Need help starting to store foods, I have 5 gallon buckets with oxygen absorbers, can I just throw uncooked foods like rice in these buckets and put the oxygen absorbers in there then seal the buckets? Or do I need to do another step?
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I use a mylar bag with the O2 absorber inside the bucket. The bag protects the food and the bucket protects the bag.
I also use mylar bags and O2 absorbers. There is a guy in mid-TN that sells used 12-15gal blue drums for $7ish on lsn.com I also hit up the local donut shop for used 4.25gal buckets for $1ea with lids.
pjf at vikingprepardness did 2videos on youtube years ago on how to do this.you need mylar bags inside the buckets.they are old videos,i think he was still in kansas at the time. it is worth the time to watch,lots of good tips.
Important to be able to retrieve a portion of whatever you have in the bucket without introducing oxygen to whatever you won’t be using in the immediate future, so use Mylar bags with oxygen absorbers.
I've done a few methods. there's the 5 gal. bucket, with one or two gal freezer bags filled with whatever. Also vacuum bags with and w/o O2 absorbers. I can pull a bag without losing integrity of the rest of the bucket. I do vac bag all our spices though. Again in sm. amounts. So i can pull what we'll use in a month or so. One of my favorite ways on the cheap cheap, is two liter bottles. I know they don't stack and kinda hard to store ,but easy for a kid/ grand ma, to handle, and great size for charity. you can also look in them. If something goes bad you can see it ,and you don't lose 5 gal.of food.With the bottles Ive used the dry ice method for C02 purge.( Canning funnel with an air groove.You put a small chunk of ice in the funnel,C02 gas goes down air comes out the groove.) Not sure its worth it though. I read years ago that when the container is full there's not much O2 left. So it stores well w/o it. Your not gonna get 25+ years but... I'm still using 10 year old beans and rice that were packed w/o the dry ice in bottles. Takes a little longer to cook (beans ), and prob lost some nutrition but still good food. God Bless.