The Best Long Term Food Storage Containers for Your Prepper Pantry - Buckets, Mylar Bags, and More!

today i want to share with you a selection of long-term food storage containers for your prepper pantry [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 the first thing i want to say is that this is not a sponsored post these are all items that i've purchased and that i use and that i think are very helpful when it comes to long-term food storage and so i wanted to share these options with you as well and the first long-term food storage container that i want to talk to you about are buckets now what i'm showing here is a five gallon bucket and these are often the most common that you'll see when people are storing their food for long-term purposes now when you're shopping for buckets whether you're actually going to be able to purchase them new at a store like a hardware store like a lowe's or at home depot or maybe one of the big box stores there are certain things that you're going to want to be looking for but what you're going to want to be looking for also pertains to if you are trying to either find buckets for free or maybe a very reduced price from a bakery or some other food service industry like that now buckets are often sold in different combinations sometimes you can buy just the bucket other times you can buy the bucket with the traditional snap-on lid that you need to use a special tool to help you loosen the lid each time you want to open the bucket another option is you can buy the bucket just as is and then you can buy what's known as a gamma lid and i really like these lids because all you need to do is screw them on and off yet they are considered to be airtight now getting back to just the bucket when i'm shopping for buckets there's a number of things that i like to look for and some of them are right here on the front first and foremost if you're going to be using your bucket to put food in here directly you want to make sure that it's food grade next you want to look for buckets that are heavy duty and the reason is depending on where you're going to be storing your food you want to do everything in your power to make that food or store that food in something that is rodent-proof now plastic buckets are not 100 rodent-proof because there have been situations where people have shared that rodents were able to chew right through the bucket but the more heavy duty the bucket is the better chance you have of rodent-proofing your food next i like to look for buckets that are bpa-free and that bpa is basically a chemical that scientists have found that's not that great for us and so now a lot of plastics are made with what's referred to as being bpa-free next if it's not on the front of the bucket i like to look on the bottom and see where the bucket was made and for me living in the united states i like to look for a bucket that says made in the united states and this one is now when it comes to storing food directly in this bucket the first thing that i like to do is wash it with hot soapy water and then wipe it down with white vinegar and i want to let it dry completely but i want it to be nice and clean and the reason i like to wipe it down with white vinegar is that once we wipe it down and it dries out we may not smell anything but any residual odor from the white vinegar is very unappealing to bugs so i don't know if it's a hundred percent perfect solution but i like to do that uh just as a little bit of an extra precaution to discouraging bugs now the gamma lid comes in two parts and just like with the bucket i like to wash this with warm soapy water wipe it down with some white vinegar and make sure that everything is thoroughly dry and again like the bucket i also like to look for a gamma lid that is made in the usa if you're looking for gamma lids to use to seal your buckets and to help make them as airtight as possible there's two things that are very important that you look at when you're looking at the type of lid that you're going to purchase and this is especially important if you're looking for getting something like this for free as i had mentioned earlier from a bakery or a reduced price if they're using gamma lids you do want to inspect the lids to make sure that they're in good condition and for the first part which we're i'm going to show you how to put this onto the bucket but for the first part what you want to do you want to look into your ring and make sure that the gasket is there because that's the first stage of helping to make your five gallon bucket airtight or whatever size bucket you have next you want to look at your lid and you want to make sure that there is a gasket on the lid as well now if you're buying this new what you'll want to look for on the label is one that says a g2 or a gamma two and that indicates that there are the two gaskets because it's the two gaskets together that help make your five gallon bucket or whatever size bucket you're using as air tight as possible if you are getting these used obviously you won't have this label here and you won't know exactly what the condition is or the state of the bucket uh prior to your obtaining it but you can check to see if you've got two gaskets and then you'll know that your bucket will be as airtight as possible one other thing i want to mention about these buckets is that they'll often come in different colors as will the ring and the lids so if you like the idea of having all different colors so that you can immediately by color identify what you have in your bucket that's certainly an option i generally just use white buckets with white lids and then i label my bucket on the outside now if you use the traditional snap-on lid that comes with your bucket or that you decided to buy separately as the name implies you'll just snap that on and then you'll just want