High Fat Long Shelf Life Foods

well cured sausages can be 30+% fat, or just make pork scratchings

reply to post by Maxatoria


Damn right, Dry Cured Salami is the one! preferably straight from Italy but beggars cant be choosers

reply to post by SirMike


Canned butter or olive oil, freeze the olive oil and rotate annually.

Im surprised no one has mentioned spam!
Spam is generally sold in 12 ounce cans which have roughly 75% DV of Protein, 125% DV total fat (150% DV saturated fat), and 70% DV cholesterol. It also has over 150% DV of sodium. See Wiki snippet for simple break down of nutritional data.

Spam has a lot of fat, cholesterol and sodium in each can which can be off-putting. On the other hand it is a very calorie dense food product that will give you much needed energy in certain survival situations, and keeps nearly indefinately on the shelf.

Hawaii has made spam almost a staple food in the past for these very reasons. It is very easy to stack/pack, efficient to ship, little energy required to store it (in terms of refridgeration), etc. Although Hawaii is much more modern today than in times past, Spam is still a quite popular food. Example Source.

Other canned meat products share very similar qualities with spam, that being high fat, very long shelf-life, pre-cooked, etc. One of my all time favorites is Hormel's Corned Beef and Roast Beef Hash products. They are more tasty than spam imho and can be eaten more often without getting 'spammed out'. I usually eat a can of hash at least once a week, sometimes more often. Big saturday or sunday breakfasts are a godsend after a week of hustle and bustle!

Anything from Hormel's Pantry Section would be a good candidate, and will help you add variety to your storage pantry.

I have been linking to a lot of hormel products, but only because they tend to specialize in canned meat products, and I can pull all of my information from their website. Any company who makes canned hash, or spam-like 'potted meat' proucts will do as well.

One last canned meat product I cant leave out is Dinty Moore Beef Stew. This stuff is tasty hot or cold (only cold if necessary or incredibly drunk ). It has tender whole beef pieces, typical canned vegetables (overcooked and mushy), hearty broth. It tastes great alone as a stew, with some instant mashed potatoes spread atop and baked (add shredded cheese for a delicious shepards pie).

Basically don't shy away from canned meat products, they will be high in fat, and have just as good a shelf life as any other canned products.

Edit: Son of a bitch! Dinty Moore Beef Stew is another Hormel product. I should buy some stock in Hormel

Have a look at canning your own butter.

I buy butter at a local store that has sales on butter periodically. Basically you melt the butter, then heat it to a germ-killing degree, and then pour hot into canning jars. We need it for cooking. It lasts 2-5 years without refrigeration.

I believe that in a non-dairy area, canned butter is the ideal barter item. Not a delicacy, it is required for most basic recipes like cooking your own bread, etc.

Thanks for all the info guys.

Don't forget peanut butter!
Two tablespoons gives you 200 calories, 140 of them from fat (which is 16g/25%)The shelf life is 3 years so just rotate. I must have over 30 jars of peanut butter by now. I actually printed out simple recipes to use and put them in the boxes. I'm sure eating it off a spoon would get old after a day.

reply to post by moondancer811


I disagree, I eat Peanut Butter off a spoon (or my finger) everyday and have done so for the past 6 years and I still havent got bored of it.

Never thought of it as a Long Term Survival food though, will have to chuck a tube or two in my BOB. Thanks for the tip

Originally posted by moondancer811
Don't forget peanut butter!
Two tablespoons gives you 200 calories, 140 of them from fat (which is 16g/25%)The shelf life is 3 years so just rotate. I must have over 30 jars of peanut butter by now. I actually printed out simple recipes to use and put them in the boxes. I'm sure eating it off a spoon would get old after a day.

Someone told me peanut butter goes rancid after only a year.

Originally posted by SirMike

Originally posted by moondancer811
Don't forget peanut butter!
Two tablespoons gives you 200 calories, 140 of them from fat (which is 16g/25%)The shelf life is 3 years so just rotate. I must have over 30 jars of peanut butter by now. I actually printed out simple recipes to use and put them in the boxes. I'm sure eating it off a spoon would get old after a day.

Someone told me peanut butter goes rancid after only a year.

Not true. This is the only problem with the internet, there is vast knowledge but it's not useful unless you try it out for yourself!





I purchased this in 2008, the best by date is 6/10 and I opened it in 11/11. It still is good, not rancid, I've been eating it and am not sick. It's a really cheap peanut butter but it does the trick.

Also, you get more shelf life from canned good by flipping them upside down every six months. I don't even open boxes, I simply flip the whole box.

Also, when you pack your boxes, pack them according to "best by" date not by item. For instance, if you 20 cans of spam, don't put them in one box, put them in boxes with other canned items from that date. Otherwise, you'll open a box and realize that there are items from 5 years ago. It's easier to pull boxes from the back of the pile open them up and use all the goodies before they go bad.
Plus, you never know what you packed 3 years ago so it's always a fun surprise.

reply to post by SirMike


corned beef = fat + protien

Instead of peanut butter I would suggest almond butter, especially raw and unprocessed.

It's a little harder to find, and unfortunately a bit more expensive than peanut butter. Some Walmarts sell it I think, but I usually just buy a jar when I get a chance to stop at a Trader Joe's.

It tastes significantly better than peanut butter, has similar nutritional value (but significantly more Vitamin E) and as the almond taste isn't as overpowering as that of peanut butter, you can use it in a larger variety of food, too.

I don't actually know how long its shelf life is, though. I would assume that i's comparable to peanut butter, a little longer if you buy the salted kind.

You might consider coconut oil. While it has a published shelf life of 2+ years...it will probably last a bit longer if stored unopened in a cool, dark area, such as a basement pantry.

Coconut oil is excellent when used in cooking. It can be used as a hair care product, a massage oil for maintaining healthy, moisturzied skin and can heal minor cuts, scrapes and burns. It aids in weight loss and digestion.

Sorry, but butter, lard, margarine or shortening don't begin to compare!!!

reply to post by Jansy


Coconut Oil is being touted in the west as "the answer," as a superior cooking product by the global corporations that process and market it.

Coconut oil is healthy in SE Asia and the pacific, where it is consumed soon after being refined.

Natural coconut oil has an extremely low melting point (below 80 F). In order to keep it from going rancid at shelf temperature, oil that is exported to the west is subjected to a process of hydrogenation. If the process is not 100%, it produces trans fatty acids. As a matter of fact, the restaurants in NYC had to redo all their recipes because they used ...coconut oil. Likewise with the potato chip makers, pretzel makers, movie popcorn suppliers, et al.

The oil industry has successfully kept he "partially hydrogenated oil" label from being applied to coconut oils, but unless the oil is fully saturated, the product is partly or completely composed of the "deadly" trans fats, now outlawed in New York State for restaurant usage.

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