The Food Storage thread

[Kaido]

This thread is for all things related to home food storage. I'm not quite in the "preppers" group, but I do like being prepared for several reasons:

• I have lived through earthquakes in California, hurricanes & flooding in Florida, and snowstorms in New England. Having food storage at home helps you get through those times when the power is out, the roads are closed, etc. Not that it happens on a regular basis, but it is annoying when it does, especially if you haven't stocked up & you're stuck eating weird stuff from the back of your fridge haha.
• Food is a BIG part of my budget, so being able to buy in bulk & cook at home saves a lot of money.
• This is negligible, but I don't have to go shopping as often because I have plenty of supplies at home. Food storage is great if you're lazy! lol
• It's useful to have a good system setup if you have a home garden, have access to local farms, or use a local CSA, so that you can store all of the items produced from them long-term instead of wasting them.
• Food waste is a huge issue in the United States. According to statistics, an average 4-person home loses $1,500 to food waste per year. By buying in bulk & utilizing food storage techniques, you can reduce this number.

I will be updating this thread with pictures & specific workflows (ex. how to grind wheat) as time goes on. Also, here are some other useful threads on various food topics here on ATOT:

• Freezer storage
  
• Kitchen appliances
• Bodybuilding food storage
• Instant Pot (electric pressure cooker)
• Anova (sous vide)
• Ice cream makers
• Food dehydrator
• Pasta makers
• BBQ & smoking
  
• Smoothies (blender)

Oh, and as far as implementation goes, it really depends on your budget & free time. Buying in bulk costs more money up-front, and buying quality storage containers & appliances is also pricey. I like to add onto my system about once a month, not only so that I don't kill my monthly budget, but also so that I can do the research I need & get properly setup on whatever I'm adding to the system. For example, my project for September 2017 was oatmeal; my setup was 15 pounds of oat groats (the raw seed that oat flour & rolled oats are made from), a 7-gallon bucket with a gamma-seal lid (for long-term storage, up to a year), a 2.4-quart OXO Pop container (for daily use in my kitchen), and a manual flaking machine (to flake the oat groats into freshly-rolled oats as needed).

Here are the basics:

1. Machines
2. Containers
3. Labeling
4. Ingredients

Machines:

There are a lot of great food storage tools available for home use. I will be fleshing these out over time, but for now, here's a laundry list of systems available for residential use:

• Lidded jars & containers (detailed below in the "containers" section)
• Dehydrator
• Freezer (also useful in conjunction with appliance cookers, like the Instant Pot for dump meals & the Anova for freezing raw items, par-freezing, and freezing fully-cooked meals)
• Freeze dryer
• Flash freezer (newly available on the market for home use)
• Vacuum sealers, vacuum chambers, and lidding machines
• Pressure cooker
• Pressure canner (separate from pressure cookers, not the same thing!)
• Grills & portable burners (for cooking when the power goes out)

Containers:

Containers can be:

• Used for storing both raw ingredients (flour, sugar, etc.) & prepared meals (ex. make-ahead meals or leftovers).
• Small in size (for using every day in the kitchen) or large (for bulk ingredient storage)
• Permanent, like something you keep in your kitchen cabinets, or portable, like something you'd put in your lunchbox.

They are useful for a lot of different purposes. I mainly use them for:

1. Large bulk storage (for storing things that come in 15, 25, and 50 pounds, like flour or rice)
2. Small bulk storage (ex. a pound of yeast, five pounds of salt, etc)
3. Bulk cooking (meals in foil trays or meal prep in multiple TV dinner trays)
4. Leftovers (I typically use TV dinner trays for this)

There are two main types of containers:

1. Disposable
2. Permanent

I will be detailing four type of containers:

1. Disposable plastic containers for meals & leftovers
2. Permanent containers for dry food storage
3. Water containers
4. Super-insulated coolers

When I buy disposable containers, I typically look for three requirements:

1. Freezer-safe
2. Microwave-safe
3. Dishwasher-safe (most plastic disposables can be re-used at least a few times before they break; use the top dishwasher rack)

I usually buy two types of disposable containers:

1. Deli container (round bowls in various sizes, with lids)
2. TV dinner-style trays (in single, double, or triple-compartment sizes)

Reditainer is a good brand & is available on Amazon; the Extreme Freeze containers are really nice and actually hold up to quite a bit of re-use. I buy most of my containers in bulk from the Web Restaurant store. My last order contained two items:

• 2-compartment TV dinner trays (150-pack with lids for $33 + shipping, good for meals)
• 16oz deli containers (240-pack with lids for $24 + shipping, good for soups, stews, pulled pork, etc.)

You can also buy oven-safe disposable containers. They are unique in that they let you take the container from the freezer directly into the oven. Genpak has a variety of shapes & sizes available (lids sold separately, and can also be put through a fill/seal machine if you have access to one for putting a sealed plastic wrap on it).