to make sure that you have a bucket lid opener tool to remove that snap-on lid every time you want to open your bucket now the gamma lids are a little more expensive but i really like working with them because as i'll show you once we assemble this all you need to do is unscrew it to open it and i find that a little easier but what i have found that some people have a challenge with is snapping on this ring which then is what has the grooves in it that allows you to unscrew and unscrew this lid and they will just tell you in the instructions just snap it on but this is very difficult to do and i've seen some very funny videos of people standing on it and trying to get it to get it to snap onto their bucket and they can't figure out for the life of them why it won't snap on and it is a challenge but there is an easy way to do it what you're going to need is a rubber mallet because you don't want to damage your ring and i'm going to put this down on the floor and i'm going to show you how to do this it does take a little elbow grease so don't be afraid to give it a really good whack and when you whack one side down the other side will come up like this but don't worry because we're going to work our way all around this lid and or this ring we're going to work our way all around and we're going to get it snapped into place beautifully now that your ring is on nice and securely you can take your lid and just settle it in nicely and then screw it down and you want to make it as tight as you can and there you go you've got your airtight bucket what to store in here and how to store it in here generally people will store dry goods in here so what that what might that be like beans or white rice or whole grains things like that also sugar and salt there's various type of dry goods that you can store in these buckets and basically what it comes down to is how do you want to store your dry goods in your bucket if you're going to put your food directly in here and you're going to want to leave this undisturbed for a while for long-term storage you're first going to want to make sure that what you're storing in here does store well over the long term the most important thing is that the dry goods that you store in here you really want to be dry now yes you can store whole grain flours in here however once you take whole grains and mill them into whole grain flours their shelf life even when they're well protected in some type of long-term storage container they don't store well for the long term generally once whole grain flours are milled because of their oil content they tend to have a shelf life anywhere from six months to one year so the better option is to store your grain in its whole form store your whole grains in their whole form and then when you're ready to bake with your whole grains then you can go ahead and grind them in your grain grinder and i realize not everyone may have a grain grinder so i've got an option for what to do in that case but if you have a grain grinder storing your grain whole is your best option for extending its shelf life and i'm very happy i use a mock mill and it's a very affordable grain grinder it is an electric stone ground grain grinder and if that's something that you're interested in be sure to check the description under this video because the peep the folks at macmill who are just so wonderful gave me a coupon code for my viewers so with a discount off of the mock mill so that's helpful with the price now you'll want to fill your bucket as high as you can with your dry goods and then if you want to add oxygen absorbers you'll need 2000 cc i think the cc is cubic centimeters but you'll want 2000 cc of oxygen absorbers so if you have 500 cc oxygen absorbers you'll want to put four of them into a five gallon bucket but keep in mind you cannot use oxygen oxygen absorbers with all types of food and i have a video where i show you the difference between oxygen absorbers and silica gel packs and when to use one or the other but the most important thing i believe in that video and i'll link to it in the description and in the eye cards the most important thing is to know what foods that you cannot store with an oxygen absorber what you need to know is that you can only use oxygen absorbers for very dry foods they have to have 10 or less of moisture and they also need to not be oily foods so you would not want to put all of your whole grain flour in here which is considered an oily food and then put in oxygen absorbers and why because if you try to store oily or moist foods with oxygen absorbers you create an environment that may be very hospitable to botulism poisoning so obviously you want to be very careful about that next if you have your dry food in here and it's filled to the top and you've got your 2000 cc of oxygen absorbers in here and then you put your airtight lid on you basically want to put that away for long-term food storage and the reason is if it's a bucket that you're going to be going into on a regular basis every time you open your lid you expose your oxygen absorbers to more oxygen and they absorb oxygen pretty quickly so they're going to start to degrade each time you open your bucket so what are some other options for storing food in your bucket if you want to go into it on a somewhat regular basis well i have to tell you about using mylar bags in your bucket and i thought this was a very clever idea that was shared by lisa sutton over on the youtube channel sutton's days and what she likes to do and this can be a very good idea for people who have smaller families is she'll go ahead and take her dry goods whatever they may be whatever can be stored appropriately with an oxygen absorber and she'll put it into a mylar bag she'll put in her oxygen absorber she'll seal her mylar bag and then she'll add that to her bucket and then she'll