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Oils

Oils are another important culinary product to pay attention to. To start, I want to address one issue with oils– they will turn rancid. They don’t store a long long time before this happens; a few months is enough in the wrong conditions. That being said, rancid oil is still okay to use. It will just have a slightly off flavor that many Americans are already used to. (Google Americans Rancid Oil and see what comes up.) The risk of eating oil that has turned are cancer-causing free radicals, but that is a whole different issue.

Regardless, oil is important to our diets and to your EOTWAWKI preparation for two reasons. The first is that a post-apocalyptic America is likely to be lacking in the fats and oils we commonly consume today, many of which are essential to life. You need to have some on hand until you get a supply of bear fat or other natural oils. The second is that oil is needed to perform many of the more advanced, and delicious, culinary techniques. Boiled rice is fine but add a little sesame oil (Asian flavor profile) or olive oil (Mediterranean/European flavor profile) and it is much more palatable and nutritious. Taken to the next level, plain old rice is fine to survive on, but fried rice or hash is a meal.

An Old Chef’s Saying: “The fat is were the flavor is.” Most of the flavors we know are in fact some form of fat or lipid. Think of the difference in flavor between a lean piece of beef and a well marbled rib eye; it’s different, right? Using oils to cook will unlock food flavors; heat spices or herbs gently in a pan with a drizzle of oil before adding vegetables, and then use a drizzle of oil when sauteing meat or vegetables to get some of the “brown” on them. The brown bits in the bottom of the pan, known as fond, is loaded with flavor and should never be discarded and always encouraged. At culinary school, we were taught that we’re “fond” of it”, especially when making hearty stews and soups. It is by far the easiest and simplest way to flavor food.

Perhaps the best oil to stock up on in bulk is peanut oil, due to its clean flavor and high smoke point (it doesn’t burn as easily), although you will need to take into consideration any allergies that may exist in your group. Five gallons of this will cost about $30. My next choice would be a safflower, corn, sunflower, or other common vegetable oil, which will each cost about the same for a 5-gallon container. After this there are some other oils nice to have around. I’ve already mentioned sesame oil for Asian style meals. One liter will cost about $12, but be sure to get toasted sesame oil since the plain variety is just another vegetable oil. There are some other varieties such as grapeseed, flax, avocado, and various nut oils. They each have culinary purpose but are not overly important in terms of enhancing your ability to create great flavors.

Olive oil comes in a variety of qualities, ranging from blended oil to pomace oil to virgin and extra virgin. There is the difference. Blended oil is a blend of some type of olive oil and a regular vegetable oil. When buying, be sure to note what the blend is 80/20, 70/30, pomace, virgin, or other. Extra Virgin Olive Oil is the highest quality; it is made by gently pressing the olives so that only the best oil is recovered. It is often a deep green color, due to vegetable impurities, which give it flavor and make it bad for cooking. (Extra virgin olive oil has a very low smoke point, actually the lowest.) Virgin olive oil take the process a little further, helping the oil to come out of the olives with extra pressure and perhaps a little processing. After the virgin pressing of the olives about 5%-10% of the oil remains. This is removed using industrial methods and is called Pomace Oil. Extra Virgin may cost $45 to $65, depending on where it is from, as the region and olives affect flavor. Virgin will be a little less, and Pomace is the least expensive at about $10 to $15. Yes, it is possible to buy Genco Olive Oil (from the Godfather, Genco Pura Olive Oil Company), but it’s not quite the same thing.

One Man’s Spam Is Another’s Paté

Canned and preserved products should not be overlooked. They can provide an intense range of flavors, fill nutritional gaps, are packaged to last, and can be handy trade items. An added bonus of canned/preserved items is the medium in which they are packed, usually oil or brine, and their salt content. These items not only enhance the flavor and nutritional value of foods you are preparing but they bring much needed oils and salts that may otherwise be missing from your diet.

Two things that immediately spring to mind are tahini and green peppercorns. Tahini is sesame seed paste or sesame seed butter. By itself it has a very strong, bitter flavor that when mixed with garlic, lemon, and chick peas becomes hummus. You may be thinking, “So what. I’m not gonna grow chick peas, and I don’t plan on laying up a store of canned chick peas.” The point is that hummus can be made from any type of beans. Black eyed peas hummus is very very good, and tahini is highly nutritious. Sesame seeds are one of the worlds great super foods. One tablespoon of sesame seeds contains 12% of the USDA of fats/oil, 5% of recommended protein, 5% of your calcium, 3% of your magnesium, and 7% of your iron requirements. Most importantly though is that tahini, like peanut butter and other nuts, makes a complete protein when eaten alongside beans and legumes and can fill the void when meat is not available. A 16 oz jar of tahini, found at most major grocery stores, will cost about $10 and will make 10# or more hummus.

