ELEVEN

USING YOUR FOOD STORAGE

When you have even a small supply of food built up, you may want to just stand back and admire it. After all, it took a lot of planning and effort to build up that food storage! But food storage is not a museum piece. The reason you store food is not to have it sit on a shelf for the rest of your life. You store food to eat it.

TIPS FOR ROTATING

Rotation is the process of continually using the oldest food in your storage and replacing it with fresh food. By doing this, your storage is never depleted and is always as fresh as it can be. Rotation can be a little tricky, so here are some tips for successful food storage rotation.

1. Store what you eat. If your family will never use quinoa, don’t store a bunch of it in your food storage. Be aware of allergies or food restrictions, and store the foods you will use in your regular cooking. Remember the classic food storage adage: Store what you eat and eat what you store.
2. Know how to use what you store. If you are storing wheat, learn how to make something you love with it. If you want to start storing a food you’ve never eaten before, open the first package of it and experiment with some different recipes and uses. That way you’ll know if you want to purchase and store more of that food. If you do, and it becomes a regular part of your food storage, you’ll be excited to use it.
3. Date your containers. Keep a small permanent marker near your food storage room or have one handy as you unload groceries, and write the date on anything that is going in the food storage. Usually the month and year are sufficient. You could also use your marker to circle the printed expiration dates.
4. Use rotation shelving. We covered rotation shelving in depth in chapter ten. Load new food in one side and pull from the other side and you’ll always get the oldest cans first.
5. Perform periodic rotation maintenance. Reorganize your food storage areas every shopping trip, every six months, or just after major purchases. Move older items to the front and put newer foods behind or in the areas that are difficult to reach. Spending time getting to the back corners of your food storage room also lets you do a deep clean of the storage areas and will reveal any sign of pests.
6. Use a food storage tracking program or app like Prep & Pantry that alerts you of upcoming expiration dates in your stored food.

There is no finish line with food storage. You don’t reach a point and declare yourself the winner. In a good food storage plan, food is constantly being used and replaced. If it is not rotated, you can end up with foods that you cannot use. Rotating your food storage will prevent waste and keep your supply of food storage as fresh as possible, ensuring that you have food ready to be eaten when you need it.

Shelf-Stable Substitutions

Fruits and Vegetables

Substitute fresh fruits and vegetables with home or commercially canned versions, or use dehydrated or freeze-dried or frozen versions when available.

Dairy

PERISHABLE FOOD	SHELF-STABLE SUBSTITUTION
Butter	Canned butter, butter powder (not for baking), oil
Cheese	Canned cheese, freeze-dried cheese, dry Parmesan cheese
Cream	Heavy cream powder, powdered milk
Milk	Powdered milk
Sour cream	Powdered sour cream, homemade plain yogurt
Eggs	Powdered egg, unflavored gelatin (1 tbsp. gelatin + 3 tbsp. water = 1 egg)

Meat

PERISHABLE FOOD	SHELF-STABLE SUBSTITUTION
Bacon	Canned bacon, TVP* bacon bits
Beef	Home or commercially canned beef, freeze-dried beef chunks
Chicken	Home or commercially canned chicken, freeze-dried chicken, chicken TVP
Fish	Canned tuna, canned salmon, freeze-dried salmon
Ground beef	Home-canned ground beef, freeze-dried ground beef
Ham	Freeze-dried ham, ham TVP, bacon bits, canned ham
Pork	Home or commercially canned pork
Sausage	Freeze-dried sausage, sausage TVP

TVP is an acronym for textured vegetable protein, also occasionally called textured soy protein (TSP) or soy meat.