put in as many sealed mylar bags as she can fit and then when she needs rice or beans or whatever the case may be she'll just open her bucket and pull out one of the mylar bags and open it and transfer it to her working pantry which she's using so she's not worried anymore that the oxygen absorber is being exposed to oxygen and her dry goods are being exposed to oxygen because she's going to be using them up and this way even though you've opened your bucket all of your other packages are safe and sound all your other mylar bag packages because they've not been exposed to oxygen because they're sealed now you might be saying is that a little overkill because you've got the bucket and the mylar bags why can't i just take the mylar bag once i fill it and put that on my shelf and that's an excellent idea and it's definitely something that you can think about but also when we talked about rodents that's something to think about depending on where you're storing your food and where you live and the weather conditions who knows all the different variables that if you just have a mylar bag this is unlikely to be rodent proof now when you shop for milder bags and we'll talk a bit a little bit more about mylar bags in the beginning you want to make sure that you have heavy duty mylar bags because some of them can be very thin and when you hold them up to the light you can see right through them you don't want anything like that but they're not rodent proof so by putting them into the bucket and again yes i know some have said that the buckets are not rodent-proof either however they do give an extra level of protection versus just storing something in a mylar bag so i thought that was a very clever idea for putting individual portions into your bucket and then extending the life of everything that's in here and this is a one gallon mylar bag you can put about five pounds of dry goods in here and putting that into your bucket and then extending the life of all of the other packages with the oxygen absorbers another option if you have a big family and you think that once when once you open your bucket you're going to use everything that's in it you can also line your bucket with a mylar bag and put in the oxygen absorbers and then you know it'll become a very tight seal in the mylar bag and then put this and then have that you know in the bucket so that again you're just giving yourself another layer of protection against rodents and then when you go to open the bucket you can open the whole bag but you know you'll be transferring that to your working pantry and most likely be using it you know in a relatively short time now something that you can do with your whole grain flowers yes you can certainly put fill this bucket with the whole grain flour if you think you're going to be using it on a somewhat regular basis but if you want to try to extend the life of your whole grain flower you can transfer it maybe in five pound sizes or less into ziploc bags and they're just going to be your plain supermarket ziploc bags you're not going to be using the mylar bags or oxygen absorbers or anything like that but what you can do is you can use a silica gel pack and that's something that as i explained in my previous video it's just something that's going to absorb moisture because it's really oxygen and moisture are the enemies of whole grain flowers but because they're oily you can't use an oxygen or an oily food you can't use oxygen absorbers but you can use silica gel packs so you could put your whole grain flower in individual ziploc bags with a an appropriate size silica gel pack and then you could pack those into your buckets and you could also something that i like to do which we'll talk about in a minute is often in my buckets i'll put some bay leaves and bugs don't like the smell of bay leaves so although it doesn't kill them it discourages them so you could put some bay leaves in the bottom and then you could put your plastic ziploc bags that have your whole grain flour in them with a silica gel pack to keep moisture at bay best you can and then all you can do you know put your lid on and then when you want to uh take uh you're ready to bake with your whole grain flour you just have to take out one bag and that way you're not exposing all of the whole grain flour to moisture and to oxygen best that you can you know the the ziploc bags are not perfect but again you don't necessarily want them to be perfect because you are dealing with an oily food and you want to keep any botulism potential at bay now what if you want to store your foods loosely in here and you want to keep bugs at bay and or you want to keep any eggs in the food from hatching what do you do now some people who have the room will freeze all of their grain uh or their beans or their rice whatever the case may be and then make sure that it's nice and dry and then they'll go ahead and put it into their storage buckets and freezing the grain or so on and so forth for 14 days will hopefully guarantee that it has killed it may not be a hundred percent perfect but for the most part it it's a fairly good measure for making sure that all of those eggs are killed and that they won't hatch and become bugs but what if you don't have the freezer space to do that what are some of some other options well as i said as i said earlier i like to use bay leaves and if i'm going to put food directly in here i'll usually just put some bay leaves throughout now as i said it doesn't kill bugs it just works as a deterrent in order to make sure that the bugs die you need to use something called diatomaceous earth and that's here this oops this is my bag of bay leaves but this is my diatomaceous earth i prefer to just use this in places like my garden like right around maybe the rim of my house to keep bugs at bay but a lot of people like to mix the