Just about every new prepper starts with food storage. Most of them spend a lot of time experimenting with different methods of packing food and trying different foods. I can’t begin to tell you all the time and money I spent on methods and recipes that should never have seen the light of day. I have ruined more food than is ethical learning how to can, dry, cure, smoke, pack, and seal. However, that experimentation led me to a system that works well for my family.
Common Food Storage Systems
Before I tell you what I found to work for my family, let’s discuss ways that work for others. It is up to you to decide what fits your budget, lifestyle, and needs.
Freeze-Dried Year Supply
This is the ultimate in food storage; many people I know (myself included) would love to have a year’s supply of commercially freeze-dried food for each person in my family. It is probably the best option for long-term food storage, and it is very easy to use. Just add water and you have a ready meal. Freeze-dried foods have a twenty-five-year shelf life and due to the quick freeze process they do not lose many nutrients.
I have a few #10 cans of commercially freeze-dried foods, and I did toy with the idea of buying the equipment to DIY my own. At least I did until I took a bioterrorism response class where I learned that the equipment I was bidding on eBay to freeze-dry my own milk was the same equipment terrorists use to make bioweapons. Since I did not want to end up on a watch list, I stopped that plan.
My main problem with freeze-dried food is the cost. This is the most expensive option and can cost around $2,500 per person for a year’s supply. This type of food is also not eaten daily so in an emergency you may have a hard time convincing picky eaters.
Freeze-dried food is the ultimate in long-term food storage, but it is expensive.
By Jaranda-commonswiki via Wikimedia Commons.
DIY Dried Foods
I love “do it” and “make it yourself” ideas. I have spent a great deal of time drying foods and storing them. In an earlier book I made a dehydrator from a box fan. I also built a biltong box from a large plastic tote so I could make South African jerky. Dried foods have been a staple food storage solution for native people and pioneers for hundreds of years. It is low tech and basically bulletproof. Every hunter I know makes deer jerky. I have made all manner of jerky and home-cured meats. Homemade bacon is incomparable to store bought. However, DIY dried foods take time to make, and don’t really save money. Their shelf life is not long. Basically you should not keep homemade dried foods longer than a year. This worked for our ancestors as they needed to keep their harvest just long enough to get them through the winter.
With most of our busy schedule and the cheap cost of freezer space, I doubt many of us would be served well by buying food, drying it, and storing it just for a few months. However, its main benefit to modern preppers is the weight savings. Meat will lose much of its weight as the water is removed. It takes around three pounds of meat to make a pound of jerky. With this weight reduction the size of the food also shrinks. This makes it great for go bags and camping meals.
Dried food storage does not have to be expensive to be effective. This DIY dehydrator was a project in my food storage techniques book.
Photo by the author.
MREs
Many people who haven’t served feel that military Meals Ready to Eat is a perfect prepper food storage plan. They do have a place in some plans but MREs are not a perfect solution. They do not store indefinitely as many think. As a Marine in the post–Desert Storm era, I can attest that MREs stored in the heat quickly go bad. There are plenty of jokes about how bad military rations taste and I never had a problem with the taste of MREs, but they are bulky and contain a lot of packaging for the amount of food provided.
MREs are expensive and they have a definite shelf life. If stored at about 70 degrees Fahrenheit, they only last two years. If stored in a cool dry place you may extend that to eight or nine years. You don’t get a lot of food for the size. On the other hand, they are convenient. My opinion is that they work best for 72-hour kits for short-term emergencies only.
Military Meals-Ready-To-Eat can be an effective option, but they do not last as long as other food storage methods and can be expensive.
Christopherlin via Wikimedia Commons.
This is a 5-gallon bucket of wheat I processed with dry ice. Packing it yourself makes it even less expensive.
Photo by the author.
I found a local food cooperative that allows me to order dry food in bulk monthly. It primarily services those with a desire to eat healthy so there is an emphasis on non-genetically modified grains and other foods. This makes it more costly than going to the co-op and buying feed grade wheat. However, the quality is much better.
The average cost for a 50-pound bag of wheat is under fifteen dollars, or you can buy a commercially sealed 5-gallon bucket containing thirty-three pounds of wheat for fifty dollars or so. I prefer the commercially sealed buckets because the shelf life is almost indefinite if stored in a cool, dry place. You can conceivably put nitrogen-packed buckets of whole wheat berries in your well. The buckets do take up space and they do weigh almost forty pounds. I try to buy the buckets, but when money is short I spend much less and purchase more 50-pound bags and package them myself.
