food storage Archives - Homesteader DepotHomesteader Depot

9 Practical Emergency Foods And How to Store Them

Long term food storage is a good idea in many, many circumstances. There are several basic food types that you should consider stocking up on that will last for years if needed. Beans Dried beans of every variety are super cheap and even easier to store. Store them in a dark, dry and cool place for best results. Coffee and Tea Most of us consider ourselves in an emergency situation if we run out of coffee. So, try to imagine going through an actual emergency without it…OH…THE HORROR!!! Just make sure you keep it in the right […]

4 Nifty Alternatives to the Standard Root Cellar

If you have your own garden and: You’ve used all your canning supplies Your freezer is full Your friends refuse to take any fresher produce off your hands Chances are you may need to consider an alternative method of storing your crops rather than just letting them all rot in their earthy homes. In cases like these, a good root cellar is an excellent alternative to mass vegetable homicide. However, unless you already have a handy hole dug in the ground complete with a door to keep out foraging animals. You may need a viable alternative. Fear not! Alternatives do […]

Canned Corn: What’s the Trick?

A fond childhood memory is sitting on the back porch with my brother as we pulled husks off the bushels of corn on the cob. Somehow, we would always end up falling to the floor in a pile of husks with corn silk stuck in our hair laughing our heads off. You’d think our mom would have been upset, but all she could do is laugh with us. Since then I have assumed my mother’s role, canned many a cob of corn, and want to share with you how to process ‘doing it yourself’ canning corn. If you have never […]

Tips to Stockpile Food for the Winter Months

Growing up, one of my favorite things to read were the Laura Ingles Wilder books. Not only were they entertaining, but she also went into great detail on how their food was grown or raised, butchered or harvested and then processed to keep all winter long. Thanks to modern conveniences, most of us don’t really need to take these steps to ensure a comfortable winter, even on a homestead with electricity and appliances. However, it doesn’t hurt to prepare for a worst-case scenario to ensure you won’t get caught during a bad winter storm or power outage. Fortunately, when proper […]

7 Steps for Easy Canning

If you decide to get into the wonderful world of canning, be prepared to experience some of the more flavorful food you’ve ever experienced at a fraction of the cost. Canning allows you to pick or buy produce when it’s at its peak maturity and preserve that flavor year-round. The simplest canning process is Water Bath Canning. To get started you’ll need a few inexpensive basics, many of which you may already have, or be able to find at your local thrift store or flea market. The absolute essential musts are: A pot that holds enough water to cover any […]

Keeping Your Harvest Year-Round (Infographic)

Whether you’re gardening or carefully shopping local and in season, the healthiest way to consume what you reap is to preserve it well so you can make the most of it! Produce turns quickly, but you can prolong the benefits of a fresh harvest with some smart planning and thinking ahead. There are so many great ways to preserve food, and this amazing infographic from Fix.com shows you how. We write a lot about food preservation here on Homestead Depot, but this infographic is a great guide to the overall concept of food preservation, and it gave me some great ideas! […]

Most Caloric Foods for Long-Term Storage

Whether you’re a homesteader or not, it is always prudent to have a good supply of emergency food for when disaster strikes. And while stocking up on your own canned peaches and tomatoes is definitely great, you want to make sure to have high-calorie foods stored up as well. Fat and protein can be more difficult to store than other foods, but they’re what you need the most to keep your strength up. High-calorie foods are also more efficient, as it takes less food to fill you up, which means more sustenance for less storage space. Here are a few […]

Dehydrating Food: A Beginner’s Guide

Dehydrating is a great option for preserving food for the long term, especially for gardeners or homesteaders. But even if you’re just an urban homesteader, it might be an excellent way to get started with food preservation. If you like to shop sales, frequent farmer’s markets, or grow veggies or herbs in your own little urban homestead, dehydrating is a great way to maximize your finds and easily store food for the long term. Here are some of the benefits to dehydrating vs. other food preservation methods: it preserves the nutritional content of food it condenses food and also makes […]

A Simple Guide to Dehydrating Mushrooms

We posted recently about foraging for wild mushrooms and how to identify them. One great reason to forage for wild mushrooms is to stock up on them and keep them around for cooking or even as part of your survival food cache. But how do you store them? Dehydrating is the best method for mushrooms, and often, when you find them in the grocery store, this is how they have been processed. It’s very simple and easy to dehydrate mushrooms, here’s how: Collect the mushrooms you’d like to process. Literally any variety will do, but of course, you’ll probably want […]