diatomaceous earth and you need to make sure that you're using food-safe diatomaceous earth they like to mix this into whatever dry goods they're storing so if you're if this is a white powder i do recommend that you be careful if you're using it and don't have any kids around when you're using it i would recommend maybe putting a little mask on and maybe some goggles because you don't want to inhale this because scientists have found that it can really irritate the esophagus and the linings of our lungs but it works very well at killing bugs so you could put maybe a quarter of your dry goods in put some diatomaceous earth in put another layer of your dry goods put the diatomaceous earth in maybe put your lid on at that point maybe roll your bucket around a little to really get that diatomaceous earth mixed through and then just continue layering diatomaceous earth dry good diatomaceous earth dry good for maybe about a cups worth of diatomaceous earth in a five gallon bucket and that will definitely keep bugs at bay but as i said i like to just use bay leaves i know they say it's food safe but i am just not comfortable using diatomaceous earth um now you may be wondering what is diatomaceous earth actually they're just little creatures ancient creatures that were called diatoms that have fossilized and that are now you know dug up and turned into this earth this diatomaceous earth that dries out the exoskeleton well first it kind of it's a little scratchy and so it'll scratch the exoskeleton of the bug and then that's very irritating to them and then it'll dry out their exoskeleton and they'll die so that's how what it is and how it works but i am just so old-fashioned and i'll just buy a big bag of bulk bay leaves like this they're not of 100 like the same quality uh they're they're nice bay leaves and they have a wonderful fragrance to them but they're pretty uh they're sort of on the dried outside and they're relatively reasonably priced as opposed to the little jar you may buy at the grocery store but they've got a quite a significant fragrance and so i found that i've had a lot of success using those are they perfect no but the better that i've got at learning how to store my food the less problem that i've had with bugs the one time that i did have an infestation of weevils was with pasta and i really hadn't stored it correctly because you know pasta just comes in those boxes and there's a lot of air that can get in and whatnot and i really hadn't stored that correctly now yes they may have just been the eggs that then eventually hatched and there really isn't a lot you can do about that but ever since then i have been very very conscious and careful as to how i store my food i use a lot of bay leaves and i find that i'm very successful at keeping bugs at bay now we briefly touched on mylar bags when we were talking about those buckets the five gallon food storage buckets but i want to spend a little more time telling you about mylar bags and how useful they can be for long-term food storage now i'm going to have another video where i show you how to actually seal this and what exactly it looks like after you've sealed it with an oxygen absorber it'll eventually be a little loose and then the next day it's going to be hard like a brick when your oxygen after your oxygen absorber has done its job but in any event as i said mylar bags come in all different sizes and this is a one gallon mylar bag and as i said it can hold about five pounds of dry goods maybe like about five pounds of rice for example and all you'll do is put your dry goods in here put in your oxygen absorber now you're not going to be using any kind of food saver device nothing like that you're just going to go ahead put your dry good in put your oxygen absorber in you want to have everything ready depending on how many bags you're sealing because as i mentioned earlier your oxygen absorbers are starting to absorb oxygen so you want to work relatively quickly so in go the dry goods in go your oxygen absorber and then you're going to go ahead and just seal this and you can seal a mylar bag with an iron just a simple home iron and you can also if you have one of those flat iron tools that ladies use on their hair that can work well to seal your mylar bag and then there's also a specific tool made for sealing them but there are other home version options for sealing your mylar bag and there's a fella on youtube i'm oh i'm not sure what the name of his channel is but uh i'll definitely look it up and list it for you but he has a trick that i think is very good he seals his mylar bag basically three quarters of the way and then he makes sure did i put my oxygen absorber in and then oh okay i put my ox it's already in there it's not there so i know it's in there and then he finishes sealing it and i thought that was kind of clever because how many times i know i've done this that i've sealed things and then i'm like oh my gosh i didn't put in what i needed to but anyways i just thought that was a little interesting tip to share then once your mylar bag is sealed then yes you have your options you can just put it right into your extended pantry you know or your prepper pantry you know where you store your extra food your backup food and then when you're ready to use this there's a little notch right here and now keep in mind you've sealed it down here and then there's a little notch here which is where if you have a scissors yes you can certainly cut it across but this is nice in emergencies because you can just rip rip it right open from where this notch is now one thing i want to mention is that when you are shopping for mylar bags you want to make sure that you get something that's heavy duty and that when you hold it up to the light you don't see any light coming through you don't see any little holes and generally