While there are many commercially available foods for long term storage, preserving your own food is another a great way to prepare for an emergency. Preserving your own food for storage can be a lot of work, but it also brings many rewards. For example, canning and dehydrating homegrown produce not only helps you save money, it can give you and your family feelings of self-sufficiency and confidence. As many have learned first-hand, preserving food as part of an emergency preparedness plan requires specific knowledge, skills, and equipment.
Knowledge
When preserving food at home, it’s important to know about the different methods of preservation; whether canning, dehydrating, pickling, etc. With home preservation, you also need to know how to do it safely to ensure the food will be safe to eat when the time comes. There are many books and websites dedicated to home food preservation that can help you.
Skills
Preserving food at home often requires multiple steps. Depending on how much food you preserve and in what form (whole, stewed, sauce, jam, etc.) you might have to process the food by peeling, chopping, blanching, pureeing, slicing, and so on. If you’re canning, the prepared product will need to be placed in a jar, then heated and sealed in a canner. If dehydrating, you’ll need to lay the right amount of product in each tray of your dehydrator on the right setting for a designated amount of time. As you refine your preserving skills, you’ll be able to juggle the different aspects of the process.
Equipment
Preserving requires special equipment and tools. You’ll likely need a variety of equipment such as jars, lids, canner, various food processing tools, a food dehydrator, etc. Although the expense of this equipment can add up initially, preserving your own food will save you money in the long run.
To learn more about preserving food at home read the Insight Articles linked below:
2 comments
Chris Gabbard
Larry Young, to my knowledge the best way to store rice is in a air tight container such as the food storage buckets they sell here on the site or in vacuum sealed bags. The rice must be completely dry for storage as far as I know. I always dry mine in a dehydrator then store small amounts in vacuum sealed bags(normal use) and large amounts in the food grade pails with Mylar sealed bags.
Beans will depend on what type you are talking about. For Green Beans you want to Can them and they will remain fresh for many years giving you have a good seal. A good seal means the little dimple in the jar lids will be gone. If the dimple is still there after canning then you don’t have good seal and will need to run through the process again. There are many great books on Canning and even though in does involve some labor it is rewarding and fun.
Dry beans such as Pinto or Navy Beans can be Caned or dried. If you choose to dry them it would be the same process as the Rice I mention earlier. Canning would be the same process as for Green Beans. Navy Beans are usually used for a baked bean dish or also known as Pork & Beans. I use the Navy Beans for Baked Beans/ Pork & Beans and prefer to dry them and seal in Vacuum sealed bags in small portions.
Hope this helps you with your projects.
Larry Young
Can anyone advise me on how to store rice and beans for long term storage? I would really appreciate it. Thank you.