The Best Food Storage Spices and How to Store Them Right

are you missing something important in your food storage [Music] hi i'm jonathan and kyleene jones and we are the provident preppers recently i discovered that i was missing a few key spices and seasonings in my pantry i'm really glad that that happened while i still have the ability to run out to the store and get more sometimes basic food storage can be just a little bit bland until you add just the right herbs and seasonings and suddenly bland turns to amazing truly amazing in this video we will talk about some of my favorite spices that i use in our food storage we'll also talk about the shelf life of seasonings and spices and the best way to store them but best of all we are going to review a new little system that we have developed to ensure that i never get caught with my spices down again you may have all this food storage but are you missing some critical ingredients let's talk about what you may be missing when we're building a long-term survival food supply we talk a lot about calories and nutrition and trying to find that balance and sometimes i think we've forgotten to remember how important basic seasonings are number one they provide flavor and make the food palatable and they also actually increase the nutritional value of the food the right spices bring great pleasure to eating and food has the ability to bring us comfort during challenging times when everything is falling apart if you have the ability to sit around the table with your family and eat some good food that tastes delicious it can make all the difference in your emotional ability to handle things so let's talk about exactly what the basics are that you need for cooking and baking with basic dry goods the first is salt culinary herbs vinegar sweeteners and leavening agents if you have those you can do a lot with just basic dried goods spices have an expected shelf life and most of them are a short-term food storage item there is no exact date when on today your food goes bad it's a gradual process and spices won't actually go bad unless they're contaminated what you'll have is a gradual reduction in flavor and aroma and the reason why that's bad is because that's the whole reason why you use those spices in the first place make sure that we store spices in a cool dry dark location heat is going to degrade spices very quickly and they should be stored in an airtight container to protect them from environmental moisture and oxygen believe it or not the best way to store your seasonings is in the unopened container your container will have a factory seal on it that has already put it in a position where it's going to stay on that shelf and be good for quite a long time if you are purchasing bulk spices for storage make sure that you package them in an airtight container if they are low in moisture and low in oil which most spices are i would use an oxygen absorber if i'm packaging them myself glass jars are ideal and will give you the longest shelf life but the plastic jars they still do a really good job and they are really convenient in the original packaging i personally always date my containers so i know exactly how long they have been on the shelf as with all of our food storage be aware of warning signs that say maybe it's time to toss this in this case this was a can of rice that we were gifted when that was first packaged it was white rice now it's yellow rice and there are some other changes so this became chicken bait the same thing applies to your spices watch for changes in appearance or texture if there's some mold in it for some reason or there's an off order or taste it's probably just best to pitch it and get something new and this is a really good reason why we should rotate everything rotation is the best way to make sure that you have the highest nutrient content and the freshest food that you can pure forms of salt have a pretty much indefinite shelf life they can go for a long time now they are hygroscopic which means they do want to draw moisture the paper containers are probably not the best way to store them but they do have a very long shelf life but if you're storing the original paper containers inside of the bucket we're just fine now leafy herbs have about an eight to ten year shelf life they will be optimal within the first two or three years and then they gradually lose flavor and aroma over time but if you store them in a cool dry location in an airtight container you can get about eight to ten years where you still have some pretty good potency whole spices like the whole peppercorn will store longer than ground peppercorn and the same thing applies for wheat versus flour the whole grain or the whole spice usually stores longer however you also need to think about the fact that if i'm using this bucket of spices am i going to have the ability to grind this pepper in our spice bucket i included ground pepper just because i want to make sure that it's ready to go when i need it vinegar has an indefinite shelf life pretty much it'll stay on your shelf and be good forever i include it in our spice bucket because there are so many recipes that vinegar makes all the difference both in my bean recipes or in some of the dressings that i would put on top of the pasta or in some of my salads sweeteners are also important consideration when you talk about spices my cuban black beans just wouldn't be the same if