A Food Storage System in 4 Easy Steps
A food storage system can be broken down into 4 easy steps or parts. These 4 steps are Location, Selection, Storage and Rotation.
Location
The first thing you have to decide about food
storage is where you are going to put your food and items for
long term storage. The location of where you are going to store
your food is going to determine how much food you can store and
possibly even types of food. Choose a location that is
cool, dry and dark. a basement is ideal. If your home has
a pantry with lots of space that can be a great location too.
Choosing what you want to put in your food storage system is as easy as making a shopping list. think about the 10 or 12 recipes that you make the most. Determine what dry goods such as floor, sugar, herbs and spices go into those recipes. Fresh ingredients can be swapped out for canned varieties or dehydrated products.
Then make your shopping list from those recipes. of course, you will want to include a basic food storage list of staples such as flour, sugar, honey etc. but don't put things on your list that you and your family won't eat. If you won't eat them when you aren't stressed you don't want to force yourself to eat them when you are.
Storage
Next determine what type of storage
containers and how you plan to store your foods. There a
number of food storage systems and processes available. You can
use a vacuum packing system that lets you store certain foods
for considerably long periods of time. You can also go
with mostly canned goods. Some people use a cooperative to
access a self-canning facility that will let them can virtually
everything from green beans to oatmeal. You can also use a
commercial service that supplies the basic food stuffs already
pre-packaged.
Or you can use a basic storage set of canisters and plastic containers that use airtight seals to store foods.
Tupperware has a variety of Food Storage sets available
There are even sophisticated systems that let you seal food in Mylar bags and 5 gallon plastic buckets. just be sure that whatever containers you choose they are manufactured for food storage or safe to store food in. Re-using commercial food containers is OK. Avoid containers that had detergent, bleach or other chemicals in them.
RotationMany food storage systems will allow you store or freeze foods for a very long time. Almost indefinitely. Canned goods from 40, 50 or even 60 years ago have been found to be untainted and theoretically safe to eat. Frozen foods if kept at the right temperature remain edible almost indefinitely with only a small loss of quality over time.
However, all foods lose some nutrition, flavor
and edibility over time. Flour has an expected shelf life
of approximately 6 months if stored in an airtight canister.
Baking powder loses its ability to raise flour after
approximately 18 months from being opened. Obviously, you
don't want to spend the money on a food storage system only to
throw the food out after a couple years. The best way to deal
with all these issues is to use what you store. Eat the
foods you place in long term storage and rotate them out.
Eat the foods that have been stored the
longest. That's why it helps to label and date your food
containers so you know what you have and when you put it in the
pantry. By using the foods that have been there
longest and replacing them with new foods you keep your store of
food stuffs fresh and perpetually ready to use for a long term
situation. This is the essence of rotation.