Cooking With Food Storage

Don’t be afraid of using food storage in your cooking. With a little practice, you’ll be making dinner from shelf-stable foods on a regular basis. Here are some general tips to get you started:

1. When substituting canned foods for fresh, drain the liquid from the cans prior to use.
2. Canned foods are already cooked, so their cooking times are less than that of fresh foods.
3. When substituting dehydrated foods for fresh, remember dehydrated foods are smaller than their fresh counterparts. Refer to the Dry to Fresh Conversion Table in the appendix for help converting measurements when using dehydrated foods. Dehydrated foods will need to cook for twenty minutes or longer with ample liquid to fully reconstitute.
4. When substituting freeze-dried foods for fresh, the flavor and texture will be similar to using frozen substitutes. Most freeze-dried foods reconstitute very quickly in either warm or cold water.
5. When substituting powdered foods for liquids such as milk, tomato sauce, and sour cream, reconstitute the powder into liquid form prior to use in the recipe. If used in baking, the dry powder can be mixed in with the other dry ingredients as long as you increase the amount of liquid required for the recipe by the amount that would have been used to reconstitute the powdered food. Refer to the Dry to Fresh Conversion Table for mixing ratios for powdered products.

Expiration Dates and Bad Food

Expiration dates stamped on canned foods are not some magical date that your food suddenly isn’t safe to eat anymore. Best by and sell by dates are guidelines for peak food freshness, but food has been shown to stay good long past the stamped expiration date. However, most food does eventually go bad. Here’s how to identify food that should not be consumed:

• can or lid is bulging, or excessive pressure is released when can is opened
• seal is broken
• can shows signs of corrosion
• food seeping from can seals
• food looks bad, moldy, or cloudy
• food smells bad after opening
• visual signs of insect infestation in dry foods like webbing, larva, or exoskeleton debris

If your food is not edible, all is not lost. Use it to feed animals like chickens or pigs, or if it is not greasy, add it to a compost pile to enrich your gardening soil.

CONVERTING RECIPES

Almost any recipe can be made food storage friendly by substituting shelf-stable foods for the perishable fresh items in the recipe. The end result is your very own food storage recipe collection made from meals your family already eats.

See the Shelf-Stable Substitutions sidebar for a list of the more common shelf-stable substitutions. Here’s how to use the substitutions to make your own favorite recipes into shelf-stable food storage recipes.

1. Start with a recipe. Most recipes can be converted to food storage, but some, like a fresh green salad, won’t work with only shelf-stable ingredients.
2. Identify the perishable ingredients. Anything that requires refrigeration or doesn’t store well will need to be replaced with a shelf-stable alternative.
3. Determine the best shelf-stable substitute. Some things can be substituted very easily; other items you may need to substitute with something similar. Minor ingredients can be omitted from the recipe if there is no good alternative. If a primary ingredient cannot be substituted, you may need to choose another recipe to convert. Calculate measures of shelf-stable products and extra water requirements if necessary. If using dehydrated or powered substitutes, refer to the Dry to Fresh Conversion Table in the appendix for measurements.
4. Test it out. It may not work perfectly the first time and will usually taste a little different than the original. Make any adjustments to the recipe and save it to use in your food storage plan.

To see how food storage recipe conversion works, let’s convert a couple of recipes together. We’ll start with a soup and then make a casserole food storage friendly.

Clam Chowder Soup Recipe Conversion

Soups are one of the easiest recipes to convert to shelf-stable food storage recipes. The recipes already plan for foods to be boiling in water, so swapping dried foods for fresh might change the amount of liquid required, but doesn’t change the cooking process much. Here’s how to convert a recipe:

1. Start with a recipe. For this example, we’ll use Grandma Paskett’s Clam Chowder recipe found in the sidebar.
2. Identify the perishable ingredients. In this recipe, the following ingredients are not shelf-stable: potatoes, celery, carrot, onion, butter, milk.
3. Determine the best shelf-stable substitutions. Most foods in this recipe have dehydrated or freeze-dried options. Freeze-dried foods reconstitute faster than dehydrated foods, so the soup will need to boil longer if you choose to use dehydrated foods. Amounts of dried foods to use for substituting are estimates.