Oh, and disposable foil containers are nice too. They can be bought at super-discount stores for really cheap (Ocean State Job Lot, Big Lots, Dollar Stores, etc.). You can put things like casseroles or brownie mixes in them to freeze for heat & eat type of quick dinner meals.

As far as permanent containers go, there are a huge variety of them available. A small sampling of popular ones include Pyrex (glass), Tupperware (plastic), stoneware, glass jars (Ball/Kerr/Weck), OXO Pop (airtight), and food storage buckets. In my kitchen, I like to use wide-mouth pint-sized glass mason jars (Walmart & other stores sell Jarden's Ball brand locally) with plastic screw-on lids for stuff like salt, baking powder, etc. I use OXO Pop containers (the ones with the metal lid) for stuff like oatmeal & flour; specifically, the square 2.4-quart size & the tall square (well, rectangle I guess) 4-quart size (be sure to measure your cabinets to make sure they will fit!).

For bulk storage, I use food-grade buckets (I buy the 3-gallon & 6-gallon white pails, depending on the size I need). Make sure they are food grade! I also use gamma-seal lids, which are awesome screw-on lids that create an airtight seal & make the buckets stackable. I keep these in my basement (nice & cool) & then refill them using my various kitchen containers (ex. the 4-quart all-purpose flour container gets refilled from the 6-gallon gamma-seal lidded pail downstairs). Super easy! I recommend buying a nice, large metal scoop (like one for dog food) to use for refilling; keep it in the kitchen rather than in the bucket itself. Plastic scoops tend to leech into the food over time, and cheap metal scoops can tarnish; if you just buy one good one & keep it in the kitchen, then you can bring it with you whenever you go to refill a particular bucket (saves money over buying a bunch of scoops, too!).

One other item is drinks. I'll address two types:

1. Small amounts (128oz & under)
2. Large amounts

For small containers (personal drink size), there is a great new-ish technology called double-walled vacuum-sealed insulation. It's basically a 2-layer metal container system for thermoses & tumblers that can keep your ice from melting for a full day (or keep soups & drinks hot instead). There are two brands I really like:

1. Ozark (Walmart)
2. Zojirushi

There are a lot of competitors in the super-insulated tumbler market including Yeti & RTIC; Ozark is a cheaper knock-off brand that, in my experience, have been exactly the same as the more expensive brands. They even take the same accessories! (ex. flip lid for putting staws in). This 30oz Ozark tumbler is really nice. I also have the 64oz water bottle (I try to drink around a gallon a day). Zojirushi makes really nice mugs, which are useful for hot chocolate, soup, etc. I have this 16oz model and it's excellent - it has a sealed lid that locks so it won't spill.

As far as large water storage goes, there are a couple of options. They sell one-gallon & 2.5-gallon pre-filled water jugs at most grocery stores, which usually have an advertised year or two shelf life (not because the water goes bad, but because of the plastic...the water can start to get an off flavor after that). These are easy to buy; grab one or two every time you go shopping & eventually you'll have a pretty good inventory built up that you can rotate throughout the year to keep fresh.

For bigger storage, you can go with stackable blocks or barrels (usually a 55-gallon barrel). WaterBricks are a really neat system that lets you stack your water storage pretty much anywhere, like Legos. A big water barrel kit usually runs about $100 to $150 online for a drum, siphon, water purification kit, etc. There are also things like pumps & other accessories available. You do want to get certain types of containers to prevent algae growth, as well as treat large quantities of water with a water treatment solution; I'll go into more detail in a future post.

There are also super-insulated coolers available these days. Yeti made these famous; they are roto-molded plastic coolers that let you keep ice for days in them without fully melting. Knockoff competitors like RTIC came out with cheaper prices. I have an RTIC 65, which is awesome for trips, camping, going to the beach, and throwing your fridge items in if the power goes out for an extended period of time. Soft-pack containers are also available, which are kind of like big lunchboxes. Even though RTIC is cheaper, they are still a fairly big investment ($135 to $410, depending on the size). If you want something more budget-friendly, Coleman has the Xtreme line of coolers available, which pack extra insulation around the box & also sport an insulated lid ($40 to $100, depending on the size).

Labeling:

Labeling is a very important part of food storage for two main reasons:

1. Know what's inside a container
2. Know the expiration date

The easiest way to label a container is to use blue painter's tape with a black Sharpie marker. The painter's tape peels off easily, so if you need to re-label a container with a different ingredient or want to update the expiration date for a new batch of ingredients, it's easy to do so.

If you want things to look a bit more professional, you can use a label maker. I have a portable label maker (Brother brand) that prints out thin strips (like 1/4" thick) of stickers. I also have a desktop label printer, which prints out larger stickers (2" to 4" thick, also Brother brand).

Ingredients:

This list will be updated over time; also, each of the ingredients (or groups) will get their own separate reply post detailing how I use them.

