The Official DIY Canning, Jamming and Preserves Thread

Oooooh....can I talk about making my pickles??!

This is a response from r214 of the other thread:

I don’t know how to break it to you, but all flour, grains and beans have insect eggs. All. Every piece of bread you’ve ever eaten in your life comes from flour that had insect eggs in it. That’s why people freeze flour for long term storage.

There’s a couple of other methods that are supposed to work, [R202]. One is dry canning, which someone mentioned upthread. YouTube is a good resource for how to do this.

For dry goods like beans and rice, you can pack them in Mylar. To do this you need Mylar bags, oxygen absorbers and a means to get the excess air out of the bag like a vacuum sealer, or you can jimmy rig a vacuum cleaner with a bit of tubing and a funnel type arrangement. Check out YouTube for different ways to do this. You couldn’t use a vacuum at home with flour, because flour is so fine. But because flour is so dense, you could try it using oxygen absorbers, shaking the package down to compress it and pressing the air out. If there’s very little air, the oxygen absorbers can pull out most of the rest. You can see if the air is out because the bag shrinks after about 24 hours and you can see the grains or texture of the product inside. You would have to press it down from the top and seal it very close to the flour. Some people use a 2x4 on top to help get the air out. But if you push too hard, you can tear the bag so don’t overdo it.

If you decide to go the Mylar route, read up before you do it and don’t cheap out. Thicker bags have a better seal and the product will last longer. Oxygen absorbers come in different strengths so make sure the ones you buy are stronger, or use more. Mylar bags come in several sizes. Smaller may be easier to handle for you. People often store the Mylar bags in five gallon buckets with lids. Oxygen oxidizes the product which is how it spoils. You sometimes see preppers claim you can store beans and rice for twenty years with this method. I wouldn’t depend on that, but you can definitely store it for extra years that way. The lack of oxygen kills bug eggs as they need oxygen to live. Also, plain bucket lids are more airtight that spinner lids, but much harder to get off the bucket. There’s a tool that pries the lid off the bucket that’s very useful. They sell Mylar bags , oxygen absorbers and the bucket lid tool at Winco. But they aren’t the highest grade bags and oxy absorbers. Try online.

There’s a couple of methods to seal the bags shut. Ironing it shut. Air bubbles can form which weakens the seal. A much better method is using a hair straighter to burn the top shut. Costco was selling a ton of hair straighters near me in March and April. The Costco manager near me is a prepper. What a coincidence.

Basically, you put some oxygen absorbers in the bottom of the bag, put the stuff in the bag, shake it down so it settles, push the air out as much as you can, and burn the top shut as close to the product as you can. Then it goes in a bucket with a lid. Mylar bags can tear, and with the oxygen out, any sharp pointy things inside could cut the bag, so don’t seal in anything sharp. Some people put bay leaves loose inside the buckets, because bugs from outside hate the smell. There are videos on YouTube about how to seal Mylar bags. If you want to try it, watch several first so you can profit from others’ mistakes.

For relatively short term storage items like pasta, I’ve used cleaned popcorn tins with bay leaves and not had a problem. I wasn’t trying to store longer than a year or so with that method. But one buggy package can contaminate your whole pantry, so separating risky items as much as you can by using glass canning jars with metal lids, tins or Mylar can protect items from cross contamination. Rectangular cookie tins can store pasta. Bugs can get through plastic. For storage of less than one year, plastic can be okay. Just buy thicker plastic. Commercial grade plastic food containers are better. You don’t want bugs or rodents to smell the food. Store everything off the floor.

For [R202], if you just want to put some flour in the cupboard and plan to use it fairly soon, and are worried about bugs, the lowest tech solution I can think of would be to seal the flour in a canning jar using an oxygen absorber. Here’s what you will need to do this:

Large canning jars, preferably amber because amber blocks out 99% of UV rays, which take the vitamins out of the food.

Oxygen absorbers, a smaller size, like around 300 cc.