if you're ordering them online they'll say heavy duty mylar bag or they might say five milliliter meaning the thickness of the bag something along those lines but you want to make sure that you're getting heavy duty mylar bags because they're the ones that are going to give you the true airtight storage seal and again if you're using these for an airtight seal and you are putting in an oxygen absorber you want to make sure that you are using foods to which you are that are approved to be sealed in a mylar bag with an oxygen absorber and i'll have a lot of information about this over on my website so if you check the description underneath this video you'll see something that'll say blog post and there'll be a link there if you click on that link that'll take you over to my website and i'll have a lot of information over there of various authoritative resources on what can be stored in mylar bags what can be stored with an oxygen absorber and so on and so forth now i also want to mention these smaller mylar bags as i said mylar bags come in all kinds of sizes but these are especially handy little mylar bags and they have like the little ziploc opener here so what happens is when you use these type of little bags and these can be very handy not just necessarily for long-term food storage but for things that you want to uh seal maybe if you're going camping or if you need to protect something uh from water uh maybe some uh medical type uh things you know minor medical things like band-aids and whatnot but you can go ahead and put your items in here you can again you want to make sure everything's safe to be used with an oxygen absorber then on with these they're open on top you're going to seal them up here and then like the larger bag they have the notch here and then you can rip that open and then you have something that has this resealable ziploc now if you had an oxygen absorber in here this zip block is not going to give it the same airtight seal that it would when it was originally sealed so you're not necessarily preserving or extending the life of what's in here once you've opened it but this can just be a very handy way to store things that you may need to be accessing regularly now some other great options for storing food long term and short term is glass if you're using the five gallon buckets or mylar bags once you remove food from those you may want to transfer them to something that has an airtight seal but that is smaller and is glass and something that you can use in your working pantry that you're accessing regularly so what i've got here are just sort of these snap lock type containers that are glass on the bottom and then the lid on top is plastic and these are all airtight they're made by different brands this brand is called glass lock see that makes a pretty a pretty tight seal but it's got the gasket here and when you when you put it down onto the glass it makes a nice tight airtight seal as i said this is by glass lock and another brand that you may find and this is often at the big box stores snapware and it's the same concept again it just snaps down it has a gasket here and it makes a nice airtight seal to keep whatever you're putting in here nice and fresh and these type containers come in all different sizes they come in round square rectangular i really like the square and the rectangular only because i find them easier to store but it's really personal preference and they come in large and small quite a variety and these i find excellent not only for storing in the refrigerator with leftovers or whatever the case may be when i transfer things from my extended or prepper pantry i like to put things in here because it does give an airtight seal and hopefully extends the life of whatever i've got stored in here longer than if it was exposed to air now is all the oxygen removed no it's not like you're using these with a oxygen absorber and you may not want to because what you may be storing in here would be a food you know like a whole grain flour or nuts or dried fruit or jerky these are things that cannot be stored with oxygen absorbers but what you are trying to do is just keep out additional air that may cause the food to degrade next i really like canning jars now the lid that i have on here is the new lid that's made by the ball canning company and it says on the top leak proof and if you go to their website and again i'll link to their website over on my website they claim that these lids are also airtight versus and i've got one of the other ones over here these are the typical white storage lids that are sold to be used on canning jars after you remove if you're a home canner and you've canned something and then you've removed your canning lid when you go to store it in the refrigerator you use one of these storage lids but these have never been considered to be leak-proof or air-tight so they came out with these gray ones that are leak proof and airtight so this would make another wonderful storage vessel again you could use this in your long-term food storage prepper pantry or you could use it the way you use these where you're transferring some food out of your extended pantry so also known as your prepper pantry i use both terms out of your extended pantry into your working pantry and again because you're limiting its exposure to air that hopefully you can extend the life of whatever it is you're now storing in your working pantry but because this is in your working pantry chances are you're going to be using this over a period of two to three months or whatever the case may be maybe six months at the most so it's going to stay relatively fresh and with any assistance with like an airtight lid all the better next i want to talk about these handheld foodsaver devices and how they can help extend the life of whatever food you might be storing