Category: Food Storage & Cooking

Letter: Food Storage Question on Mason Jars

Hello, Hugh, I’ve been following Sarah’s articles on food storage with interest,and learning a great deal from them. My question is this: Has your family performed any food storage involving vacuum-sealing “wet” food in mason jars and freezing them? I’m wondering if putting hamburger and chicken in mason jars, vacuum-packing them, and freezing them is a reasonable long-term storage solution (assuming electricity exists to maintain storage temperatures at 0F or below). If such a procedure is feasible, are there any cautions I should be aware of? I would guess that, since water expands as it freezes, the jars should not …


Letter Re: Dry Canning

Hello Hugh and Sarah, Do you sterilize your jars before using when dry canning? Do you boil or use dry heat (oven)? Wonderful articles! I’m converting. I’ve had too many reservations about the mylar bags. Have done a lot with them but some don’t seem to pull a vacuum. It makes me question whether they are truly sealed. In fact, I wonder about whether I should repackage everything in jars. Yikes. We’re talking a 300-400 half gallon bags. – P.B. HJL Comments: We don’t use water bath canning as a general rule so we don’t worry too much about sterilization. …


Using Canning Jars For All Food Stores and More-Part 3, by Sarah Latimer

Managing Your Jarred Larder Moving a single jar at a time is cumbersome when managing so many. I have kept the original Ball cardboard boxes that the jars came in because they assist in moving multiple jars and placing them on shelves easily, but we are gentle with them to help them last. Occasionally they require some reinforcement with duct tape or replacement altogether; however, so far, most have held up well for a minimum of four years. Labels can easily be placed on the ends of the Ball boxes, identifying the contents and their dates, so that it is …


Letter Re: Vacuum Sealing Mason Type Jars

Dear HJL, I own my own freeze dryer and with this I seal a lot of food in glass jars. The best way I have found to seal in bulk is something I built. I took an old pressure cooker with a good seal on the lid. I removed all the pressure cooking fittings on top of the lid. I then installed a vacuum gauge with a tee fitting and a ball valve to relieve the vacuum later in the process. I also installed a fitting with a 1/4 flare end. I then attach the flare connection to a vacuum …


Letter Re: Canning Jars

Hugh, As I was reading a recent SurvivalBlog post on the many uses of canning jars, I remembered that in my childhood days the ladies doing the canning would sometimes use melted paraffin poured over the top of the food instead of using metal lids. (They also used metal lids.) So maybe the wax only on the sweet stuff like jellies, etc.? Maybe only on smaller size, smaller mouthed, recycled, jars? As I remember it they would keep the paraffin, wash it, and reuse it the next year. Has anybody used this style of sealing lately? – K.S. HJL’s Comment: …


Using Canning Jars For All Food Stores and More – Part 2, by Sarah Latimer

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What We Store In Jars Dry, bulk goods. This category of items includes grains, dried pasta, dried potato flakes, dry beans, and rice for long-term storage. We buy these in 40- and 50-pound bags from the Mormon storehouse, Costco, and online vendors and then repackage them into the half gallon jars, which are then vacuum sealed, using our FoodSaver Jar Sealer connected to an electric vacuum pump system that Hugh installed into my kitchen. It takes less than a minute to put the lid on, vacuum seal a jar, and put the ring on. All I have to do at …


Letter Re: Food Preservation

Good afternoon, Hugh, Recently SurvivalBlog has presented several articles on food preservation, including extremely informative ones from your wife, Sarah. I’ve become curious about a few things: Is there a minimum vacuum level necessary for food preservation? (This assumes other factors, such as the lack of heat-based canning procedures are not necessary for preservation.) Are there advantages to purging air from a food container with nitrogen? If so, is there a recommended procedure for that? Does vacuum sealing after nitrogen purging offer additional advantages? You have tested and reported on a commercially available home freeze dryer; how much preservation time …