Green peppercorns are the unripe berries of the peppercorn tree. They have a sharp, spicy but not hot flavor that is excellent with meat. They can be found both dried and canned. I prefer the canned variety for flavor, but dried is fine too. Considering that during the end times it’s likely you will be eating a lot of game and free-range meats, I highly recommend getting some. I like to use them in sauce and gravy, but they are also good in stuffings for fowl, rubs, and marinades for meats and in salad dressings. I usually see them in 3 or 4 oz cans. You’ll use a ½ oz or less to make a pint of sauce, and they cost a few dollars. A case of cans, 24, will cost $50 to $60 dollars and will last a very long time and come in an easy to trade container.

Olives are an important addition and bring both salt and oil to the equation. Olives come from around the world, range in flavor from creamy mild to robust and pungent. They are preserved in just about every manner imaginable. The most common are brined, oil cured, and air dried. California olives in the can are okay as a source of fats and oils, but they have the worst flavor. A one-gallon jar of pitted black kalamata olives (the kind you get with your Gyro sandwiches) costs about $40, a one-gallon jar of green Manzanilla olives (Spanish, small, mild salty flavor) about $10.

Recipe Tip – The Muffaletta is a classic American sandwich hailing from New Orleans. It is basically a toasted grinder or combination cold cut sandwich on a large round loaf. Aside from the loaf, the number one distinguishing characteristic of this sandwich is the condiment– a vinegarry olive and herb spread comparable to a French tapenade. To make, combine ½ cup green olives with ¼ cup red wine vinegar, 1 Tbls dijon mustard, 1 Tbls chopped red onion, 2 Tablespoons herbs (oregano, thyme, basil, marjoram, parsley as you have them), 4 cloves garlic, and 2 Tablespoons olive oil. Place all in a blender or food processor and process until finely chopped and spreadable. Serve on sandwiches or as a dip for crudités, on salads, or with grilled meats and fish.

Canned seafood, and I don’t mean tuna, is yet another great canned product that should be included in this category. For general prepping purposes of course include canned tuna and salmon, and include both water and oil packed varieties. For flavoring, morale, and health enhancing purposes, add things like diced clams, sardines, cockels (from Spain and Portugal), Abalone, and caviar. Again, don’t worry too much about the cost. Most of these items can be purchased for only a few dollars per can and are intended to be used as an ingredient in food rather than as a main dish, so they will use up only a small portion of the total food prep budget. Think about it like this; it may take 32 oz of chopped claims to make clam chowder for a family of four, but a simple 2 oz can is enough to add flavor, salt, protein, and fats to any meal.

Most of these items can be found at the local grocery store. More exotic items are easily purchased online. The one item that may be expensive is the caviar but only if you insist on buying the highest quality black beluga. Many varieties of caviar including trout, salmon, lumpfish, and paddlefish are readily available for a few dollars per ounce.

The final ingredient group that needs special attention is the spirits and liquors. I’ll be honest; most of these have very little in the way of nutritional value, but they all can take a simple meal and turn it into gourmet cuisine. The obvious choices are of course red and white wine. Avoid the cheap cooking brands and go for the least expensive of the table varieties. Box wine is fine for cooking and imbibing.

Cooking tip: Use wine to deglaze a pan after sauteeing or pan frying. Remember before, when I was talking about the fond? A shot of wine tossed into a hot pan will help lift the fond off the bottom of the pan so that it can be fully incorporated into your gravy, sauce, stew, or soup, and it will impart its own flavor as well.

After the wine, there are four spirits a well-stocked pantry should have– marsala, sherry, port, and whiskey. Each can be used to deglaze for sauces and the like, each comes with a unique flavor, and all go well with meat and fowl. Inexpensive varieties used for cooking may cost $5 to $10 per liter, and a liter will last long enough to flavor gallons of sauces and soups.

My Simple Approach To Pantry Prepping

My recommendation is to devote 5% of the monthly food prep budget to buying these types of items. Don’t worry about trying to buy them all at once; it will cost hundreds of dollars, at least, and may take days or weeks to complete. Simply buy one or two each week, when you go to the grocery store, and by the end of the year you will have a nice collection of pantry items to rival even the highest quality 5 star restaurants. When it comes to cooking, try to stay out of a rut. I try and use a different ingredient each week and make a challenge of learning new dishes. To wrap this up, my final suggestion is to include a few cook books in your pantry preparations. Try to choose ones that are rich in recipes and less on the pictures, those that teach an actual cuisine such as Mexican, Thai, Basque, or Greek, and get a variety of them.