A canning jar funnel. I highly recommend these for everyone. They’re good for pouring food into jars or ziplock bags without making a mess, and the open part is much larger than with regular funnels, so you can use them to pour cereal or beans and keep things neat. You can find them where the canning jars are. Walmart, Ace Hardware, Target, and a lot of markets have canning supplies. Buy the metal canning jar lids, not plastic. Plastic leaks air.

Using the canning jar funnel, fill the jar about half way. Use a metal canning jar lid and close it. Then shake it down so it settles at the bottom. Do this a couple times as you fill it. Fill it pretty close to the top.

When it’s as settled as it’s going to get, put an oxygen absorber on the top and close the lid tightly. After a while, as the oxygen absorber pulls the air out, you will hear a small “pop” which means the lid is vacuumed sealed. Don’t open it again until you’re ready to use it. There’s a product called a vacuum sealer that will do the same thing for canning jars but really well. I don’t know if they’re available now though. People that buy those really like them.

When you want to open the jar, it will be harder to open because it’s vacuum sealed. Throw the oxygen absorber away because it’s used up. If you use half the flour, put the rest in a smaller jar so it’s full, use a fresh oxygen absorber and shut it.

This method pulls the air out so it is airtight and makes it much harder for bug eggs to flourish. It’s not as tight as Mylar but for short term storage it’s good. Short term = up to the expiration date, which for flour could be as short as six months. If the worst happens and bugs somehow hatch in there, it will prevent them from spreading to other products in the pantry.

For people that aren’t used to storing a lot of food, or long term storage, here’s some tips for right now:

Due to shortages, some markets may be selling lower grade or off brand products. Warehouses have roaches or rats. It’s getting hot which makes roaches flourish. The vermin at the warehouse are having a heyday right now with all this extra stuff.

It’s more important than ever to store foods carefully to prevent cross contamination. You may be storing beans or grains long term. Like [R216] says, it’s inevitable there will be a possibility of bugs. Also, you’re storing more food than usual so you may have a lot of cardboard food boxes. Cardboard boxes are bad news. They’re not airtight, the plastic bags inside are thin and don’t keep air or bugs out, and you’re storing a bunch of different grains in the same cupboard. Oatmeal, cereal, crackers, flour, etc. every one is a possibility for cross contamination of bugs. You get meal bugs in your cupboard and they can go through there like wildfire. So what can you do?

When you get home from the market, take the food out of all the cardboard boxes and throw the boxes away. Now. Don’t wait until tomorrow, there’s roach eggs on the boxes. You don’t need a roach infestation when you’re storing more food than Walmart.

Decant all the cereals and grains into glass canning jars with metal lids, or temporarily store them in zip lock bags or clean plastic containers until you can get to them. This is where the canning jar funnel comes in. You should put the plastic zip lock bags in a second container, plastic food grade buckets with a lid, or a plastic *food grade* container, anything you have that’s heavy plastic. This is for temporary or short term storage. Or double bag them and straight to the freezer. Crackers store well in tins, like popcorn tins, if you can get those. Or heavy commercial restaurant food grade plastic containers. Oatmeal is a bug hazard, so freeze, canning jars, Mylar, anything with no air and no opportunity for bug migration. If you buy ten pounds of oatmeal, break it up, unless you’re putting it in Mylar. Open one jar at a time. Same with cereal.

You know all those pretty pictures of pantries where everything is delicately stored in beautiful plastic containers? It’s bullshit. Glass. Glass doesn’t allow bug spread. Glass goes in the dishwasher. I have 100 year old glass canning jars and still use them every day. They never wear out. They never retain smells. They never stain. New canning jars go in the microwave. Canning jar glass is much thicker than pickle jars, and you can buy new lids. Lids are a universal size across the brands. Plastic leaks air long term. Including plastic canning lids. Use metal lids. If you’re choosing canning jars for dry storage, like spices, “regular mouth” jars and lids are better than “wide mouth,” because the smaller opening means less air. The biggest jars are only available in wide mouth though.

Don’t store grains on the floor, ever, no matter what it’s in. It attracts vermin. They can smell through plastic. Put it on a wire rack, shelf, or in a cabinet. If your storage is limited, a clean metal trash can with a tight lid can be a rat proof container for smaller plastic containers. Rats can gnaw through all sort of containers. About the only thing they can’t gnaw through for sure is glass.