Staples:

• Cornstarch
• Arrowroot flour (starch)
• Baking powder
• Baking soda
• Kosher salt
• Yeast
• Water
• Oils

Specialty:

• Dairy
• Eggs

Rice:

• Basmati rice
• Jasmine rice

Flour:

• Sourdough starter
• All-purpose flour
• Whole-wheat flour
• Rye flour
• Bread flour
• Cake flour

Grains:

• Corn
• Oat groats

 

[NetWareHead]

I found myself agreeing with all of your bullet points written in the first portion of your post. I am definitely heading into prepper territory and also appreciate being able to go into my basement and grab my own groceries vs needing to run out to the store every few days. I do buy in bulk as well to take advantage of economies of scale. We garden as well and concentrate on growing specific staples that can be preserved various different ways. To this point, we also are considering participating in a food and also meat CSAs. We also value shopping at local farms where we will find better quality food and can support our local communities. I mean, is there any real reason I have to buy an easy to grow item like zucchini from spring to fall when it practically grows like a weed where I live? No need to have it shipped from california or mexico for instance.

The downside is food preservation needs an investment in both time and equipment. It is a long process but for us, a labor of love. Fro instance, the canning I describe below requires an entire day of preparation in order to reach the final product. But if I am going to work an entire day to can food items, I'm going to make sure I make 100 cans, not 10. We enjoy food preservation and make ALOT of recipes using our own recipes and source every ingredient carefully. We do it for health reasons and so that these long standing traditions/recipes in our family dont die away. On a funny note, all of my friends say they are coming to our house in the event of a disaster. They look at our basement shelves are are amazed. Thats fine and we have plenty of food to share with those we love and plenty of ammo to refuse those we dont.

Anyway, we use a variety of food preservation methods.

Vacuum food saver combined with freezing: Our easiest and most practiced method. We use this mainly for cooked foods or for raw freezable produce. For cooked food, one example is pulled pork. I have a charcoal smoker and when I make pulled pork, I stuff the smoker as full of pork shoulders as can fit. My record at one time was 9 shoulders. Once pulled, we had over 35 pounds of ready to eat meat. With a kitchen scale, we made one pound portions in a food saver bag, added some of the meat drippings to the bag and sealed. Flattened the bag for easy storage (and later thawing) and into long term storage. For fresh produce, one example is we go to local farms and pick blueberries when they are in season. Wash and dry them and vacuum package single serving sizes for freezing. Once frozen, ESPECIALLY under vacuum, the threat of freezer burn and off odors disappears. The quality and food storage effectiveness of a real vacuum bag (that are heated sealed, not valve sealed) is 100x better than a zip-lock freezer bag. We can enjoy food years down the line if we wanted to.

Pickling: My wife's parents are from Romania and used to run a delicatessen. So they have many large glass jars (over 1 foot tall) saved from this business as well as pickling crocks. We make sauerkraut, giardiniera and other various pickled vegetables. Wash your produce well and stuff the jars. You can go 2 directions and make either a strong brine solution or use white vinegar. Fill the jar with either solution (the brine recipe will taste like a german or eastern european type of pickle while the vinegar solution is an italian mediterranean style) Use clean pop-sickle sticks wedged into the jar neck to force the veggies to stay submerged. Shake the jar to release any air bubbles. After a month submerged, they can be eaten although I like to wait at least 2. Sky is the limit to what you can pickle and thats why you have strange pickled items like pork feet, eggs etc... Using some red cabbage will turn the entire bright pink and give you items like pink cauliflower. Also an excellent way to preserve the masses of green tomatoes you get at the end of the season when they are in danger of frost damage and you need to do something with them. Caution that some brine solutions will undergo fermentation, while usually desirable, will change the flavor. And the fermentation process releases carbon dioxide that needs to be vented unless you want overflowing or ruptured jars. Vinegar solutions usually dont ferment due to the disinfectant properties of the vinegar. The veggies that emerge are crispy, pungent and make a fine side dish to roasted or grilled meats. We also pickle meat and this is basically what corned beef/pork is. Our basement has several crocks/large jars with various veggies and sometimes meats pickled.