in jars now i'll put links below uh to where you can find these and all of the things i've been talking about today but definitely look in your big box stores for all of this stuff and the hardware stores for the five gallon buckets because you really want to shop and find out where you can get the best price for these things because there can be some real variables from high to low uh regarding all of these things so get look for the best buy that you can get now this is the older food handheld foodsaver device and this little charging cord pulls right out and when you want to charge it you just keep it plugged in and you plug this into the wall and when you're not charging it then you just put your charger aside this doesn't you can't stand this up or anything like this it has to lie down flatly now this is the newer version of the handheld food saver this is much smaller and it's got a little docking station and the cord stays a perm permanently attached to the little docking station and then you go ahead and plug it in when it needs to be charged now both of these will work with the attachments the jar attachments that you will need in order to use these to seal your jars and both of these will work with the foodsaver bags that are specifically made with the little circle here for using with these handheld devices and they'll suck out all the air of whatever you've gotten here and then when you want to open it again it's very much like your grocery store ziploc bag it has a zip lock here on the top which you would seal up before you suck all the air out and then when you're ready to open it you just open it like a typical ziploc bag now when it comes to your jar adapters you're going to have a wide mouth jar adapter and a regular mouth jar adapter now for demonstration purposes i'm going to be using a wide mouth canning jar and you're going to need a wide mouth canning lid now you don't need the band or the ring as it's called the canning band or the ring you just need the canning lid now we're going to pretend that this is filled with the food that we want to store and then you're going to go ahead and you're going to put your canning lid on and then you're going to get your canning or your wide mouth jar adapter since we're using a wide mouth canning jar and you're just going to give this a push down it's very simple and that it's securely on first we'll use the handheld the older model of the handheld foodsaver and if this if you have this model you're going to see there's a hole on the bottom of the little device and then there's a hole on the top of the jar adapter what you're going to do is take this hole and line it up with this hole and then you're just going to press the button and start extracting the air now when you do this at home you'll hear a little change in the sound to know that chances are it's sucked out most of the uh air in the jar and this will also have a little bit of a firm grip to your jar adapter and then you'll have to loosen it you'll hear that and then all you do is pull off your jar adapter and now your lid should be nicely sealed now this makes a very tight seal and it's very difficult to pull this off manually so i'm just going to use the dull edge of a or the flat edge of a what's called can opener and we're going to open it and you'll probably hear a whoosh good seal now we're going to repeat the same process but this time we're going to use the newer handheld foodsaver device so again you're going to take your canning ring you're going to put your jar adapter on and there is a little bit of a difference when using this you need to know that yes there is a hole here and yes there is a hole here but something that i found was when i purchased this and i was trying to do this i could not get this to seal for the life of me so i went on the internet and i did a little research and i found a wonderful youtube channel by a great gal and you have to forgive me i don't know her first name but the name of her channel is the purposeful pantry and she went through the same thing that i did and little by little through trial and error she figured out what the trick was this little piece here detaches and you need to remove it so once you get that pulled off you're going to notice that on this device is a little a little nub that sticks out just a little tiny black tube and it's just a hard little uh piece of plastic but it is a little tube next you need to take this little tube this little nub and you need to put it over the hole in on your jar adapter and it's not going to push in or or feel snug or anything you'll see what i'm showing you it just just sits on top of there this one confused me a little but it works so here we go we're just going to put that right down on there we're going to hold it in place and then we're going to press the top button here it's much quieter than the older handheld foodsaver and again you may hear like a little difference in sound and then you're just going to pull this off and then you're going to remove your wide mouth jar adapter and again you've got a nice tight seal i'll use the flat edge of this can opener and we'll open it and we'll listen for the whoosh ah see so i've made a nice seal so whichever one you have both of them can work for for sealing your canning jars nicely and securely now i also want to mention if you want a non-electrical source for sealing your jars with an airtight seal there's a device called a break bleeder and those of you who know heidi my friend over at rain country homestead has videos on where she shows you to use this manual device using the jar adapters and attaching the brake bleeder uh to uh your jar and extracting out uh the air from it uh so i'll be sure to link to that video i think she may even have a playlist because she uses the brake pleater a lot but if you're worried about