   • Potatoes. The potatoes in the recipe are diced, so use either dehydrated or freeze-dried diced potatoes. You’ll get approximately 3 cups of potato dices from those two large potatoes and that will be equal to about 3 cups of freeze-dried potato dices or 1¹⁄₂ cups of dehydrated potato dices. If you only have shreds or slices, those can be used as well, just break the slices into smaller pieces before cooking.

   • Celery. Two stalks of celery equal about 1 cup of diced celery. Substitute 1 cup of freeze-dried celery or ¹⁄₄ cup of dehydrated celery.

   • Carrot. One large carrot is approximately ¹⁄₂ cup shredded carrot. There are not freeze-dried carrots they don’t like the freeze-drying process and turn white—so we’ll substitute about ¹⁄₄ cup dehydrated carrots. Unless you dehydrated your own shredded carrot, your dehydrated carrots are probably diced. You could run these through a blender to break them up or just use them as carrot dices in your soup instead of shreds.

   • Onion. One medium onion is about ²⁄₃ cup chopped onion. Substitute with approximately ⅔ cup freeze-dried onion, 3 tablespoons dried onion, or 2 teaspoons onion powder.

   • Butter. The butter is used as fat for making a sauce, so powdered butter, which does not melt, won’t work as a substitute. Replace the butter with an oil and add butter powder to the soup for flavoring if desired.

   • Milk. The powdered milk in my cupboard is an instant milk that calls for 3 tablespoons per cup, but be sure to check your can for mixing instructions—powdered milk has one of the widest variances in mixing ratios between brands of any dried food. With my milk it will take 9 tablespoons of milk and 3 cups of water to substitute for 3 cups of milk.

Grandma Paskett’s Clam Chowder

Ingredients

2 large potatoes diced

2 stalks celery diced

1 large carrot grated

1 onion diced

2 cans clams

¹⁄₂ tsp. thyme

1 tsp. salt

Pepper to taste

White Sauce

³⁄₄ cup butter

¹⁄₂ cup flour

3 cups milk

Instructions

1. Cook vegetables in a pot with enough water to cover them plus the juice from the clam cans.
2. Make white sauce by heating butter, stirring in flour, adding milk, and heating until thick. Add white sauce to the vegetables. Add clams and seasonings.

With the substitutions, here is the new food storage friendly clam chowder recipe, found in the Shelf-Stable Clam Chowder Conversion sidebar. Be sure to test the converted recipe to make sure you like the results. If you find areas that don’t work well as you cook or substitutions that needed more or less dried product, make a note for the next time you make that recipe.

Shelf-Stable Clam Chowder Conversion

Ingredients

1¹⁄₂ cups dehydrated potato dices

¹⁄₄ cup dehydrated celery

¹⁄₄ cup dehydrated carrot

3 tbsp. dried onion

2 cans clams

¹⁄₂ tsp. thyme

1 tsp. salt

Pepper to taste

White Sauce

³⁄₄ cup oil

¹⁄₂ cup flour

¹⁄₂ cup butter powder (optional)

9 tbsp. powdered milk plus 3 cups water

Instructions

1. Cook vegetables in a pot with twice as much water as vegetables plus the juice from the clam cans. Cook until tender adding more water as needed.
2. Make white sauce by heating oil, stirring in flour, adding milk powder, optional butter powder, and water (may need to be whisked) and heating until thick. Add white sauce to the vegetables. Add clams and seasonings.

Turkey Tetrazzini Casserole

Ingredients

8 oz. spaghetti, broken into bite-sized pieces

5 tbsp. butter

6 tbsp. flour

3 cups chicken broth

1 cup cream

1 tsp. salt

Pepper to taste

1 cup mushrooms

¹⁄₂ cup green pepper

3 cups cooked turkey

¹⁄₂ cup Parmesan cheese

¹⁄₂ cup cheddar cheese

Instructions

1. Cook spaghetti in boiling water per instructions on box.
2. In a skillet, melt butter and blend in flour. Stir in broth and add cream. Cook until thickened.
3. Add salt, pepper, cooked spaghetti, mushrooms, peppers, and turkey and heat through.
4. Put entire contents of skillet into a 9" × 13" (23cm × 33cm) pan and sprinkle the top with cheeses. Bake at 350°F (177°C) for thirty minutes.