If you can smell spices or foodstuffs in your kitchen you’re storing it wrong. You shouldn’t be able to smell anything that smells like food. And grains in a double zip lock bag smell. Put a zip lock bag of grains in a plastic bucket with a lid and leave it overnight. Come back and open the lid. It smells. Vermin can smell that. That’s what they smell when you have a cardboard box of cereal. So you have to put it in a container they can’t get through even if they can smell it.

Bay leaves sealed in a plastic bucket smell very strongly. Bugs hate bay leaves. Buy them and put several in containers of grains where you would use bay leaves anyway. Pasta, rice, beans

My advice is if you end up buying the big bags or boxes of something, break it down into smaller ones and freeze what you can. Because once you open those 4 lb bags, stuff gets stale or goes bad or you see those little mites in it.

Why do you need an oxygen absorber if you're vacuum sealing? Doesn't that suck all the oxygen out?

More storage tips:

PESTICIDE around the baseboards in your kitchen, around the doors inside and out of the house and along the baseboards all over the house. Especially around the garage door inside and out. Around the trash cans, across the front and back door. Straight across the entry of the doors. Around the doorways. Get the baseboards along the halls and along the way to the kitchen. Behind the fridge. You can just shoot the sprayer back there. If there’s a bathroom, bathtub or sink you don’t use, be sure to flush the toilet and run the water every few days, at least once a week. Water in the trap keeps bugs from outside out of the house. If the trap goes dry, you can get large bugs from outside, like roaches or water bugs in the house through the pipes.

Go outside and spray all around the front door and back door. Especially sliding glass doors, they have tiny vents at the bottom and top. Go all the way around the sliding glass door frame from the outside. Especially around the track. There’s drainage holes at the bottom. Let it dry for at least an hour before touching it. Look around for cracked or missing caulk around windows and re-caulk it.

You can buy pesticides at Home Depot and Lowe’s by the gallon that come with a sprayer.

Don’t let grains fall on the floor without wet wiping it up. It’s like birdseed for bugs.

Look at expiration dates of food when you get home and if you repackage foods, label the package with the expiration date.

Certain foods have very short expiration dates. Especially unprocessed grains like brown rice, whole wheat flour. White flour and white rice are better for long term storage. White rice can be easily stored in a Mylar bag for years, because they strip the oils out of the rice during the processing. Any food in a big bag like rice or beans should be repackaged. Those bags aren’t airtight or bugproof, or meant for long term storage.

Some foods don’t do well in the heat and will go rancid if exposed to heat very quickly. Anything with oils. Olive oil, peanut butter, nuts, brown rice, crackers have oil in it which will go rancid. These foods need to be used by the expiration date or put in the fridge or freezer for hot weather. Look at the expiration dates carefully. Don’t store them on the top shelf, it’s hotter up there.

Canned meats and fish have the longest expiration dates, canned acidic foods have the shortest, like pineapple, tomato or orange juice. Foods with high acidic contents are best stored in glass, which is why pickles are sold in glass. Foods pickled in vinegar have a high acidic content which makes them suitable for long term storage. The acid in vinegar makes it hard for bacteria to grow. Pickles and bottled hot sauce with vinegar last a long time.

Foods stored in clear glass or plastic containers can lose vitamins from light exposure, so keep them in a dark cabinet. Don’t leave pretty jars of beans in a clear glass container on the counter for display. Keep them in the dark. If you have to leave them out, put them in an amber glass canning jar, which blocks UV rays, or put them in a dark container like a plastic bin or with a dark cloth over them.

I have a cat and she is perfectly healthy.

I used to have a guy come and spray and he had cats and a little dog at his house. All fat and happy. Pesticide does not kill cats. Maybe if you spray it in their mouths. It’s meant to damage insect shells or in some cases it’s like warfarin. Cats are larger and don’t have shells. Commercial office buildings are all sprayed around the baseboards. Yet you’re still alive.

There are strict laws about not spraying counters or shelves where food is stored. No one stores food on the baseboards. Or outside the front door.

