Making Basic Food Products
Five Things You Can Do Now
- Purchase a good cooking thermometer and a kitchen scale.
- Acquire a yogurt start and experiment with making yogurt.
- Find recipes for making cheese and gather the supplies you need.
- Try making homemade crackers. Experiment until you find one you like.
- Purchase a tortilla press. Try it out. Use a YouTube video to guide you.
Many of the suggested food storage items are the raw ingredients for the basic foods you may use daily. Knowing how to use these raw ingredients will add variety and enhance your diet. You will find recipes for using these basic ingredients on our website: CrisisPreparedness.com.
Making Milk Products
Powdered milk is a versatile food and the foundation for several milk-based products. And, with just a little knowledge and effort, it can enliven a diet. Making yogurt, buttermilk, or cheese is economical and an excellent way to help use and rotate your powdered milk. One cup of liquid milk makes about one cup of yogurt or buttermilk, and one pound of powdered milk makes about one pound of cheese.
Making Yogurt
Table 20.1
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Yogurt is easy to make, but because it has a sensitive incubation temperature range, it takes some practice to get it to set up properly. You can use whole milk if it is available, but powdered milk also works. You’ll also need an active yogurt culture, a nonreactive pot such as stainless steel, a heat source, a cooking thermometer, and a way to keep the culture warm while it incubates, such as an insulated cooler. For creamier Greek yogurt, you’ll also need cheesecloth. You can invest in a yogurt maker, but that’s not necessary. The best thing to do is experiment with several recipes until you find a method that works for you. You’ll find yogurt-making supplies and equipment listed in table 20.1.
Personally Speaking
When my kids were growing up, I would make yogurt in my Salton thermostat-controlled yogurt incubator, and I learned I had to cover the maker with a kitchen towel to help maintain the right temperature so the yogurt would develop. My daughter makes yogurt for her yogurt-loving girls about once a week, but she doesn’t use anything fancy to incubate the culture, just recycled plastic sour-cream containers and an insulated cooler she uses to keep the yogurt at a constant temperature during incubation. She usually makes the yogurt in the evening, and by morning the yogurt has developed. Once you get a yogurt strain you like, you can continually refresh and replenish it.
Making Buttermilk
A buttermilk substitute can be made from powdered milk using white vinegar or lemon juice and reconstituted skim powdered milk. Simply place four and a half teaspoons of white vinegar or lemon juice in a glass measuring cup and add enough reconstituted powdered milk to make one cup. Stir and let it stand for ten minutes. It works well in baking and salad dressings and any recipe that calls for buttermilk. “Real” buttermilk is made with a buttermilk culture and whole milk. It is less familiar to Americans and usually only available at health-food stores.
Making Cheese
Table 20.2
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Cheese making is an ancient culinary art and is one of those survival skills worth developing. If you anticipate prolonged periods of crisis, you might consider acquiring cheese-making supplies and equipment, especially if you have access to cow, goat, or sheep milk.
Making Cheese from Powdered Milk
Powdered milk can also be used to make fresh soft, hard, and cottage cheese. It is especially a good option for making soft cheeses. However, cheese made from skim milk will be drier, have less flavor, and produce a smaller amount. Be aware that hard cheeses take three to sixth months to age, which may be challenging in a crisis. Because of the high heat used in processing, canned milk is not recommended for cheese making.
Depending on the recipe, you may need buttermilk powder or yogurt powder, lemon juice, vinegar, or citric acid crystals. Cultures keep for a couple of years and are available from internet sources and grocery stores. Again, the best thing to do is experiment until you get the results you want.
The New England Cheese Making Supply Company is an excellent source for all things relating to cheese making. Besides the milk, for basic cheeses, you’ll need the equipment and supplies listed in table 20.2. As cleanliness is critical in cheese making, all equipment must be easy to clean and sterilize.
Making Butter
If you are lucky enough to have cream during a crisis, you may want to make your own butter, which is made by agitating whole milk to separate the butterfat from the liquid and milk solids. Making butter was a weekly task in the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century. Butter was churned in a glass jar fitted with a metal crank and wooden blades. Electric and manual butter churns are available today but are expensive.
Used, vintage Dazey Butter Churns are sold as collectors’ items, but practical reproductions, such as the Lehman’s Dazey Butter Churn (pictured), are also available. A blender, mixer, eggbeater, or plain glass jar can do the same thing. Butter molds are also useful.
Making Grain Products
Table 20.3
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Type of Flour |
Percent of Protein |
Bread It’s |
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All-purpose white |
10.5%—11.7% |
Sandwich bread |
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Bread flour |
12.0%—12.7% |
Rustic, hearth loaves |
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Whole-wheat flour |
14% |
Substantial, wheaty bread |
Making Bread
The art of making quality bread is also a skill worth cultivating. There are many nuances to making high-quality bread, but with just a little experimentation and persistence, you can achieve fantastic results with just a few simple ingredients from your home food storage. Table 20.3 lists types of flour and the kinds of bread they are used for.