Canning: Using ball or mason jars, we employ 2 types of canning. Boiling water and pressure canning. Boiling water canning is for recipes where the interior contents of the jar are acidic enough that botulism poisoning is prevented. There is enough acidity to prevent botulinum bacteria from growing. Or for recipes where the water content of the interior jar is so low that bacterial growth is discouraged such as jams or other fruit preserves. If either of these 2 conditions do not exist, then pressure canning is the only answer. I have a huge pressure canner, a large cauldron type of pot for regular boiling canning as well as an outdoor propane burner. I can do 30 - 50 jars at once depending on the jar size. Pressure canning is like putting your jars in a huge pressure cooker and taking them past 250 F for specific amount of time which is high enough temperature to destroy the botulinum spores. After processing, the jarred food is shelf stable, just like cans of food on the supermarket shelves. We store in a cool dark basement where it lasts several years. We jar fruit preserves, pickles, vegetable spreads (good way to use up a huge amount of veggies is to to make a thick stew of various veggies and then jar it.) You may have heard of recipes like tapenade, ajvar, caponata, zacusca etc... and all of these are easy to make at home and lend themselves to canning. It is even possible to can meat items. We have friends who hunt and can a bunch of ground moose meat. Canning soups or stews is possible too. Its pretty cool to go down into your basement and return with a can of sliced mushrooms, another can of soup and another jar of fruit marmalade for instance. We havent bought some food items at the store for years now because we make it ourselves and make it better. Like I said, nearly any canned item on the store shelf can be made at home.

Drying: We have a dehydrator that we use mainly for spices. It works by enclosing the food in a chamber and using warm forced air over the course of a day or two. We have made jerky, dried fruit slices of all varieties and dried herbs. Veggies/herbs are stored in airtight bags to prevent odor absorption. When the cats exhaust their supply of catnip, we pick a few stalks int he garden, dry them and begin their next stash.

Charcuterie/wurst/salumi production combined with under fat storage: An excellent way to preserve meats is to make sausages or delicatessen items out of them. This requires a fanatical adherence to cleanliness and an understanding of biology related to bacterial and fungal growth. Not easy for the average beginner and requires an investment in equipment like a sausage stuffer, meat grinder curing chamber etc... (My in-laws have all this from their old deli plus a butcher's band saw!)

We dont actually have a need to do this. We dont have livestock or a need to preserve 100s of pounds of meat... this is more for flavor and love of the finished product. The quality and taste of your own cured meats is nothing short of amazing. We have been to europe and the sausages there are something you cant find for sale here. Most sausages we find for sale dont live up to what we remember. So the solution is to make your own. After curing, no special storage is needed, the dry sausages will happily hang from your kitchen ceiling. But they will continue to dry and lose moisture to concrete like levels so the solution to preserve them is under fat, a form of confit. When your sausages are ready and at the finished moisture level, stand them in a crock and pour hot melted animal fat onto them. Typically 300 degrees, the point is not to cook the sausages but to flash sterilize their exterior. Now sterilized, the fat cools at room temperature forming a sealed storage with the sausages underneath the now hard layer. The sausages are protected from spoilage by their sodium nitrate content. The fat was brought up to high enough temperature to drive off any water which will prevent the fat from spoiling. Cover and store in cool dark location. Now covered the sausages will stop drying and some grease will even infuse into the sausages making them even softer. Simply reach in and grab a sausage taking care to not disturb any neighbors, clean it off and smooth the solid grease back over. An added bonus is the grease can be spooned and be substituted for oil in other recipes (it acquires a terrific meat flavor from the sausages within). Everyone thinks tomato sauce is started by sauteeing garlic etc... in olive oil but the old school method is to begin the sauce with some of this sausage storage fat. Those truly adventurous will undertake the production of prosciutto or capocollo. These whole muscle cured meats (as opposed to sausages which are chopped meat and stuffed into a casing) are best plastic wrapped when done curing and refrigerated. The advantage of whole muscle curing is you typically dont need to use nitrites/nitrates so it is healthier. A sharp knife or even better a deli slicer is whats needed to enjoy.

 

[Kaido]

I am definitely heading into prepper territory and also appreciate being able to go into my basement and grab my own groceries vs needing to run out to the store every few days.

...

The downside is food preservation needs an investment in both time and equipment. It is a long process but for us, a labor of love.

Yeah...like, we go through a lot of rice. On an average night, I'll walk in the door, grab my 2.4qt OXO Pop container with jasmine rice, rice it, and throw it in the Instant Pot to get dinner started, and then I'll whip up some 5-star Salmon or Beef & Broccoli or Indian Curry Chicken to go with it. If my OXO's rice supply is low, I just walk downstairs & refill it from the 50-pound bag I poured into one of my large food-storage buckets with a hands-accessible gamma seal lid. When the bucket gets low, I either order some more online or pop down to a local store to snag another bag...which is only a few times a year due to the quantity.

One of my concerns after writing down the OP was that the simpleness of the system would get overwhelmed by the dreaded Wall of Text. I may have to whip up some videos at some point to visually show how easy it is, because like you said, it's like having your own grocery store when you can just run down to the basement & refill what you need! Excellent comparison btw.