Prepping for the apocalypse, whatever its form, is an important task. Depending on how the Schumer hits the fan, it may be necessary to have 20, 30, or more years of supplies laid up for you and your family. The easiest and most cost effective way of doing this is to buy large quantities of stable, storeable food products, such as rice, beans, grains, pastas, and other dried items.

Once you’ve taken care of the bulk of your preparation, it becomes time to focus on the level of comfort of your preparation, because let’s face it rice and beans can only take you so far. Think about this: thirty years of plain rice and beans will keep you alive, but you have to eat plain rice and beans for the next 30 years.

Variety, it’s the spice of life, right? You prep a variety of weapons and ammo to meet different needs. You prep band aids for cuts and field dressings for GSW’s. There is no reason not to prep a wide variety of food products, too. It will help ensure your health, your sanity, and your survival.

In my previous submission I discussed the need to stock up on herbs and spices when preparing your food stores. There are many reasons, but the two most important I think are morale and health. Herbs and spices can help alter the flavor of your rice and beans, bring some variety to your daily life, and will even help your group maintain a higher level of health. After all, the first doctors were herbalists, and the first medicines were herbs and spices. In this submission I will expound on this idea, widening the idea to include dozens of flavors and products, so that you too can include healthful, delicious, cost effective, long lasting, and multi-purpose food products to your pantry.

Prepared Foods Are Made To Store; Dried, Pickled, Salted, Cured

The first thing to remember is that most of the world’s great food products are inherently made to be stored, either dried, pickled, salted, and/or cured. These are the words of the gourmet culinarian as much as they are the devoted prepper. In times past, everyone was a prepper because that was how you lived; you worked, you produced, you stored, and along the way we learned to appreciate the unique flavors and processes that have become the buzzwords of modern 5-star cuisine.

Mustard

I’m going to start with mustard, because it is one of my favorite culinary products and leads me into ketchup, which is another one of my faves. Mustard is one of the most useful culinary products in the kitchen and even has application outside of food preparation. In terms of food science, mustard is an emulsifier. This means it breaks down water tension and allows the mixing of oil and water. In the kitchen, this process is used to emulsify salad dressings so that they don’t separate, to make mayonnaise, hollandaise, and many other sauces, as well as to add flavor. A teaspoon of mustard, dry or prepared, is enough to emulsify between two and three cups of vinaigrette; a tablespoon or two is enough to make that vinaigrette into Dijon Vinaigrette.

There are a wide variety of mustards and each has a unique flavor and application. Yellow mustard, such as French’s, is great for basic uses and for emulsification. It’s great in deviled eggs and tuna salad. Add to this a few jars of Dijon (French flavor profile, which can also be substituted anywhere a recipe calls for yellow mustard), spicy brown, like Guldens (German/European), German-style spicy senf (no better mustard in my opinion, if you like it hot), and a Chinese variety. Each of these will cost $3 to $5 dollars for a name brand jar about 12 oz and will last for decades unopened and many years opened. In order to maximize your mustard prep, I recommend adding ground dry mustard as well as dry mustard seeds, both brown and yellow.

Cooking Tips: Use mustard in marinades for meats, especially game meats and fowl. It can also be used as the “glue” that holds a crust or rub onto your meat. A tablespoon of Dijon, or the mustard at hand, in a pint of gravy turns it into Diane Style, a classic steak dish with mustard-mushroom gravy.

Ketchup (Mustard Is Really Ketchup)

I could segue into ketchup a number of ways, who doesn’t associate these two condiments together. I like to start out by saying the mustard is really ketchup. Yes, that’s right; it’s really ketchup. Let me explain. Ketchup, by definition, is a vinegar-based sauce with a single primary flavor ingredient– usually a vegetable product. Mustard is a vinegar-based sauce flavored primary by mustard seed– a vegetable product. Like mustard, ketchup is made to be stored and will last for decades unopened and for a ridiculously long time after opening. (It is basically pickled ripe tomatoes, salt, and sugar– what I call preserved tomatoes.)