Letter Re: Vacuum Sealing Jars and Feed Store Grain

Good morning, Hugh, I enjoyed and learned a little more from Sarah Latimer’s post. I’m interested in the method used to create a vacuum in the canning jars when dry canning. We have arrived at the same place you have– to use glass jars. We have canned many jars of dehydrated apples and other items by heating the jars in an oven to 300 degrees and sterilizing the lids, filling the jars with the contents, and tightening the lids quickly. This has worked well 95% of the time. We have heard of various devices to place a vacuum on jars, …


Using Canning Jars For All Food Stores and More-Part 1, by Sarah Latimer

Those who have been following my writings probably have figured out by now that I have a great deal of respect for efficiency and resourcefulness. It is my nature to pursue these. With the garden growing and an abundant surplus of fruits and vegetables just around the corner, the preservation of these is on my mind, as it has been annually this time of year since I first began gardening long ago. The process needs to have high quality results but be done efficiently and use as little precious storage space as possible, too. In the past, we’ve tried every …


Letter: The Importance Of Food And The Ability To Grow And Process Food

Dear Hugh: The situation in Venezuela has a precedent. When the Kuomintang Army remnants fled to Taiwan in 1949, they brought tons of paper money and spent it freely, resulting in a rapid hyperinflation. During that time only food had any value and nothing else, not PMs, weapons, ammo, fine art, you name it. Now for those who have some arable land (or neighbors that do) I figure veggie seeds, fertilizer, and stabilized diesel will have considerable value in that they can be used to grow food. It is for this reason that each year we save many gallons of …


Nutritious Homemade Dog Treats and Food Using Mainly Scraps, by Sarah Latimer

In this day when everything seems to cost so much more than it did twenty or even five years ago and we all work harder than ever to make ends meet, I just can’t stand waste. Beyond that, I think I was born with a love for efficiency and resourcefulness. These are traits I highly esteem in individuals and strive to accomplish myself, and I know Hugh appreciates that I am able to stretch our dollars further than many others know how to do. So, let me share how I apply this to our beloved and useful dogs. While I …


Letter Re: Pantry Building Basics

HJL, This was an excellent article to which I would add home freeze drying (fd). Canning fresh foods is a lot of work, but you know what went into those canning jars. Freeze drying at home is almost no work and is fun, in addition to you having the knowledge of what went into those jars. A home freeze dryer costs less than $3,000; that’s less than a one year’s supply of commercial fd food for one person. You can fd almost any food at home. Imagine ice cream sandwiches after the SHTF! Those cans of commercial foods that are …


Letter: Discounted Freeze Dried Food Sources

Hugh, I’m reasonably sure lots of your readers are aware, but just in case… Costco (online) has lots of freeze dried foods at really good prices compared to other vendors online. Apparently they buy overstock from many suppliers. Anyway, I just got a case of six #10 cans of Mountain House Breakfast Skillet for $149 with UPS shipping included in the price. Also, I got a case of MH Chicken Stew for $139, with the same free shipping deal. The prices of these items are usually between $185 and $200 PLUS shipping at three of the popular online providers. (I …


Hawkins Pressure Cooker, by Pat and Mary Cascio

We’ve owned several travel trailers over the years but hardly ever went out camping. We live in the boonies, and I sincerely love where I live. There is no need for me to go any place else to enjoy myself. Basically, we used travel trailers as mobile bug out retreats, if the time ever came, or as a spare “bedroom” for guests. Approximately a year ago, we acquired a newer 21-foot travel trailer that has everything I wanted, except a/c, which would have been nice. (I still might have it installed and spend hot summer nights sleeping in it in …


Response to Making a Final Run, by Jim Fry

I must confess that I haven’t had a chance to read every single post on “Making a Final Run”. A farm in winter can be a very busy place. So I hope I’m not just repeating someone else. In the main I agree with most posters, a final run is possibly/probably not a good idea, maybe. If you’re talking about a last run to Walmart, then maybe you run the chance of getting into the middle of where you don’t want to be. However, there are lots of other sorts of “final runs”, such as to the bank, the gas …