If you are interested in beginning a food storage, there are a few different ways you can go about doing this. The first and most common is canning.
Canning is a great way to keep things like wheat and flour safe and airtight for the future. However, you cannot can everything-fruits and vegetables for instance are not always the most fresh when canned.
For this reason, you should look into the latest and greatest method of food preservation: freeze drying. In commercial freeze drying, foods are flash frozen and dried in a vacuum to convert internal moisture from a solid to a gas without passing through the liquid state.
This process preserves nutrients in the food and makes it hard to tell the difference between a fresh meal and a freeze-dried one that has been rehydrated. Although it is too expensive and impractical to duplicate this process in your home, you can get a similar result with your freezer and a vacuum sealer.
To begin, make drying trays. Use an awl or ice pick to puncture the bottom, sides and top of disposable roasting trays.
The hole spacing should be a quarter inch or less so that your tins look like a screen. This will circulate the air evenly so your produce dries out quickly.
If you have cake cooling racks or metal mesh trays, you can use them as well. Next, prep your produce.
Wash, peel and slice your produce, making sure to remove the pith (soft spongy center), core and any bad parts. You will need very fine slices that have a thickness that is a quarter inch or less.
Leave your citrus fruits in wedges and your berries whole, but any broccoli or cauliflower clusters shouldn't be bigger than your index finger. Pat your prepped produce dry with some paper towels.
For the next step, load your produce. Arrange the produce on your roasting trays or cooling racks so that it fills up the space without contact between the slices.
Fill all the trays in the same way before putting the lids back on, but do not put different fruits and vegetables on the same tray. You can stack the roasting tins in your freezer since the holes will allow air to pass through them.
Adjust your freezer's temperature to its maximum. Next, it is important to test your produce.
After three weeks have passed, take a sample from each tin or rack and see if it darkens. If it does, your produce is not dry and you should leave it in for a few more weeks.
When you can remove samples from the freezer without a change in color, your produce is ready. The sealing process comes next.
Get out your vacuum sealer and pull on the roll of bags until you have a section that is three inches larger than the produce you will be sealing. Cut off this section and put an end in the sealer, then press the button to seal it.
Now fill the bag with your produce and put the open end in the sealer. Press the button again to suck the air out of the bag and seal the open end.
If you do not have a freezer, you can freeze-dry your produce by putting it in freezer bags between layers of dry ice in a small cooler. It should be frozen in thirty minutes, but you will need to check it to make sure it is hard.
You must be very careful when you are handling any dry ice. It can cause terrible burns and injuries if you are careless.
Touch dry ice only with insulated gloves. If you handle it with your bare hands, you will get frostbite!
By following these simple steps, you can ensure that when emergency or disaster strikes, you will have foods that contain the vitamins and minerals that you need to stay healthy and survive. With a process this simple and even fun, there is no reason why you should not prepare now for your future.
You do not want to be filled with regret when the time comes and you have nothing healthy to eat by carbs and starches. Take the necessary steps now to protect yourself, and your family.
Author Resource:-
Terry Daniels is an accomplished expert in family preparedness and has been giving seminars for over 15 years. He recommendsFreeze Dried Foods to be included in your emergency food storage.
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