As far as food preservation being an investment of time, that's one of the big things I've been working on for the last few years - figuring out how to make it convenient & easily accessible to the point where it's more or less instantly usable (outside of large-batch projects, like your tomato haul!). For example, I keep my 9-tray Excalibur dehydrator on top of my smaller deep freezer in the basement - the noise & heat stay downstairs, but it's still easily accessible so I can keep stuff running in it all the time (jerky, herbs, peppers, fruit, fruit rollups, crackers, etc.). And it's like the easiest appliance ever...for most jerkies, the meat just needs to be sliced, slapped in a bag overnight with some marinade, and then put on sheets, and everything else mostly just needs to be chopped & put on the sheets, or blended up & put on the sheets. Loading the entire unit only takes five or ten minutes for most recipes, and thanks to the built-in timer, I don't have to remember to turn it off when the drying cycle is done.

I do have a pressure canner, albeit a small one, which I use with a hot plate. I know what you mean about the tomato days; my in-laws are Italian & used to grow roughly 500 pounds of tomatoes per season in their four backyard growboxes. Right now, I just do small-batch stuff (mine is a 21.5-quart All American model, most people I know who use them have the larger 40-quart models), so if I come home from the orchard with a big bag of apples, we can can those in pretty short order.

There are a lot of factors at play with food storage as well. I have a mix of things going into my own system:

1. My current eating style of choice is IIFYM, where you count you protein/carbs/fats. It's easy to do & I like how controlled the results are in combination with doing calisthenics for a bodybuilding workout. Plus it more or less forces me to make sure I have food every day, because it's hard to be successful meeting your numbers if you haven't prepared any food! I still grab a Whopper & treats out here & there, but as I've spent more time cooking at home and finding not just good but really great recipes, it's actually lessened my desire to go out to eat. After doing sous vide for couple years now, I had a steak out recently and was so, so disappointed in it...it's nice to have really good food available at home without having to be a trained chef!

2. I have a history of a grumpy stomach; even after being on modern medicine for it (and gloriously being able to eat dairy, gluten, and corn products again), I still don't do so well when I eat a lot of stuff with preservatives on a regular basis, and I do pretty bad if I eat fried food out more than one day in a row. I think it has to do with how much they re-use the oil...when I deep-fry at home, I have no problems, regardless of what oil I use. Plus, I've worked in the food industry & know all of the garbage that goes on behind the scenes haha. The TL;DR version is that I feel pretty good 24/7 when I make all of my food at home, regardless of what I'm making...I make homemade pizza all the time, burgers, ice cream, that sort of stuff, but because my ingredients are generally from whole foods & don't have a paragraph of chemical ingredients mixed in, they don't bother me. So being able to eat well, and eat fun stuff, is a huge bonus for me personally because of how my gut reacts to certain types of food still.

3. I'm kind of an all-or-nothing person...not that I'm a control freak, but I need a clean, clear system I can slide into & use easily if I'm going to make it happen. When my cupboards are stuffed & overflowing and I don't know what I have in-stock in my kitchen and things are generally a mess, it's a huge barrier to me actually cooking at home. Getting organized in the kitchen has helped immensely in actually cooking at home on a consistent basis. I'll have to detail that in a future post...I've got a pretty solid kitchen organizational system down that really takes the headache out of getting & staying organized.

4. The integration of automated appliances has been a real boon as well. The Instant Pot & Anova being the top two, along with my Traeger pellet smoker (primarily for meats). I can use all of those fairly hands-off & get really really consistent results with all of them, every time. Taking the guesswork out of cooking has really incentivized me to try more recipes at home because I know they're going to be good every time I re-make them. And mentally, it's just so easy to get home, toss some frozen chicken breasts in the water bath, some rice in the Instant Pot, some veggies in my other Instant Pot, take some freezer rolls out, and have a nice hearty dinner without having to sit there and actually "cook" for an hour.

I think two of the biggest barriers for doing food storage are not knowing exactly what to do, and having it feel like such a big monster to deal with that it's hard to even begin. A lot of people I talk to are interested in it, but because it's not necessarily intuitive if you're not familiar with it, that hurdle kind of stops a lot of people. I would say that the two biggest barriers to entry are the financial side (my OXO Pop containers alone have run over $200 over the past year as I've added individual containers for basmati rice, jasmine rice, white sugar, brown sugar, oat groats, etc., which may not sound like a lot to some people, but if you're on a budget, that's a lot of money to spend on small plastic containers lol) & having to learn how to use everything. The Instant Pot is so unique that a lot of people buy them & never use them because it's such a different way of cooking. And doing things like buying bulk bags, large food pails, scoops, etc. never crosses a lot of people's minds because they're so used to grabbing the small one-pound sacks of rice from the grocery store on their weekly trip. So hopefully we can break down some of those barriers in this thread as we discuss the options available & getting things setup over time so people can get a nice, working system going!

 

[NetWareHead]

Agree with the health benefits. You know exactly what is going into your own food. Your body feels better. As a result, we eat out less and when we do, it is for special occasions or for food we cant prepare at home.