they didn't have a little bit of honey in them and same thing with some of my dressings real maple syrup white sugar and honey pretty much have an indefinite shelf life and will last a really long time in storage over time your honey may crystallize but all you really need to do is warm it back up and it will go back to its original form leavening agents is another really important thing to store baking soda has an indefinite shelf life and pretty much it will last forever however baking powder really you're pushing it at about eight years and yeast if you store it in the freezer will store indefinitely this is what happens with old baking powder the sample that you see on the left is 14 years old and the one on the right is brand new the difference in the power of leavening is incredible yes the 14 year old baking powder will still leaven somewhat but you're going to need a lot more and it's just not going to be as effective you really need to rotate your baking powder frequently to test something to see whether or not it still has leavening power just take some warm water and stir it in and you should get a good reaction these are my food storage spice buckets and i think they're really important to make sure that i don't find myself without some important basic ingredients when i was packaging and working and trying to design what i wanted in there jonathan was really funny because he's like i've been looking at those and i want to play tetris with them he didn't like the way that i was trying to package them all in all these different odd shapes and sizes in a way it's kind of hard to get them all to fit in without wasting space but i still think there's enough value in leaving them in the original containers that that's what i want to do these spice buckets we decided to use red because they are going to be mixed in with a whole bunch of white buckets and these are short-term storage and they will need to be rotated more frequently than the other buckets but they will be stored with a regular long-term food supply one of the things that i liked about these buckets is that they are portable so i can just take one of these buckets no matter where i'm going and i know that i've got everything that i need to create good meals using basic food storage the buckets create a really nice protective environment it protects them from the moisture from rodents from anything that could try and get into them and they're fairly pilfer resistant so that when i run out of something and i want to run to the store room and take a spice i actually have to open the lid to this bucket and pull it out which the plan is that if i need to do that i will just take everything out of this bucket and put it on our normal pantry shelves and then we will refill that bucket things that we felt were really important to include were the basic salts and the reason why is because i can't make delicious bread for these cute little kids unless i have wheat salt and water we also included basic disposable salt and pepper shakers just for use at the table and now seasoned salts they are magic there are many different flavors to meet whatever your preference is and we have included all of these in some of the different buckets season salt has the incredible ability to add flavoring to any kind of basics whether it's vegetables from the garden including zucchini or this pot of beans all you have to do is cook the beans until they're tender and then add whatever variety of seasoned salt you want and you have some delicious beans they are absolutely amazing i store flavored soup bases in the buckets and quite frankly normally i don't use them because of the high level of msg i make my own bone broth however if i am using these spice buckets there is a good chance that my life isn't going to be quite what it is right now and i might not be in a position to make my basic chicken and vegetable stocks and white chicken chili just isn't the same without it the original recipe for this chili has chicken bouillon in it and quite frankly it is delicious with chicken bullion in place of the stock when you look at this recipe you can see that the majority of these items while i do use the fresh onion and the fresh garlic and the green can of green chilies you can use dried versions of each of those and still come up with a finished product that is almost as good as the one with all the fresh ingredients i don't use lemon pepper on very many things but there are a few things that just aren't okay without it and one of those is swiss chard if you haven't tried lemon pepper on chard you are really missing out in a survival scenario one of the things that we would grow a lot of is swiss chard and the reason why is because it's very prolific in a four by four area we can grow plenty of swiss chard for our family to eat almost every night it's also good with balsamic vinegar on it but it's just nowhere near as good as lemon pepper swiss chard would provide both vitamin a and vitamin c which would be missing from your dry good food supply and a bed of swiss chard starts to produce very early in the spring continues throughout the summer and will go into the fall until it has a hard frost so you've got a really long growing season on it minced dried onions is a basic i just wouldn't want to live without it has a long shelf life almost every day in my kitchen you will find me sauteing onions sauteed onions are a wonderful