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10K views 27 replies 18 participants last post by  CO-retired 
#1 ·
I want to purchase some more dried goods including dried milk, brownie mix, baking power, baking soda, egg noodles. These are all in 5lb bags that I will buy multiple of and I want to transfer them into larger 5 gallon buckets with mylar bags and O2 bags for the long term.

My question is will this work for these items? I know this will work for wheat, flour, beans etc, which i alread have. But will it work for these items?

What can the expected life span be for these items?

Is there a good list of items that can be stored this way? And their life span?
 
#2 ·
I've done a similar thing with my preps. I stored pasta items, cake mix, drink mixes and some other smaller items in a mylar bag, with O2 absorbers and then placed them in 5 gal buckets. I did this about a year ago and checked them (rotated some of the pasta and cake mixes out and used them) and seemed to be fine. As far as the life span, I would have no idea. Hope this helps.
 
#4 ·
Some of the mixes might not store so well if they have baking powder in them. Baking powder doesn't store well long term. On the positive side, it's very easy to make and the ingredients store very well seperately. Just mix it as you need it. There are recipes for it on the site.

Pasta, powdered milk and things like that store very well for long term. That's a big part of my own long term preps. I just opened some powdered milk that has been stored in our hot shed since the late 90s and it's perfectly drinkable. Same with the powdered eggs and other stuff.
 
#5 ·
Well this is how I handle my staples for long term use

I had my kids give me a Food Saver sealer for Christmas one year... then I started buying 2 lb small bags of rice (for example)... I froze the rice for a week, killing any buggy types which may be in the bag. Stuffed the rice (still in the store bag) in a clean sock and sealed two 2 lb bags at a time in the vaccum sealed bag, (4 lbs =100 servings)

The sock prevents the rice from puncturing the plastic when subjected to a vacuum.

the procedure is the same for flour, beans peas, etc

I expect to get 10-20 years out of these items as they are stored in opaque bins inside my house for temperature control

This is a little more expensive than buying in 25 lb sacks, but I think it will store a little longer.

anyway... my 2 cents... good luck
 
#7 ·
I had my kids give me a Food Saver sealer for Christmas one year... then I started buying 2 lb small bags of rice (for example)... I froze the rice for a week, killing any buggy types which may be in the bag.
Sounds like a great system. Just keep in mind that insect eggs survive out doors with repeated freezing and thawking all winter long. In some areas, they survive sub-zero temperatures for many months. Diatomaceous earth may be a better mechanism for killing little creatures.
 
#6 ·
Pasta will last forever. You are better off collecting the ingredients for brownies (aand a good recipe) because of the shortening in many ingredients. Although I do vacuum seal my brownie mix for stoarge of up to a year. Dried milk will store in mylar with o2 absorbers for 5 years, but you can also buy the 10# cans for storage of about 10 yrs.
Baking soda will be fine, I'm not positive about baking powder.
Sugar, rice (white), cornmeal, coca powder will all last stored that way. Salt too.
 
#8 ·
If You Vacuum package them they will last longer, then you can place them in water proved plastic barrells and add a lighted candle inside then tight seal, the Candle will turn off when all oxygen is gone thus making it even more insect proof, I recommend this for keeping rice as well for a long time.
 
#10 ·
The candle will go out when the O2 level is too low to support combustion, but there is still plenty of it left to rot the food and support insect life. This goes in the "old wives tales" file, along with bay leaves and spearment gum for preventing bugs. There have been plenty of lab tests done on all of them.
 
#11 ·
MikeK, I agree that it's anecdotal but I've found that bay leaves do work. I'm not always very quick to use foodstuffs and if they sit for a while without bay leaves, I can expect bugs. With bay leaves, no problem.

I don't rely solely on bay leaves for vac-packed items, however; it's the freezer, plus bay leaves, plus vacuum packing. Relying on one method seems foolhardy when multiple methods provide inexpensive insurance against bugs.
 
#14 ·
Oxygen is one factor that can lead to spoilage.

Another factor is humidity.

We use desiccant in our storage and it works fine. We prefer it in fact because we only had to buy desiccant once and now we re-use it again and again.