What do you like about your Oxo Pop containers vs others? We tend to reuse mason jars. We have a ton of lids & bands including hundreds of them we purchased for dirt cheap from a yard sale. They are pretty old so I would trust them anymore for actual canning but they make fine lids for shelf/refrigerator food storage or for packing a lunch for work.

I also have an All American pressure canner but I opted for the biggest model at 41 quarts. No way I can cook with that thing inside, my residential gas stove simply doesnt have the horsepower to drive it. So I cook with a 55k btu propane burner outdoors. My parents owned a restaurant until recently, dad is retired now, and our canning days were always done on a day when the restaurant was closed for business. Being Italian, our main focus was tomatoes (the end goal was being able to make tomato sauce easier) and we utilized a full sized commercial kitchen. We had 5 commercial 48 inch wide 6 burner high power stoves plus all the enormous stock pots we could need to scald tomatoes. As well as plenty of countertop space to work and most important, an area with double 3 bay sinks (and commercial dishwasher) that made cleanup a breeze. It is such a downgrade now to have to can in my own residential kitchen when I remember the restaurant. As a result we tend to do as much as possible outdoors on fold up tables where we can spread out (plus the burner cant be run indoors).

Id love to learn about your organization system and it sounds like you have done a good job of integrating your food storage with recipes you developed. Sometimes we struggle to use all of our stash (or we sometimes forget what we have!) and we have had food go bad. Found a stash of canned green beans that we just got bored with and never ended up using the majority of. A shame when you think about it since the amount of work that goes into caning. Food wasnt bad per se, but when you bite into a string bean that had been canned 5 years ago, it had become mushy and was clearly expired. My wife does much of the cooking and she would love to get into or develop an organizational system.

Another tool Id like to share is our spremipomodoro or literally a tomato squeezer. Its like a continuously operating food mill that ejects the seeds and skins to one side and flows the juice/pulp into a pot. My dad imported it from Italy (plus the 120V conversion kit) and its now mine. We ended up having a great crop of tomatoes one year and canned passata which is literally means tomatoes passed through a mill, deseeded and deskinned. The red color was so vividly bright, really a great crop. I compared it next to another jar of mexican salsa we canned and the color difference is apparent. We didnt pressure can since tomatoes have ample acidity and I wanted to cook the passata as little as possible. 30 minutes of boiling water is far less than almost an hour of pressure canning. We did add a little lemon juice into each jar to adjust the acidity. Later we ran the seeds and skins through the squeezer a second time but saved the juice and made bloody maries for the next week! https://photos.app.goo.gl/M3xSffwstsuaiCM83

 

[Kaido]

What do you like about your Oxo Pop containers vs others? We tend to reuse mason jars. We have a ton of lids & bands including hundreds of them we purchased for dirt cheap from a yard sale. They are pretty old so I would trust them anymore for actual canning but they make fine lids for shelf/refrigerator food storage or for packing a lunch for work.

I'll preface by saying that I have a truckload of mason jars - wide-mouth pint, wide-mouth quart, and lately, the 4oz jelly jars (the ones with vertical sides, not the bell-shaped ones), which I've been using primarily for sous vide projects (egg bites, creme brulee, yogurt, mini cheesecakes, etc.). I typically use the white Ball plastic screw-on lids, although sometimes I use the stock metal ring/lid system along with my Foodsaver to suction the air out.

I like the OXO Pop for larger quantities, especially for things like rice or flour, where I'm typically using between one to four cups per recipe. I have the 2.4qt square size (fits in my kitchen cabinets) and the 4.0qt tall rectangle size (fits in my pantry cabinets). They have a wide mouth (easy to scoop from & easy to refill), they are heavy-duty (thick plastic container + metal lid), easy to clean (the bottom part of the lid screws off), and airtight (once you push the button). Keeps the bugs out, helps the food last longer, lets you visually see how much quantity is left because the containers are clear, keeps the cabinets & countertops clean because everything is kept sealed inside the bin, and looks nice (there's sort of an intangible benefit to having a nice-looking set of labeled containers on your shelf. My only real complaint is that I've had one bucket arrive cracked because Amazon did a crappy job of protecting them in the shipping box, which is a complaint I've read in their comments section. But I haven't found the metal Pop containers anywhere locally (or for any better prices), and I don't need an infinite amount, so I feel that they were worth the investment.

My refill system right now is that large bulk items go in 6-gallon pails with gamma-seal lids, with any overflow going into 3-gallon pails with gamma-seal lids (ex. a 50-pound bag of rice gets split up because it's too much to fit in a 6-gallon pail, and I didn't want to go bigger than 6-gallon pails for weight/size handling reasons), and then I scoop some into a smaller OXO bucket to keep in the kitchen. For items with smaller quantities, like a large box of baking soda or Kosher salt, I dump that into an airtight OXO bucket & then scoop some out into a pint-sized mason jar with a plastic screw-on lid. For day-to-day usage, I just use the mason jar because I typically don't go through a cup of baking soda or salt.

