezer leave some space at the top of the jar just in case it does expand so that it doesn't crack your jars but by vacuum sealing it and then freezing it then you don't have to worry about freezer burn at all because that's some of the problem with some of my things as it does they do get a little frosty in there usually I'm using them up within a year anyway and they don't get that freezer burn a taste to them at all but to prevent that altogether now from now on when I do my zucchini chunks my rhubarb my blueberry or any other vegetables I want to try out that way my snow piece I'm just gonna go ahead and vacuum seal and then freeze it and not worry about it because I realize now it's not going to be an issue and I'll do a separate video just on that to do an update on how I freeze in mason jars and I'll cover some of these other things make sure you understand you can't just cut up a bunch of Romney stick in a jar vacuum seal it and then go put it on a shelf that's not gonna work it does not replace canning for putting on a shelf it only if it's dried goods okay well I think I covered everything I meant to cover in this particular video but if you still have some questions go ahead and put them in the comment section down below and I will try to get to those and if I have a video I can link to where I talk about that and then I'll give you that alright well I hope you found this helpful thanks for watching take care Hank god bless you

Channel: Rain Country

Views: 51,183

Rating: 4.9693742 out of 5

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

Id: kYJ9TF3dCC4

Length: 24min 31sec (1471 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 10 2020