Ketchup has a long and distinguished history as well, another reason why I like it. It dates back several thousands of years to Asia, where it was known regionally as ke-tsiapp, a sauce made of fermented fish similar to today’s Thai fish sauce. (Get a bottle of this, too; you’ll use it a teaspon at a time, and it’ll last you the rest of your life and help make delicious Thai and Vietnamese inspired cuisine.) It was “discovered” by Dutch, English, and Portuguese sailors during the eastward expansion. These fellas, sick of eating moldy hard tack and wormy salt beef, embraced the pungent sauce and its preparation, put their own spins on, took it back to Ye Olde Worlde, and now we have dozens of inspired sauce condiments, including Worcestershire Sauce and A-1 to thank for it. Ever wonder why the label says “Tomato Ketchup”? It’s because commonly made ketchups include mushroom and walnut among many others. One gallon of Heinz Ketchup will cost about $6 and can be purchased in #10 cans, plastic jugs, or bags.

Random facts: Ketchup is the world’s #3 condiment behind salt and pepper; the ketchup industry spends less on advertising relative to its income than any other food industry.

Ketchup Can Save Your Life. A typical one tablespoon packet of tomato ketchup has 20 calories, 125 mg of salt, 2 grams of sugar, lycopene (cancer fighting antioxidant) and trace amounts of necessary vitamins and minerals. A few of these in your pocket are the equivalent of a power bar, gel, or half of a pb&j sandwich and can mean the difference between making it out alive and completely bonking. I’ve used them myself after big bike rides when I ran out of other food.

The unifying theme between mustard and ketchup is vinegar and that is another area of your pantry that needs attention! The bulk of your vinegar needs will be met by white distilled vinegar, but it is not the only one you need. It has the highest acid content of any commercial vinegar, the most neutral flavor, and is widely used in preservation, pickling, and canning. After this you are going to need a number of other vinegars, each of which imparts a unique flavor, has unique uses, and special flavor profiles.

Vinegars

The next most commonly used vinegar is cider vinegar, made from apples. It is a high acid vinegar, has a potent flavor, and is also good in pickles and basic vinaigrettes. After this, go after wine vinegar, both red and white, and splurge a little. Avoid the cheap $2 brand, and go for the $3 or $4 brand. You will notice a difference. These are very good for vinaigrettes and to go on sandwiches, like subs, hoagies, grinders, po’boys, heroes and Dagwoods. Also good for marinating cucumbers or onions to go on the table.

Recipe Tip: Take a 1-gallon jug of Apple Cider Vinegar and remove 1 cup; reserve that for another use. To the jug add 2–4 tablespoons of crushed red pepper or whatever dry chili product you have, adjusting heat to taste, 1 tablespoon of dry garlic, 1 tablespoon of dry onion, and ½ cup of brown sugar. Shake vigorously and then allow to sit, until you are ready to use it, and voila! You have Eastern NC BBQ sauce great for marinating, brushing on to grilled meats (that monster boar you shot last fall?), and sprinkling on cooked foods.

After this the options for vinegar open immensely, but I will pick Balsamic as the next choice; it is well known, can be found in any grocery store (usually several brands and qualities), and is relatively low cost. It is good in vinaigrette, marinating vegetables, marinating meats, and is really good served with cheese and fruit. To serve with cheese or fruit, I recommend a higher quality that is thicker, sweeter, and has a better flavor; for general use, get a lower quality. Other vinegars that are useful to have include Sherry vinegar (adapts well to Asian and European style flavor profiles), Champagne Vinegar (excellent for dressings or applications using raw vinegar ie cukes, onions etc), Rice Wine Vinegar (great for Asian flavor profile, has the lowest acid and sweetest flavor, adapts well in many situations) and Malt Vinegar (Fish and Chips!, and other condiment situations).

Balsamic comes in two classifications and a number of subqualities. Those labeled Balsamic Of Vinegar Of Modena are made for commercial purposes and export. They may be blended with red wine vinegar or other and come in four levels or leafs. One Leaf being the lowest and good for everyday use, Four Leaves the highest and recommend for drizzling over fruit, ice cream, cheese and special recipes. One leaf varieties may cost $4 or $5 a gallon, Four Leaf may cost as much as $30 a pint. Balsamico Tradizionale is the real deal, top shelf balsamic made by slowly allowing reduced verjus, unfermented wine grape juice, to evaporate from within a sealed wooden barrel. This is not a true vinegar but an intensely flavored, sweet-acidic, syrupy grape juice with a flavor you will never forget. It can only be made using traditional methods, is aged for at least a dozen years, and must be judged acceptable before labeling. It’s only to be used with your besties; five ounces of 12-year-old may cost $30, the same bottle of 30 or 40 year Balsamico may cost upwards of $300.