aromatic that does all kinds of fabulous things to recipes but if i can't have my sauteed onions i definitely want to have my dried minced onions and the same thing goes for garlic i store granulated garlic because powdered garlic tends to go bitter faster than the granulated and i'm able to use granulated more like what i would use the fresh garlic you could also store garlic salt and that would work really well the reason why i don't store the garlic salt in these buckets is because i want to control the amount of garlic versus the amount of salt that i put in a recipe this is a super simple recipe where it just takes a few spices just some olive oil garlic red pepper flakes and parsley to make a really tasty pasta dish chili powder and cumin are basic necessities for many of my bean recipes like this chubby's copycat bean recipe that it's a foundational recipe in our house sometimes i use bacon and sometimes i don't quite frankly it's really good even without the bacon usually i'm using fresh garlic and onions and then a can of green chilies i could use all dried if i needed to and i have done that before but the chili powder and the cumin are what makes these beans taste spectacular soy sauce is a staple in our home we love it with all kinds of things including the fried rice this is our fried rice friday that we always have our fried rice for breakfast but you can also have it for lunch or dinner and we make enough so that we have it for lunch and dinner don't judge us don't judge us fried rice friday for breakfast i know it sounds so weird but the kids absolutely love having fried rice for breakfast and that's john's thing it's waffle wednesday and fried rice friday and that allows me to sneak some vegetables into their diet you can see in the recipes that we have onions and vegetables and these onions can be fresh they can be dehydrated and the same with the vegetables you can use frozen you can use dried you can use garden fresh it's all very flexible and you can use whatever you have on hand when i decided to create these spice buckets the first thing i did was go and visit my local dollar store to pick up some of the dollar spices that they have there there are some spices that i have a certain place that i buy them and there's just no substitution for them like my creole seasoning there is no substitution for that i want to make sure that i have that and my johnny seasoning from costco but the dollar store spices can fill in a lot of those other gaps and this is what the shelf looked like when i arrived there not after i left it looked like other people had the same idea about stocking up on spices for their food storage i decided that these spice buckets would give me the opportunity to have three strikes and then i'm out each bucket is designed to last for about four months which means i need three to have a year's supply of the spices and seasonings that i need for my family each one of the buckets is a little bit unique the objective is to open one of these buckets when i start to run short on spices in my pantry and just take everything out and put it on the shelf in my pantry and then replace the items in this bucket and return it to my long-term food supply my personal goal is not to pill for anything out of these buckets because if i do then i'm going to be short on something obviously because i am worried about that you can see that i have a history we encourage you to spice up your basic food storage this is something that's often overlooked but these spices can make all the difference in making these meals that are healthy nutritious and delicious go to the provident prepper and visit the post that this video was based on make food storage meals amazing include a spice bucket in your storage in that post we have included all of the recipes along with some really valuable information that will help you as you design your spice bucket one of the questions that we are frequently asked is the difference between short-term and long-term food storage there is a video on youtube short or long-term food storage and it kind of walks you through the process so that you can understand what short-term is what long-term is which one you need or why you might actually want both remember that spices are a short-term food storage item but they are a very valuable asset in your long-term food supply another great video is build your survival food supply this video starts with the basics and helps you decide how you will build your survival food supply check them out now it's time for you to inventory your family's food supply what herbs spices or seasonings are you missing to make your family's favorite meals the next time you go to the grocery store pick up those spices and put them in your pantry you may want to devise some system like what we have to ensure that you will never be without the spices that you love and now for the question of the day which spice or herb or seasoning would you simply not want to be without comment below and thanks for being part of the solution [Music]

Channel: The Provident Prepper

Views: 37,743

Rating: 4.9437227 out of 5

Keywords: TEOTWAWKI, Survival Spices, Food Storage Seasonings, SHTF, Prepper, The Provident Prepper, Prepping, Food Storage, Long Term Food Storage, Short Term Food Storage, Spice Bucket, Dry Goods Seasoning

Id: AGA7vXMZSJ8

Length: 17min 0sec (1020 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 09 2020