However desiccant does not work for everything. Oils for example spoil with O2 contact.

We store a selection of grains, powdered milk, this way as well as our ammo.
 
#18 ·
I plan on starting my adventure in dehydrating vegatables(frozen for now)I bought several dozen 1 qt. ball mason jars to get started with....and mainly because I thought it would be a good idea to be able to see into the jars for anything spoilage related going on(I'm new at this...what do I know:upsidedown:)
Can I simply fill the jars to 1" below the top and drop in an oxy. bag(I have about 200- 500 cc packets I just bought)
Or should I vacuum seal with my sealer..................and still use the oxy drier?

Any help here would be greatly appreciated..................................Dave.:cool:
 
#19 ·
Why would you dehydrate vegetables then put them in mason jars. Just can the vegetables. When you need them all you have to do is heat them. Don't get me wrong. Mason jars are great to store dry things in. I have several hundred full of dry beans, rice, sugar, powdered eggs etc.
 
#20 ·
I'm a newcomer to dehydratin and thought the most logical way to start out was with Jars......plus with jars it's easy to undo a lid and then simply reseal it.Also,I wanted the option of long life storage so I felt that this method was the right thing to do....damifino!
I'm sure I'll go with bags as well.
Should I vacuum seal them with oxy removers in Jars?
 
#22 ·
Storing rice, etc., in their original plastic packaging is not a good idea because the plastic will degrade over time. It's ok for sts, of course, but not lts.

Baking powder stores ok for sts but not lts. For lts, just store the individual ingredients and they will last pretty much forever. I never buy mixes since most of them can't compare with scratch cooking which takes only a minute or two more. But, if I did store mixes, I wouldn't count on more than a year or so for storage for them.

Mice and rats can indeed easily chew through 5-gallon plastic buckets and even travel straight up some walls so vermin control is imperative for anything not protected by good metal.

I wouldn't trust corn meal not to get bugs because I've gotten them in it when it was stored in the cupboard for not a very long time. It had not been frozen and was in the original package, so I won't be doing that again. Storing corn is safe from vermin, I've read, but I haven't done that yet and I'm not sure that I'm going to do much of that because such a huge percentage of corn is now GMO. I would want to make sure I get corn that has not been tampered with before buying it.

I always go the most conservative route for storage because I only want to spend my valuable time, energy and money doing it once. Waste really annoys me. Because of that, I freeze for a week, thaw for a week, freeze for a week and then thaw and dry out for at least three days before packing for storage. The freeze/thaw/freeze/thaw can be done in as little as 5 days but I make my changes on the weekends so I never forget where I am in the process and don't have to write it all down, so that's just what works for me.
 
#26 ·
This is great info. I have heard from some about bugs in rice and I've heard others say once your bags are sealed they can't survive.
Anyway to know if the rice you are buying has bugs?

Good points on the prepared foods maybe I should buy sperate ingrediants and store those.

As far as pasta Im worried that if I fill my mylar bags with my twisted pasta the air pockets in the pasta will allow it to go bad no matter how many 02 Absorbers I add.

I'm trying not to buy prepackages #10 cans as they are expensive and they don't seem to have that much quanity to them. I figured buy bulk is better.

Where to get large bags of powered eggs?
 
#27 ·
Find your nearest LDS church and they can tell you where the local dry pack cannery is. You can purchase all sorts of bulk items including milk and eggs at wholesale prices. They may also let you sit in on a canning session with a local ward or stake to can your own bulk supplies.
 
#28 ·
Hey...I just wanted to add that I started dehydrating my first batch of goods last night!!! 5 mar 10....I did peas(frozen) and as I type this I'm doing corn(it was also frozen)I hope to do lots of frozen veg....as long as walmart has very reasonable prices such as they do right now.

My sealer/vacuum machine didnt work right...so I called them and they're sending me out another one...no cost.

For now,I'm using Qt. jars with oxy removers in them....they seal up nice and I'm boiling the lids for a good tight seal as well.

The jars are for short term/intermediate term use.......once I become more proficient in dehydrating I'll do much larger quanities....bucket size with mylar bags.

I got on tammy's mailin list(hydrate2store.com) she really has it together!!:D:
 
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