You can find great tutorials online that show you how to repackage bulk dry foods. I wrote about this and how to calculate the amount of oxygen absorbers in my book, 52 Unique Techniques for Stocking Food for Preppers. Basically, you need a clean container that is safe for food and can be sealed airtight. Pack the food inside the container and replace or remove the oxygen inside. I have used dry ice to make carbon dioxide push the air out of buckets and I have used oxygen absorbers to chemically remove the O2 from the containers. Commercial packing plants often displace the oxygen by using nitrogen.
This is a great way to make your food budget go far, but owning 1,000 pounds of wheat does not translate to food. You will also need a way to grind the wheat (discussed later), other ingredients to cook the wheat (salt, baking powder, yeasts), and most importantly the skill to cook it.
One concern with using dry bulk food for your disaster meal plan is that you can shock your system and cause all manner of digestive issues shifting from first world fast food to old world whole wheat. If you do not already bake a lot, you should incorporate dry bulk foods into your daily routine.
Home Canned Food Storage
Tools that many preppers/homesteaders/frugal moms use are water bath and pressure canners. I own several of both types and have had my share of success and failure in experimenting with canning food. Like DIY food drying, home canned items have a year shelf life. It is designed to get a farm through a typical winter not a twenty-year nuclear winter.
However, as you practice growing your own food the ability to can your own sauces, jellies, jams, and preserves is a wonderful thing. One thing you need to be aware of is food safety. Improperly canned items can allow botulism bacteria to grow and create a deadly paralytic toxin in your canned food.
The federal government has created food safety guidelines and home canning recipes that have been scientifically designed to ensure that the hard to kill botulism spores cannot survive the canning process. DIY recipes for things such as canned butter, eggs, and cheese cannot be proven to kill the spores, which is why the USDA says there is no safe way to can certain foods. If you choose to can items using recipes other than those provided by the manufacturer or the USDA, be aware of the risks.
Commercial Canned Goods
While I have some of each system listed above, I must admit that the main food storage in my home consists of cans of staples that I buy by the flat at warehouse and discount grocery stores. I have enough canned pinto beans to make chili for a battalion. A can of soup or vegetables is inexpensive, should last for years, and can be eaten cold right out of the container. Most of the canned fruits and vegetables also contain water, which can be drunk instead of drained.
Canning your own food is a step many preppers take. Be aware of the safety issues and buy a good recipe book.
Photo by the author.
I use a cardboard can organizer to help sort my commercially canned foods. By buying in bulk and rotating stock this method is easy and inexpensive.
Photo by the author.
A benefit to commercially canned foods is that it is familiar and easy to eat. Unfortunately, it is also bulky and heavy. If you choose to store a large amount of canned goods you need to create a method of rotation as it is easy to place the new cans in front of the older items and end up with twenty-year-old yams in the back of the closet. While it takes up a little more space than shoving cans tightly together, I use a cardboard can organizer that allows me to place my newly purchased cans at the top and pull out the older cans from the bottom so that I have a first in, first out food rotation. I buy these organizers in bulk and assemble them at home.
Mormon/LDS System
I am not a Mormon, but I do have some distant cousins that are. We do not share the same religious beliefs, but I do admire that the Church of Latter Day Saints believe that they need to be prepared for end times and should keep food storage to take care of their families.
As a group that embraces food storage they have created a thoughtful way to quickly and inexpensively stock a large amount of food. As I developed as a prepper and tried all of the methods listed above I eventually got down to basics. I like the LDS system of getting the basics first and fleshing it out with nice-to-have items later.
The base of the Mormon food storage plan is bulk wheat, salt, sugar, and powdered milk. Once you have a year’s supply of each for everyone in your home you can add extras as money allows. Herbs and spices, dried meats, and dried vegetables can round out your food supply. The only problem I find with the LDS system is that it takes skill to cook from simple wheat, salt, and sugar. There are recipes for them and you can make great meals with those simple items but you need to know what you are doing.
Hybrid System
My own system is a hybrid of these. I have a little of all of the above. The base of my food storage pyramid is dry bulk food centered on the items the Mormons store. The majority of it is safely stored at my homestead. I then have a lot of canned items from my garden and my in-laws’ garden. This tier also contains a lot of dried foods that I made myself. This is split between my “bug out homestead” and my basement. I have a small amount of freeze-dried commercial foods that are all solely at my land.
I keep a relatively large amount of canned goods in my pantry at home, and a smaller amount in a shipping container on my property. This is what I normally eat from. I cook with older cans and replace with newer cans. This ensures a steady rotation and that I buy what I eat and eat what I store. This is probably the best system for most people. It is inexpensive, realistic, and can be built quickly.
Using Wheat
Earlier we talked about the need to use your food storage. This is particularly true if you store a lot of wheat. You need to know how to grind it, how to cook with it, and your body needs to have adjustment time so you don’t shock your intestines and bind yourself up.