you know not having electricity that is definitely something to have as a backup another tool in essence for using for long-term food storage is a foodsaver machine and these come in a variety of models and sizes uh really when you're at a big box store just take a look uh in the aisle they're pretty much sold at all of them and you can find a model that'll fit your needs perfectly but basically uh what it does is it sucks the air out of a bag to give a nice airtight seal and generally when you buy it it does come with a bit of a starter kit of some different bags you'll put this roll of plastic basically into the machine and this particular one isn't cut for any particular size you can make this as big or as small as you want and you'll just put your food in and you'll cut the bag to the size that you want and the machine kind of does all of this for you and that's my ice maker in my refrigerator and it'll extract out the air and you'll have a nice airtight seal and so it's great for long-term food storage it's also very good for things that you want to store in your freezer like meats to prevent freezer burn and you know when i talk about long-term food storage i'm really kind of for the most part focusing on what i refer to as the extended pantry or the prepper pantry but generally when i use the the broad term pantry i'm talking about the four corners what i call the four corners pantry and that's your main working pantry in your kitchen that you access on a regular basis could be a closet could be a cupboard you know whatever you have and then your refrigerator and then your freezer and then your extended pantry where you store your backup food your emergency supplies whatever you want to refer to them as and those are the foods that you uh stock up on you know when they're on sale or whatever the case may be and when the food in your working pantry runs low you then have your extended pantry to basically go shopping in and then you refurbish your working or you refurbish your working uh pantry uh with whatever you need and then on your next shopping trip you buy those things you need to restock your uh extended pantry i have a little ebook it's free and it's all about this it's all about the traditional foods four corners pantry and how to stock your four corners pantry with real foods and it's 36 pages long it's got a lot of information plus video links you know i don't leave you stranded when i talk about sourdough and whole grains and all of that i have videos showing you what i'm talking about or how to make these things because i also share how to make a lot of homemade things that you can store in your extended pantry as well as your working pantry well in any event this particular model also has one of these little handheld attachments and you can use this uh on their jars that have like a little device on the top you can also use that this device on their on the foodsaver bags that have the little circled area up here and you can also use this to suck air out of containers that they sell for marinating food and so it has some various options i have not found it successful in being to extract air in camp with using a canning lid in a jar the way that we were successful using the other two handheld devices so i thought there might be some way to pull off this little bottom the way we did with the more modern handheld saver but it's actually screwed on so i don't know maybe one day we'll have to experiment and unscrew it and see if there's a little nib there that we can then i use to convert this into something that can be used in our jars but in any event this is something to keep in mind this i i feel is helpful uh especially for foods for the re for the freezer as well as things that maybe you want to seal that can be sealed with a food saver and then maybe put in a mylar bucket for long-term food storage because again these bags or this this is not going to be rodent-proof by any stretch of the imagination so i think for long-term food storage if you do have what you consider a very safe long-term storage food area and you do want to use the foodsaver and then maybe just put it on a shelf uh you know keep in mind that it's not rodent-proof so if you are storing it in a place where there is a possibility of rodents then i would recommend storing going ahead and then storing these in a mylar in a mild bag in a five gallon uh bucket and one thing i want to mention about the five gallon storage buckets the reason that i like that size once they're filled they weigh they may weigh somewhere 40 to 50 pounds you know they're still relatively easy to pick up depending on your level of strength as opposed to the larger buckets which do get a little harder to pick up uh but they also come i believe in about uh a three or three and a half gallon size so if you're worried about the weight of the bucket if you think you're going to need to be moving it you may want to look into those smaller buckets as well well if you'd like more information about the prepper pantry how to stock your prepper pantry with real food how to stock it on five dollars a week how to make homemade items that are shelf stable for 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: 124,822

Rating: 4.9523263 out of 5

Keywords: The Best Long Term Food Storage Containers for Your Prepper Pantry, Best long term food storage containers, long term food storage, prepper pantry, long term food storage prepping, long term food storage containers, food storage containers, 5 gallon bucket, storage buckets with lids, best food storage buckets, mylar bags, long term food storage mylar bags, mylar bags and oxygen absorbers, glass storage containers, glass storage, food savers, marysnest, marys nest, foodsaver

Id: ekH3YnLV9nc

Length: 47min 7sec (2827 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 26 2020