Turkey Tetrazzini Casserole Recipe Conversion

Now let’s convert a casserole recipe. Using the conversion steps again, start with a recipe. We’ll use one of my family’s favorite recipes for Turkey Tetrazzini Casserole (see sidebar).

In this recipe, the following ingredients are not shelf-stable and need an appropriate substitute: butter, cream, mushrooms, green pepper, cooked turkey, cheddar cheese. Chicken broth (canned) and Parmesan cheese have shelf lives of less than three years and could also be substituted.

Shelf-Stable Turkey Tetrazzini Casserole

Ingredients

8 oz. spaghetti, broken up into bite-sized pieces

5 tbsp. oil

3–4 tbsp. butter powder (optional)

6 tbsp. flour

3 cups chicken broth or 3 tsp. bouillon plus 3 cups water

4 tbsp. powdered milk plus 1 cup water

1 tsp. salt

Pepper to taste

1 cup freeze-dried mushrooms

¹⁄₂ cup freeze-dried green pepper

3 cups freeze-dried turkey chunks

¹⁄₂ cup Parmesan cheese

¹⁄₂ cup freeze-dried cheddar cheese

Instructions

1. Cook spaghetti in boiling water per the instructions on the box.
2. In a dish, reconstitute mushrooms, peppers, and turkey, draining any excess water.
3. In a separate dish, reconstitute freeze-dried cheddar cheese, draining any excess water.
4. In a skillet, heat oil and blend in flour. Stir in broth (or water and bouillon) and add powdered milk and water (may need to whisk it in). Cook until thickened.
5. Add salt, pepper, cooked spaghetti, reconstituted mushrooms, peppers, and turkey to thickened broth and heat through.
6. Put into a 9" × 13" (23cm × 33cm) pan and sprinkle the top with cheeses. Bake at 350°F (177°C) for thirty minutes.

Now determine the best shelf-stable substitutions.

• Butter. This butter is being used as a fat for thickening the sauce, so powdered butter, which does not melt, won’t work as a substitution. Substitute a shelf-stable oil like vegetable oil or coconut oil. Butter powder can be added to the sauce for flavoring if desired.

• Cream. Heavy cream powder or powdered milk can both be used. Powdered milk is more common and has a longer shelf life. Mix the powdered milk at a higher powder-to-water ratio than normal to substitute for cream. The powdered milk I’m using is an instant milk that calls for 3 tablespoons per cup. Raise the amount to 4 or 5 tablespoons to mix a cup of cream.

• Mushrooms. One 8-oz. can of mushrooms is around a cup. Or use 1 cup freeze-dried mushrooms or about ¹⁄₂ cup dehydrated mushrooms. Because this is not a soup that will boil with plenty of liquid for fifteen minutes or more, rehydrate the freeze-dried or dehydrated mushrooms before adding them.

• Green pepper. Substitute with either ¹⁄₂ cup freeze-dried or ¹⁄₄ cup dehydrated green pepper. Boiling the dehydrated peppers prior to adding them will tenderize them and keep them from being tough.

• Cooked turkey. Use 3 cups of freeze-dried turkey or freeze-dried chicken, or 1 cup chicken TVP. Reconstitute either before adding them to a casserole recipe.

• Cheddar cheese. The cheese in this recipe is melted on the top, so a cheese powder won’t work. Use ¹⁄₂ cup shredded canned cheese or rehydrate ¹⁄₂ cup of freeze-dried cheddar cheese.

• Broth. Use cans or mix using bouillon powder or cubes. Add 1 teaspoon powder or 1 bouillon cube to 1 cup of water to make a cup of broth. This recipe would need 3 teaspoons bouillon powder or 3 bouillon cubes plus 3 cups of water.