You can’t eat unprocessed wheat berries; you will need a grinder.
Flickr: cheeseslave.
Many people that store wheat purchase the cheapest wheat grinder they can get. I started this way myself. A good grinder is expensive and it is hard to justify spending the cost of a handgun or a car payment on something you hope to never use. However, after trying to grind wheat with a cheap hand mill I know exactly why a good grinder is an essential tool if you store bulk wheat. It is much faster, easier, and does an extremely better job.
Three Basic Types of Mills
Impact Grain Mills
Also called a micronizer, impact mills are a popular choice as they are of moderate cost and work at high speed. They only work if you have electricity and they are pretty loud. Impact mills have a chamber with concentric rings of stainless steel fins. The fins spin at tens of thousands of revolutions per minute and when grain impacts the spinning rings they burst into small pieces. This will generate some heat which is a concern for people that want minimally processed foods.
Impact mills cannot grind a cereal texture, or coarser cracked grain as they only produce flour. The flour can typically be adjusted from coarser flour to very fine flour. These mills are suitable for dry grains and beans, but cannot grind oily, wet, or fibrous materials.
The NutriMill Classic and the WonderMill are typical examples of impact mills.
An example of a stone burr millstone.
By Navaro via Wikimedia Commons.
Stone Burr Grain Mills
Stone burr mills come in sizes ranging from small to very large commercial machines. They are both quieter than impact mills and can be hand-cranked so they do not rely on electricity.
Stone burr mills have adjustable stones that rub against each other so they can produce ultra fine and coarser flour. Stone mills can grind cereal or even crack grain. Quality modern millstones are long lasting, cool grinding, and do not add grit to your flour as did the old grist mills our forefathers used.
Stone burr mills grind all dry grains and beans and some can be used for small quantities of fibrous materials such as dried spices. Unfortunately, they aren’t suitable for wet or oily materials.
You can purchase both electric and hand crank stone burr mills. The Wonder Junior Deluxe Hand Mill is an example of a quality stone burr hand mill. It can also be adapted to be a steel burr mill if desired.
Steel Burr Grain Mills
Steel burr mills are built using the same basic form as a stone mill. As such, they are also fairly quiet, and have a wide range of adjustability. Unlike stone mills, few steel burr mills can grind to an ultra fine texture, but there are some exceptions. Also, because steel burrs are nonporous, these mills can grind some materials that are wet, oily, or fibrous.
An example of a steel burr grain millstone.
By Una Smith via Wikimedia Commons.
It is probably my favorite choice for a mill, and I have longed for a Country Living Hand Grain Mill for years. This model runs around $450 but it can easily be adapted to be belt-driven. I have seen many people attach these mills to bicycles.
A Few Words About Water
Many new preppers start by storing food, but as important as food is, it is a distant second to water. You can live for weeks with little food or months on a starvation diet. Without water you will die in days, sometime hours depending on your environment.
Water is something we take for granted. It is cheap and available with a turn of a faucet. It is only when it becomes unavailable that we realize how deeply water impacts our world.
The first step in dealing with the water problem is to store some. Common prepper wisdom is one gallon per person per day. I think that is too low. It does not account for hygiene only cooking and drinking. My small family consists of my wife, my four-year-old son, and myself. I plan on five gallons each day for my family. I have purchased five 5-gallon “jerry can” style water containers. This should be enough for three people to get through four or five days.
Add a quarter-teaspoon of unscented bleach per gallon of water for storage. This is a lot, and more than you would use to purify water for immediate drinking, but bleach breaks down over time so the extra amount ensures that the water is shocked and any biological contaminates are killed after the container is sealed. I rotate my water supply once a year.
Water is an essential part of any disaster plan.
Photo taken by the author.
Water weighs a little more than eight pounds a gallon. It’s bulky, can get contaminated, or it can leak. This means it can be difficult to store for a long-term catastrophe. Because of this you will need to be able to get water as well as store it. Collecting rainwater from your downspouts is a great technique if your local government does not claim ownership of the rain drops. I do this, but I have also bought a bug out location that has springs. In my neighborhood I have found easily accessible creeks, and have acquired the means to both haul and purify water from them. Boiling is an easy way to purify water.
Boiling Water for Drinking
To kill biological contaminates for drinking, cooking, and washing you should bring water to a full rolling boil for one minute. Allow the water to cool before you use it. Cooling boiled water may take thirty minutes, so you may need to plan ahead.
It is important to know that boiling or using bleach only kills biological impurities; it does nothing for chemical contamination. Filtering may help with that, but the only sure method to ensure your water is 100 percent free of all contaminates is to distill it.
Bring your water to a full rolling boil for one minute.
By GRAN via Wikimedia Commons.