How to Package Food for Long Term Storage

One large part of creating the emergency food store was learning how I could package food so it lasts a long time - 10, 15 maybe 20 years. In my regular food store everything, even the canned food has an expiration date so I need to rotate that food into my normal diet so that it does not go bad. This limits the amount of food I can really have. By being able to store some foods in such a way to keep them good for 10 -15 years this allows me to have a large quantity of basic staples such as rice, flour, lentils, mung beans, garbanzo beans and so on.

Food generally goes off when it reacts to oxygen, daylight and heat. This method strives to eliminate these elements to increase the life of your food.

Types of Food: I have found this method works well with non-perishables. I have personally used this method to store: rice, pasta, lentils, mung beans, beans, wheat berries, flour, corn meal, garbanzo beans.

You will need

• 5 Gallon (20x30’) mylar bag
• Oxygen Absorber 2000CC
• 1 x Food Grade Bucket - 5 Gallon with snap tight lid
• Household Iron or Heat Sealer

Instructions

• Take a mylar bag, open it up and place it in the 5 gallon food bucket with the opening upwards.
• Pour your chosen food into the mylar bag. Make sure it is not filled too high. You need to make sure that the open edges of the bag can come together relatively easy.
• Shake the bag a little to so that the food fills any air pockets at the bottom of the bag.
• Place 1x 2000CC Oxygen absorber in the bag. Please note that oxygen absorbers begin working as soon as they are out of their vacuum packet so you need to be sealing your bag relatively quickly after putting the absorber in the bag.
• Sealing the bag – I have found using a house hold iron a perfectly good way to seal my mylar bags.
• Take the open edges of the mylar bag, place them together and lay them flat on a table, or hard surface. This can be done without taking the bag out of the bucket. (My own method is to place the bucket on a chair nest to a table then have a wooden chopping board on the table that I lay the top of the bag on.)
• Turn on your iron and put it on low to medium heat. Run the iron along the open side of the mylar bag. This will make the two sides of the bag stick together. DO NOT iron all the way along but leave an opening of about 1-2 inches at the end.
• When you are ironing , iron a strip about no more than 2 inches deep ( Mylar bags are reusable so the less you have to cut open the more you will be able to reuse it). Iron from the bottom of the strip up to the opening, this helps get rid of wrinkles and creases.
• So now the open edge of your bag should be almost closed apart from 1-2 inches. Squeeze the bag so all remaining oxygen is being pushed out of the bag. Then seal the final 1-2 inches with your iron.
• Check along the seal of your bag to make sure it is sealed firmly. If not then go over it again with the iron.
• Push the bag down into the bucket and close the bucket with a snap lid.

Useful Tips

Food Buckets(food grade buckets have the symbol on the bottom with a 2 in the middle). Restaurants or supermarkets will usually have things such as frosting or pickles delivered in these. To be honest you can scour your local restaurants and supermarkets for these but it is a lot of effort to get them and clean them. I would advise against using buckets that have been previously used for other food stuffs. Yes your food will be in a sealed mylar bag but you do not want to attract rodents etc to your food store. Buckets can be picked up online fairly cheaply. Make sure the lid snaps shut tightly - I have had some dodgy lids in my time.

Mylar Bags - just make sure you get the right thickness and size. There are a couple of websites online where you can order these bags.

Oxygen Absorbers - instead of getting 2000cc you may want to get 500cc and then put 4 in per bucket. Oxygen absorbers come in vacuum sealed packets of 10,20 or 50. Once you have opened the packet you need to use the oxygen absorbers fairly quickly. You cannot reseal the packet.

Please note that these instructions are based on my experience of food storage. They do not constitute professional advice and therefore I cannot guarantee the success of your food storage endeavors. Please also visit the following video sites for comparable instructions on food storage using mylar bags.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vW7_cTn6YpE