• Parmesan cheese. If you need to substitute this, use additional freeze-dried or canned cheese or omit from the recipe.

These substitutions are reflected in the Shelf-Stable Turkey Tetrazzini Casserole sidebar. Cook the new recipe and make sure it works for you. Note any adjustments in amounts or cooking methods for the next time.

Now you should be ready to tackle one of your own favorite recipes. Using your food storage to cook recipes your family already loves helps you know which foods to store and how to use them. Plus you’ll have a little less palate shock if you ever need to use your food storage exclusively.

POWERLESS COOKING METHODS

Many emergency situations will result in the loss of electricity. The majority of your food storage still needs to be cooked. Making a plan for cooking without electricity will help ensure you’re not eating all your food storage cold and raw. So here are some options for cooking when there is no electricity.

1. Fire. Build a fire in a fire pit, barrel, or other enclosure so you don’t add an uncontrolled fire to your emergency! Do not cook your food over fuel that produces toxic fumes as it burns like tires or carpet. Roast your food on a stick, or use a metal grate or tripod over your fire and cook in sturdy pots and pans.
2. Wood or coal stove. The flat top of a wood or coal stove can be used to cook like a range. An antique wood-burning kitchen stove would be ideal, but a stove built to heat a home with a flat top would work as well. Cooking on a wood stove will serve the dual purpose of heating your home as well—perfect for a winter emergency.
3. Rocket stove. Rocket stoves are designed to burn biomass fuel like sticks, but use less of it than an open fire. You can make your own rocket stove, or purchase one like the EcoZoom stove. Volcano Stoves use a similar fuel-conserving design as a rocket stove and are also available with a propane adaptor for an additional fuel option.
   

   EcoZoom Versa rocket stove

4. A barbecue grill. An outdoor grill, either gas or charcoal, is a simple powerless cooking option many of us already use regularly. But it’s not just for steaks and burgers. Any food small enough to fall through the grate can be cooked in foil or a pan over the heat source.
5. Camping stove. With styles ranging from pocket-sized backpacking stoves to briefcase-style double burner stoves, there’s surely one of these portable stoves that will fit your needs for preparedness and maybe even make itself a regular participant on your camping trips as well. Larger camping stoves, like those built by Camp Chef, use the same propane tanks as a gas grill, increasing your cooking options with the same fuel you may already have on hand. Each of these camping stoves uses a specific fuel, so be sure you have sufficient fuel stored to be able to use your stove when you need it.
6. Gas range. If you have a gas range in your kitchen and the gas lines are not damaged, you can use that range in your home for cooking. Just bypass the electronic ignition and light it with a match or other fire starter. A gas oven will not work without power, only the stove top.
7. Solar oven. Make a solar oven or purchase one like the All American Sun Oven. Solar ovens magnify the heat from the sun and work on sunny days in any season. In winter months, your best cooking time is between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., so plan your meals accordingly. A solar oven can cook anything you’d put in your normal oven and can also be used to dehydrate foods and pasteurize water.
   

   Sun Oven solar cooker

8. WonderBox or HayBox. After food has reach the correct temperature or water has been brought to a boil with one of the previous cooking methods, placing the pot into one of these insulated containers allows the food to continue cooking without using additional fuel.

Having alternate methods of cooking the food you have stored will give you the ability to have a hot meal even when the power is out. And I don’t know about you, but for me a hot meal beats cold soup in a can any day.

SUMMARY

Throughout this book, we have covered many options for storing food. Remember, food storage is not one-size-fits-all. Each of us is in a different situation. Some live in an apartment in the city, some in a big house in the country, and most of us live somewhere in between. We are young, not-so-young, single, married, or have families or friends we want to take care of. With the information you are holding in your hand, I believe each of you can make wise choices to provide food for your own family, allowing you to be more self-reliant and prepared for whatever lies ahead.