Storing Food - Which Method is Best?

I found this information on the Emergency Essentials website and their link is on my page (on the right) to their blog. What an amazing source of information. Anyway I wanted to spend a couple of minutes today and write a bit about which is the better storing method. The options they cover include Dry Ice, Dehydrated and Freeze dried. Please note that most of the wording is theirs with a bit of Jan thrown in :)

First - Dry Ice:

The purpose of this method is to eliminate beasties by releasing carbon dioxide into the container and the product. It's perfectly safe and will help your product to last a lot longer. This method of preservation is used mostly for grains (wheat, rice, etc.) and legumes (beans).

I was taught that the easiest method is to put the dry ice on the bottom of the 5 gallon bucket (the site suggests putting parchment over the ice) and then pouring the product on top of it, leaving the lid just slightly ajar to let the ice vent. When the ice it totally gone then you seal the bucket (you leave the paper inside). Done :)

But site also talks about doing it on the top - which makes makes sense since who wants to dump out a five gallon bucket just to put ice on the bottom and then load all that back in. You put the dry ice on the ice on top of 'a non-conductive insulating material such as kraft paper'. Then put the lid on (not tight or it will launch itself) and then wait for the ice to disappear. About 30 minutes or so. Then take out the material and seal the bucket. Cool. Literally :)

Next is Dehydrated:

Dehydration is the process of slowly removing moisture from food without actually cooking them. There are three methods - Air Dried , sun dried (like with raisins or apricots), and Kiln Dried. I suspect that Kiln Dried refers to heavy duty equipment and Air Dried would be a simple food dehydrator but even Wikipedia can't seem to help me with that. Suffice it to say the food is dried out. This makes it easier to store but it does have some flavor loss in the process. The plus about this method is that you can do it at home.

Finally is Freeze-Dried:

Not a home skill since in this method fresh or cooked foods are flash frozen and then put in a vacuum chamber and kept frozen while introducing heat - the idea is to move the food from frozen to dry without going through the liquid phase. Then the product is bagged or canned. This is the best and most flavorful way of storing food.

So if you have to buy food for storage remember that you can do the dry ice and the dehydrated methods at home but if you are investing your hard earned dollars then buy Freeze dried - best flavor and the only one you can't do yourself.

Enjoy!