Yes, I know it’s very boring for you to have to read about food storage. But a lot of people don’t cook and they know nothing about food storage, much less not going out for weeks on end. This is an unprecedented circumstance for most people and they don’t know this stuff. So if it interests you, fine, if not, fine. I just posted it because some people might happen to read it and it might help them. Nobody lives like on Little House on The Prairie any more and they didn’t learn at Ma Ingalls’ knee. More like they live on fast food and store Manolos in the oven.

I have a bunch of those half-gallon (64 oz.) canning jars. I use them with the FoodSaver vacuum device to seal them. I use them for pasta (I used to get moths in my pasta all the time), beans, bread crumbs, etc. But I think I'm going to start putting flours in there too. (Sugar is not a problem)

Who the fuck let Heloise out of her cage at R2, R:, R4, R5......

All those posts about mylar bags and what to do to your flour got me watching videos about it.

Someone said that if you vacuum out all the air in a bag of flour and throw in an oxygen absorber, you don't need to heat or freeze your flour.

Frau cunt thread.

preppers used to freeze their grains in the freezer for a few weeks and then take them out and store before Mylar. It turns out, the first round kills the first layer of bugs, then there’s a second layer that are eggs that have to be hatched, revived and then frozen again. Nobody seems to know how many rounds of that you have to do to kill them all. I used to freeze mine three weeks and never had a bug, and other people online have said that too, but whatever.

Now the advice is, put it in Mylar, suck every drop of air out with a vacuum sealer or vacuum, or just pressing the air out, put in the oxygen absorbers, and the bugs die because there’s no air. No freezing, just straight to the Mylar. These days preppers swear by it. I went on Survivalist Boards Forums a couple of weeks ago to see what they were doing. Some of those guys are old guys and they’ve tried everything. They’ve all moved to Mylar now.

Here’s a short video about sealing Mylar bags with a hair straightener. She makes an important point. Once you open your bag of oxygen absorbers, you have to use every one very quickly. Once they absorb too much air they’re done. So you have to lay out everything and get it ready to go before you crack open the oxygen absorber bag.

If you do use a hair straightener, I keep a large baking pan near me to set it in for a minute when I have to put it down.

he videos I've seen had people quickly taking the oxygen absorbers and placing them in a canning jar and putting the lid on in order to keep them for another round of use.

I decided to look on Amazon for different mylar bag options but didn't really see any of the thick, recommended ones.

I’ve done that, but it doesn’t really work well. I used the smallest size canning jar and jammed them in there. You can tell they’re absorbing oxygen anyway because the oxy absorbers start getting hot and sweaty.

When I was packing bags, the best thing that worked was getting a zip lock bag that was big enough to fit the whole oxygen absorber bag inside, pulling out a few at a time, and rolling the bag to push the air out, in between going for the next handful. Even doing that, they eventually started heating up towards the last bit, but not as badly.

You really want them as fresh as possible, because fresh ones suck out as much air as possible.

This is what you want it to look like after 24 hours of absorbing the oxygen inside. This looks like it could be rice. See how wrinkled it is? That’s good, it means there’s no air in there.

You know how bags of potato chips look, puffy and full of air? That’s the opposite of what you want here. I packed grits and they were so airless you could see the individual grits grains through the bag. That’s what you’re going for.

Oxygen absorber bags usually have an indicator that looks like a little eye or something and when the container is full of air, the eye changes color. So that’s what they’re showing.

But before that, the packets get hot. You can feel them start to work.

I just ordered another six-pack of half-gallon Mason jars so I can store my newly acquired flours. I'm thinking it should be sufficient just to vacuum seal it in to the jars -- or should I microwave first? And are oxygen absorbers needed?

Are we really doing this???

I would like suggestions on canning some of my vintage poppers. I don’t want them to lose potency.

I think a lot of us have come to the realization that we cannot trust the government, the supply system, or anything else ... so we need to be prepared and stock up while we can. I was never a "prepper," and still don't think of myself that way, but I want to stay as well-stocked on the essentials as possible while things are still available. We have no idea what's coming down the pike.