As I've added each ingredient to my storage system, I've tried to maximize my output from each item. For example, oat groats (1-year shelf life in a bag, 10-year shelf life in a #10 can) can turn into both rolled oats (using a flaking machine) and oat powder (using a high-powered blender). Then I can make a bunch of stuff with oats as the base ingredient: granola bars, energy bites, oatmeal cookies, multi-grain bread, Nutella bars, overnight oatmeal, etc. Adding ingredients to my system slowly also gives me time to figure out the macros for the various recipes I add to my personal collection so that I have an easy reference when making them in the future.

 

[Carson Dyle]

I bought some one quart freezer bags the other day after reading that you could easily freeze cooked rice and quinoa. I never knew that. When I cook brown rice, I make enough for days, but the last of it almost always goes bad in the fridge. Now I'll make a big ol' pot and freeze one or two-serving portions.

 

[herm0016]

i have been finding that ziplock freezer bags get holes in them easily in the freezer, we freeze a whole bunch of pre-seasoned chicken thighs for su-vide cooking and many of them have holes. any guidance on this? or recommend a real vacuum sealer? we have tried both keeping them loose and making sure the air is out before we freeze. they get stacked in a cloth bag in our big freezer for storage.

 

[Carson Dyle]

They can't spontaneously be getting holes in them, can they? Someone must be tossing them around in the freezer while digging for things.

 

[NetWareHead]

Any bones or sharp spots causing the bad to abrade and hole in the freezer? Anything rough stacked on top of it?

 

[herm0016]

nothing out of ordinary. they are on the top layer of the chest freezer. its really the only thing that we regularly go in there for. the only thing on top of them is sheet pans for fruit or veg that we are freezing. The one i pulled out last night had about 6 pin holes in it, and not on the edges.

if we are looking for stuff under them, we just grab the whole bad and lift it out. everything in the chest freezer is in reusable grocery bags by type. chicken, beef, fruit, veg, etc.

 

[Mike64]

the only thing on top of them is sheet pans for fruit or veg that we are freezing. The one i pulled out last night had about 6 pin holes in it, and not on the edges.

Placing – not to mention re-positioning, removing, and replacing – weighted metal pans on top of rock-hard-frozen, irregularly shaped items "covered" only by a plastic film a few mils thick might, just might conceivably , have something to do with the random pinholes that aren't around the edges, but probably are located over "high spots" on the bags of frozen chicken... (And when I say "high spots", they don't have to be at all obvious, even just a millimeter or two would be enough to cause much greater pressure on specific, isolated spots on the bags.)

In short, don't put the pans directly on your chicken. The simplest thing would probably be to throw a thick (or folded up) towel over it before you put the pans down, but at some point the towel will get damp and start sticking to the chicken and/or pans, so putting the chicken in a cardboard box you can loosely close, or a plastic crate/bin you can rest the pans on top of (while not filling them to to the brim), would make more sense as a longer term solution that stops short of building some sort of racking into the top section of the freezer...

 

[herm0016]

a sheet pan of sliced tomatoes 1 layer thick is about 2 lbs. plus there is folded over fabric from the bag over them.

 

[Mike64]

Still, unless your food contains corrosive substances strong enough to eat through moderately thick polyethylene film (which you'd probably notice when you ate it, too), the holes aren't showing up for no reason. They're either being made when you jostle the frozen items around in the process of moving soft-sided bags full of them in and out of the freezer (and/or digging into the bag to find exactly which you want), or from completely external pressure from the pans.

If you don't want to completely re-vamp your wrapping and/or organizational methods, by double-bagging things, wrapping individual freezer bags in some sort of paper, and/or using rigid-sided crates/containers instead of bags to organize like items, start paying close attention to where you take packages from and which ones you find holes in to narrow down the probable cause.

Last but not least, if this is a recent phenomenon, have you changed the brand of bags you use? Has this always been a problem? If not, what has changed?

 

[Kaido]

Id love to learn about your organization system and it sounds like you have done a good job of integrating your food storage with recipes you developed. Sometimes we struggle to use all of our stash (or we sometimes forget what we have!) and we have had food go bad. Found a stash of canned green beans that we just got bored with and never ended up using the majority of. A shame when you think about it since the amount of work that goes into caning. Food wasnt bad per se, but when you bite into a string bean that had been canned 5 years ago, it had become mushy and was clearly expired. My wife does much of the cooking and she would love to get into or develop an organizational system.

FYI working on typing this up. Translating everything from my head & my habits is proving to be more of a chore than I had originally anticipated

It's very easy to maintain once you set it up. And now that I'm working on writing it out step-by-step, it looks like it's actually pretty easy to implement, too (it just took me forever because I had to figure it all out from scratch, haha). There's an initial setup process & then there's a basic set of ongoing maintenance processes. It makes keeping a clean, organized kitchen with non-expired food manageable! Plus it has a pretty good approach to menu planning.

