An unexpected disaster, like lightning striking from a clear sky, gives us a new understanding of how quickly our comfortable, customary food sources can collapse. Blizzards, fires, floods, tsunamis, earthquakes, mudslides and terrorist attacks. Any of these could halt our steady flow of food, and the more widespread the disaster, the more profound the disruption.
With foresight, a judicious supply of necessary stock can assure us that we eat healthfully during such a crisis. Such stock includes a generous amount of dry staple foods, some canned goods, dehydrated foods and water–enough food for the family for a month or two.
A good cook only needs basic raw ingredients with long shelf lives. To do this, you need to know the shelf life of foods and how to store them, and you must also abide by the food market principle “first in, first out.” Dating and rotating your supplies assures you of the most nutritious, most flavorful and most appealing ingredients.
How long to store food
Food researchers have attempted to give us a usable shelf life of dried and staple foods with modest success. Any “use-by” date you see on packages is simply a guess–and very conservative. This is hardly surprising. Few volunteers are willing to store and regularly kitchen-test such staples as lentils, dry beans and rice over a 20-year period to arrive at a reliable shelf life.
I recently compared beans freshly harvested and dried against similar beans I had in storage for at least 10 years, and detected no deterioration in flavor. While working in the Canadian north, I found well-sealed dry staple foods abandoned for more than 50 years in miners’ cabins that appeared to be perfectly fine.
Shelf life of canned foods also is an unknown. The Canned Food Alliance mentions on its Web site (mealtime.org) that hundred-year-old canned goods recovered from sunken ships were microbiologically safe. Still, storing food too long is not good. Food scientists, such as William C. Hurst and his colleagues at the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, indicate that storage deteriorates some nutrients, mutes flavors and dulls colors, even though the food remains edible.
The shelf life of frozen and fresh foods is easier to study because these are measured in months, not decades, and “use-by” dates on packages are reliable. Their wholesomeness still depends on the freezer’s temperature, what kind of wrapper is used and how well-sealed the food is. Heavy, waxed butcher paper and heavy-duty plastic freezer bags are good protection against harmful oxygen, as long as you ensure that you squeeze as much air out as possible. Vacuum sealing is even better.
Under very cold temperatures and with complete elimination of oxygen, shelf life is measured in centuries, even millennia. The food guru, Harold McGee, quotes in his celebrated reference volume, “On Food and Cooking,” a find of a 15,000-year-old mammoth in the frigid Siberian ice that the Russians found perfectly edible, thanks to both the low temperature and the complete exclusion of damaging oxygen.
Our daily staples like flour, sugar, salt, rice and other grains have virtually indefinite shelf lives. Dried legumes and other dehydrated foods are perfectly good for 10 or more years. The shelf life of frozen foods ranges from a month to several months, even years, and these numbers are listed in reference cookbooks on your shelf, such as “Joy of Cooking.”
When it’s time to replace stored items, rotate them into your regular household stock.
Should the power fail, have the inventory of your freezer’s contents handy and plan to eat the most perishable items first. A closed freezer should maintain a safely cold temperature for a few days.
Smart storage
Dehydrated foods are very stable if well sealed, and they can be the basis of soups, stews and hearty vegetable main dishes. They are always nice to have in storage as even in non-emergency situations they can serve as substitutes for fresh should you run out of an ingredient.
Many types of dried foods are available. Natural food stores are good resources for bulk dried foods at modest prices. Wholesale food stores for institutional buyers often accommodate retail shoppers too. You can find all the common dry staples packaged in large bags (10 to 25 pounds) at reasonable prices.
How to store
Storing all dried food calls for the usual ideal storage conditions: dry, cool and airtight. No matter what you store, the colder the better. The ideal storage temperature for shelf-stable staple foods is in the 50- to 70-degree range, sealed well from moisture. Storing foods in the garage where temperatures fluctuate is a poor idea. No one has much extra space in the home for storing bags of staples and piles of cans, but you may find unused space high up in cupboards, under and behind desks, under beds, in crawl spaces and basements.
Airtight is also the key to eliminate unwanted bugs, but even heavy plastic is no protection against hungry creatures. Metal and glass are better. Occasionally there may be bugs in a package you brought home from the store, so check stored food occasionally to make sure they are not present and multiplying.
Whenever you open your storage container, keep it exposed to outside air just for a few seconds, then cover it up again quickly.
Heat and water basics
You cannot put decent food on the table without heat or water. When a disaster strikes there is a good chance that you will lose both. If you have a wood fireplace, a small campfire in it can serve as a cooking facility with some bricks or empty cans and a grill to hold pots in place. A camping stove works fine, or if you have a back yard (and the weather allows), cook on an open fire or on a barbecue grill.
Water is not as easy to solve. For cooking, just about any reasonably clean water with no objectionable smell will do. Cooking will disinfect the water, but if the cooking process is very brief, like brewing a pot of tea, sterilize the water first with at least a 1-minute rolling boil, as suggested by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The boiling drives the oxygen out, so if your need is drinking water, re-oxygenate by pouring the boiled water back and forth between two bowls from a height of about a foot.
It is smart to store gallons of water for emergency purposes if you have the space. Even so, you may need to be resourceful to find cooking water outside your home if the inside supply fails. Public fountains are good sources; you also can collect rain from downspouts or melt snow. If all fails, there is still hidden water in your home, in the hot water heater, water pipes and toilet tanks.
Implementing a good emergency storage plan will aid you in continuing to dish up hearty meals even in a worst-case scenario.
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Suggested foods for storing
At least three types of dry beans and peas (in 10- or 25-pound bags)
Grains such as barley, bulgur, buckwheat, white rice and wild rice (avoid brown rice, which has a shorter shelf life)
Dehydrated vegetables, as much variety as you can find, including dried mushrooms
Flour, both all-purpose and bread (white flour only, not the more perishable whole wheat flour)
Granulated sugar, brown and icing sugar
Salt and pickling salt
Cornmeal
Dried milk
Cornstarch
Baking soda and baking powder
Pure cocoa powder
Bread crumbs
Unflavored gelatin
Dried whole egg powder
Long-shelf life breakfast cereals, such as oatmeal and farina
A variety of pastas (7-10 pounds per person)
Assorted dried spices (unground spices will last longer, but make sure you have a non-electric spice grinder or mortar and pestle)
Dried onion and garlic
Dehydrated fruits
Baking chocolate, nuts in shell, dry yeast
Instant coffee and tea
Vegetable and olive oil in sealed bottles
Vegetable shortening
Several types of vinegar
Meat, chicken and vegetable base concentrate (stock)
Canned and bottled products you usually use
