shelf life for stored food

I'm at work and just got2 5 gallon buckets with lids. And next time I go too the grocery store I'm gonna pick up some rice,beans,barley,pasta. Enough to fill at least one bucket for now. But I was just wondering what the shelf life would be on them. And should I just throw them in ziplock bags and close the lid?ill make sure I clean the inside real good so its sterile. But what about moisture or the air inside the bucket? I don't want to do all this for nothing. I plan on buring one in my backyard and the other one in my dads backyard(without him knowing) cause I will head to his house if shtf. To meet up with him and my lil bro. For more fingers on a trigger. Any other suggestions will help
-thanks in advance

Use buckets with a nephrene or rubber seal if you are going to put them in the ground. Use an inner bag like mylar which is the most air tight after it has been properly sealed and use oxygen absorbers in each bucket.
If it is only a bucket apiece then there is no need to bury them. Hide them in the back of a closet. Indoors (not a garage or attic) is best because the product will stay edible much much longer.

Lots of good information on the internet on this subject as well as other threads on this site too.
Do some research and you will find that you can store food in plain sight (right there in your pantry) without being accused of wearing a tinfoil hat when nobody else is around.

Ok thanks. I'm gunna check to see what kind of plastec they are. They were used to store pop syrup(I work at a pop bottleing comp)so they may be diff than the ones ypu can just buy from home depot. And the lids seem prettyheavy duty. Unlike most I've seen.

I by rice in 4kg bags... the best before dates give them about 2 years shelf life and so i just rotate them with what i eat. Same for all my reserve food. Rotate you’re food and then when the SHTF you have almost new stock to full back on instead of something that’s been in storage for 10 years

Yeah that's a good idea. And I was just lookin at them they do have a rubber seal on the lid. So that's a good thing

I read that a lot of food is packed with nitrogen to extend storage times by displacing oxygen...why wouldn't dry ice work? throw a huge chunk of it in and let it "melt" the bucket is then filled with CO2. displacing the oxygen. It works for beer so why not food right? Here at home you can buy 10lbs of dry ice for a dollar. I cant see why it would work if your bucket seals like the food grade ones used in the restuarant biz.

Yeah the dry ice idea sounds pretty good I might try it. Imma try to make it up to the army surplus store and see if they can help me out.

reply to post by agent0range



Here's a good guideline for most grub...



Chart Time!

I read that a lot of food is packed with nitrogen to extend storage times by displacing oxygen...why wouldn't dry ice work? throw a huge chunk of it in and let it "melt" the bucket is then filled with CO2

It works well, just make sure it's well insulated from the foodstuffs. Gives a nasty burn if in direct contact with some food.

A cheap and nasty way is to get a 5 liter drum, Fill 3/5ths with body temp water. Throw three yeast sachets in it with sugar and start fermentation. Pipe the gas given off (co2) to a garbage bag with a bike pump. Now you have a bag filled with CO2 and you can pump it into whatever youre storing stuff in.

Cheers
Shane

Originally posted by kaferwerks
I read that a lot of food is packed with nitrogen to extend storage times by displacing oxygen...why wouldn't dry ice work? throw a huge chunk of it in and let it "melt" the bucket is then filled with CO2. displacing the oxygen. It works for beer so why not food right? Here at home you can buy 10lbs of dry ice for a dollar. I cant see why it would work if your bucket seals like the food grade ones used in the restuarant biz.

Dry Ice doesnot work because CO2 is acidic against many foods. its the same reason they use nitrous oxide as a propellant in whipcream as opposed to co2.

If you pack your foods with dry ice becarful that they will not get ruined by the acidity of the co2.

Taken from wiki on food storage.

[edit] Modified atmosphere
Main article: Modified atmosphere
is a way to preserve food by operating on the atmosphere around it. Salad crops which are notoriously difficult to preserve are now being packaged in sealed bags with an atmosphere modified to reduce the oxygen (O2) concentration and increase the carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration. There is concern that although salad vegetables retain their appearance and texture in such conditions, this method of preservation may not retain nutrients, especially vitamins. - - Grains may be preserved using carbon dioxide. A block of dry ice is placed in the bottom and the can is filled with grain. The can is then "burped" of excess gas. The carbon dioxide from the sublimation of the dry ice prevents insects, mold, and oxidation from damaging the grain. Grain stored in this way can remain edible for five years. - Nitrogen gas (N2) at concentrations of 98% or higher is also used effectively to kill insects in grain through hypoxia. However, carbon dioxide has an advantage in this respect as it kills organisms through both hypoxia and hypercarbia, requiring concentrations of only 80%, or so. This makes carbon dioxide preferable for fumigation in situations where an hermetic seal cannot be maintained

reply to post by agent0range


If you live someplace that gets hot, you run a risk of flour weevils and other food-infesting insects ruining your stockpiled goods. With flour-based goods (flour, pasta, etc.) the eggs of some of these critters are shipped with the flour; it's just a by-product of the harvest/packaging. I tested this theory out several years ago, by putting wheat and white flour in glass containers that have a rubber grommeted and metal lid. After about 2 months, they had flour weevils.

After that, everything that comes into this house in the way of dry foods, gets put in a ziplock freezer bag, and goes in the freezer for at lest 24- hours before storing away. I'm convinced that this process causes expansion and subsequent killing of the eggs. When I repeated the experiment, I had two glass jars of pre-frozen flour, and two from the same package that were not frozen first. The frozen ones didn't develop weevils in four months, and the nonfrozen ones did.

As previous posters indicated, having a system of rotating your goods and labelling the ziplock bags with the purchase date keeps you always using the oldest goods.

We have about two years worth of food any time of the year, and rotating our stocks is second nature now -- part of the household process. I haven't had any issue of weevils or other food insects since we began prefreezing them. Many parts of the world have enough cold that this isn't an issue.

If you decide to bury some of your stocks, you might want to first construct a hideaway mini-bunker underground (not big enough for a human, just for your buckets.) That's make the rotating an easier process if you don't have to re-excavate it each time. You can make this out of pressure treated wood and disguise the lid. If it's not in a place a person would walk and hear the hollow sound, all the better. There are all manner of things that can be glued to a plywood lid.

Good luck! Oh, one other thing....... I frequently include dried herbs, chicken bullion, spices, salt packages, etc. with the dry rice or beans. If our diet is every seriously dependent upon these dried goods, spices might not save our lifes, but they'll make the food less mundane.