The structure of bread depends on the amount of protein, or gluten, in the flour. Unbleached, all-purpose white flour has less protein and makes a bread with a soft texture. “Bread flour” has a higher percentage of protein, or gluten, and makes a more robust artisan bread. If white bread is your preferred bread, you’ll need to store white flour and rotate it since its shelf life is only six months to a year.
Whole-wheat flour has an even higher protein content and makes a hearty, nutty-flavored bread. It’s the ideal bread to partner with your long-term wheat food storage because it will help you use and rotate your stored wheat.
Equipment and Supplies
Table 20.4
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You will need a grain mill to make whole wheat bread. And if you are going to make bread regularly and rotate your food storage, you’ll want a heavy-duty mixer that can handle bread dough. See chapter 19 for a complete discussion of grain mills and mixers.
Table 20.4 lists other tools and equipment that make bread making easier. You will need four to six quality loaf pans. Loaf pans come in metal, nonstick, glass, and ceramic. Light-colored metal pans will prevent crusts from getting too dark. Glass and ceramic are attractive but do not conduct heat as well as aluminum.
Breadtopia
Breadtopia.com is a website that is devoted to bread making. The tutorials, recipes, and baking guides will support you in your bread-making endeavors, and their online store offers you a large selection of breadmaking tools and supplies. They specialize in unique heirloom, ancient, and specialty grains.
Making Crackers
Crackers add variety to many meals but are not easy to store because of their short shelf life. But they are simple to make and require just a few supplies and tools. You will need a rolling pin, parchment paper, a pizza cutter, and cookie sheets. Experiment with the basic recipe and decide which toppings you should include in your food storage.
King Arthur Flour has an excellent guide to making crackers on their blog, www.kingarthurflour.com. They offer several recipes and give you helpful tips.
Making Tortillas
Flour tortillas are made with regular white flour, corn tortillas with masa harina. Being able to make them will add variety to your menu during a prolonged emergency.
Flour tortillas are traditionally made from white flour but can also be made from whole wheat or a combination of white and wheat flour. The other main ingredient is solid fat—usually lard, butter, or shortening—which is needed to coat the flour to prevent gluten from developing and making the tortillas hard to roll out.
Corn tortillas are made with masa harina, which has a shelf life similar to flour—about one year. It should be kept in a closed container and, if possible, in the freezer. You will need a pastry blender and a few basic cooking tools. A tortilla press, as opposed to a rolling pin, makes it easier to get thin, flat tortillas. Experiment with tortilla recipes until you find one you are confident with.
Personally Speaking
Tortillas are one of my solutions for a quick meal. I have learned firsthand how good homemade tortillas can be because one of my friends of Mexican heritage generously shares hers with me. Making homemade tortillas is a skill worth developing! I feel fortunate that she was willing to share her recipe. Like other good cooks, she estimates the amounts and just has a feel for when it is right. Her recipe is made with simple ingredients. She starts with 3 cups of flour, then adds about ¼ cup of vegetable shortening or lard (she prefers
lard), 1 teaspoon of baking powder, and 1 teaspoon of salt, plus her secret ingredient — 1 teaspoon of sugar. She adds enough water, about 1½ cups, to make a soft ball of dough. The recipe makes a dozen tortillas, depending on size. For a more detailed recipe, see our website: CrisisPreparedness.com.
Making Pasta
The recommended shelf life of pasta is one to two years, but if you can make your own, you won’t have to rely only on store-bought pasta. Although pasta is traditionally made with white flour, it can also be made with whole-wheat flour. There are lots of helpful pasta-making tips on YouTube. It is possible to make pasta completely by hand with just a rolling pin and knife, but for ease and more refined pasta, consider a hand-crank pasta machine, such as the Marcato Atlas 150 Pasta Machine (pictured). You may also want a ravioli attachment.
Personally Speaking
My daughter has mastered the art of making ravioli. She really liked the homemade pasta in restaurants and decided she would figure out how to make it herself. Her recipe is basic—120 grams of flour to one egg, with a little less flour if she is making noodles. One of her daughters likes pumpkin ravioli, which has a filling made of half pumpkin, half ricotta. But be warned—it is time intensive. But it’s so good it’s still worth it.
Cooking with Beans
Dry beans are extremely easy to prepare and cost about one-fifth the price of canned beans.
Some people are intimidated by cooking with dry beans. But there are a few secrets that make cooking beans much easier. The first is to think ahead and start soaking the beans the night before. The second is to cook them with good seasonings. It takes about two hours to cook the beans on your stovetop. Or you can cook them in a crockpot all day long. And using a pressure cooker eliminates the need for soaking and speeds up the process. For more information about cooking with beans, refer to our website, CrisisPreparedness.com.
Although beans are a great addition to your food storage, they can cause gastrointestinal discomfort in some people due to the presence of certain indigestible carbohydrates that ferment in the colon and produce gas. See the Quick Check for tips on how to make bean more digestible.