 

[Kaido]

Small Batch Canning 101:

https://www.melskitchencafe.com/small-batch-canning-101/

This is from Mel's Kitchen Cafe, one of my favorite food blogs.

I find that during the summer and fall months, I tend to make use of small batch canning. This means different things to different people, but for me, a small batch of canning is any recipe that gives me about 10 jars or less and that I can finish in just a few hours. It works so much better for my life. I can whip out a batch of homemade salsa (8-9 pints) in an afternoon and still have the kitchen cleaned up in time for dinner (which will most likely be chips and salsa anyway).

I am a big fan of small-batch meal prep for several reasons:

1. It doesn't suck up your whole day
2. It doesn't require a huge investment of raw materials
3. It gives you time to learn the process
4. It lets you master the recipes so you're not stuck with tons of mediocre stuff
5. It doesn't give you so much output that you will never be able to eat
6. It's not a mental challenge to do...small batches are easy, big batches are...ugh. If you're in the mood to do a big batch, great, but if you're not, then it's a huge chore.
7. It lets you build up a nice variety, so you don't get sick of eating the same thing all the time

I do a lot of small-batch meal prep with my Instant Pot & Anova right now, and lately, with various (unbaked) baked goods (particularly cookie dough & homemade freezer dinner rolls). It can really help making dinner at home every night easier by changing it from a cooking job to an assembly job, which is a lot easier to approach mentally when you're worn out from the day and just want a nice hot plate of tasty food without much effort!

 

[Kaido]

FYI working on typing this up. Translating everything from my head & my habits is proving to be more of a chore than I had originally anticipated

It's very easy to maintain once you set it up. And now that I'm working on writing it out step-by-step, it looks like it's actually pretty easy to implement, too (it just took me forever because I had to figure it all out from scratch, haha). There's an initial setup process & then there's a basic set of ongoing maintenance processes. It makes keeping a clean, organized kitchen with non-expired food manageable! Plus it has a pretty good approach to menu planning.

This has turned into a bigger project Should have it ready for this weekend! (2018 edit: soon...maybe...I'll get back to you...lol). I think I have a good structure laid out; consolidating all of the information now. This is the high-level overview:

1. Main goals
2. Eating style
3. Eating schedule
4. Meal planning
5. Kitchen organization

Doing some up-front thinking about how you acquire & consume food helps a lot downstream (we are habitual creatures, so the initial planning part is actually pretty easy), because then you have some structure to apply to how you organize your kitchen. I've gone back & forth through various iterations over the years, from eating out all the time to eating at home all the time, to doing bulk meal prep, to doing once-a-month cooking. The way you approach food has a big impact on what you do day to day. Like, I have friends who are stay-at-home moms and have all day to cook & enjoy cooking as a hobby, so everything is made fresh that day & hours of work are put into the meals. I like to cook, but I'm not in the mood to cook every day, so I like the meal-prep approach where I can either do a heat & eat approach or just an assembly approach (i.e. bake pre-made rolls or pre-made cookie dough instead of having to make it and then cook it on the same day). Anyway, more on that later

 

[Kaido]

A list of over twenty foods that must be repackaged for long-term storage: (and how to repackage them)

http://thesurvivalmom.com/20-foods-...-long-term-storage-and-how-to-repackage-them/

There are also some good links at the bottom of that article for additional food storage information.

 

[waffleironhead]

Resurrection!!
Im on the market for a vacuum sealer and looking for recommendations.

 

[MtnMan]

Resurrection!!
Im on the market for a vacuum sealer and looking for recommendations.

We have used FoodSaver for years. We buy in large qualities of meat because of price, primarily Sam's Club and Costco. I'll get a pork loin and slice into chops and freeze in FoodSaver bags. Be it a month or a year, they are as good as the ones we cooked fresh.
If you don't want to slice, you can select a loin, or any piece of meat, then ask the butcher to slice it for you. It's 50¢ or $1 per pound cheaper than what they have pre-sliced in the display.
I make a big crock pot full of my spaghetti sauce (very meaty) and freeze two thirds of it for later, in freezer bags.

 

[waffleironhead]

Thanks! Im just getting into looking at models right now and was looking for a recommend if possible. There was a foodsaver 3170? at sams on sale last week that I probably should have jumped on, but I tend to overthink these things.
I do a lot of gardening and have been canning and also freezing stuff in zipper bags. I lost a bit of butternut squash to freezer burn this winter so was looking to try vaccuum bag storage.
Plus was going to try sealing up jerky as the 5lb batches tend to go bad before we can finish them off.
Definitely agree on the pork loin. I just double wrap freezer paper mine.

 

[A///]

For day to day stuff I like those push and seal Oxo containers for food storage. It keeps my cereals and oatmeal fresh.