The Off-Grid Winter Pantry (Video)

When most people think of living off-grid, there are usually two major challenges that come to mind: winter, and food storage. Well, this video shows us that with the right amount of supplies and planning, you don’t have to worry much about either! It is seriously one of my life goals to have a pantry like this one day. YouTubers and off-grid homesteaders An American Homestead shares their well-stocked winter pantry, with preserves made from their harvest for the year. Their viewers kept asking to see what they had, so they give us a tour of their impressive pantry, ready for […]

How (And Why) To Cure Potatoes Before Storing Them

Potatoes are such a great garden crop, if you can manage to grow them. They can keep for months throughout the winter, and are a great source of nutrients and calories. While they keep well in a dark, cool area like a root cellar or even a garage, there is a very important step you must take before storage: curing. What is curing? Curing potatoes is essentially letting them dry out before storing away. There are several advantages to curing: All wet spots dry out that might otherwise contribute to rot The skins will harden, allowing the potatoes to keep […]

Tips for Living Without a Fridge

Refrigerators are one of the great wonders of modern science, and can greatly improve your quality of life. However, we’ve also grown so dependent on them, we don’t even know how to live without them anymore. Many people in the world still live without modern refrigeration, and it’s certainly not impossible. There are many reasons you might find yourself living without a refrigerator. If you are a new homesteader, just getting set up, you might be completely off-grid or not have the infrastructure yet on your homestead to power a full-sized refrigerator. You also might find yourself stuck in a […]

Easy Pickled Garlic

Pickling garlic is a great way to preserve it for the winter, or if you don’t grow garlic, to ensure that you always have it on hand. You may have seen minced garlic or even whole garlic cloves in the store, but those typically have lots of preservatives in them or take on the flavor of whatever they’re preserved in. This recipe isn’t like them. This method will keep your garlic tasting fresh, and just like garlic. Since it is preserved in vinegar, when you’re ready to use it, you can simply rinse off the vinegar and use as you […]

How to Freeze Raw Potatoes

Keeping potatoes in a root cellar is a common way to store these essential root veggies through the winter, but plenty of people don’t have root cellars! Canning is another option, but that usually takes a pressure canner. If you find yourself with a lot of potatoes you’d like to store for a long time but don’t have a cellar or a pressure canner, freezing them is a great option-if you do it right. It can be kind of tricky, so here are some tips to ensure they remain fresh in the freezer. Use Fresh Potatoes Don’t use potatoes that have […]

A 1870s Root Cellar (Video)

I absolutely love seeing how people back in the day lived, before modern conveniences and when people still worked with their hands, tended their animals, and used traditional technology to produce and preserve food. You know, like homesteading! I got such a kick out of this video. The channel, Appalachia’s Homestead, is great, and I highly recommend following YouTube channels like theirs if you’d like to get an inside peek into how established homesteads function on a day-to-day basis. It was really clever of them to share a video of their root cellar, which they estimate to have been built in […]

Preserving Meat with Salt

Whether your homestead is off-grid, you don’t have enough room in your freezer, or you want meat that could last when power is interrupted, salting is a great time-tested option. In this article, we will discuss dry salting. The process works by using the salt to draw out the moisture from the meat and any potentially harmful bacteria until microbial growth is prohibited. It is basically chemically induced dehydration. There is always a risk of food poisoning when one is consuming meat that is moths, or even a year old, get properly prepared and use caution when salting your meat […]

Storing Potatoes for Winter

Potatoes are one of the best crops you can grow! Nutritious, substantial sources of food, they also keep well over the winter, if you know how to store them right. Whether you’ve been growing them and would like to do a big harvest to keep them all over the winter, or you’re buying them in bulk from the farmer’s market before it closes from the winter, it’s important to use the best storage practices so they don’t rot or sprout through the winter months. Potatoes are wonderful for hearty winter dishes so it’s imperative to store them well! Here are a few […]

Canning Tips for Those Just Starting Out

You are a homesteader, then it typically means you have a garden. This means you are growing vegetables and fruit more than likely. You cannot eat all the food right away in most cases, so you want to can it to preserve it. There are some excellent benefits to canning in addition to having all that extra food in the house. One of the primary benefits is that you do not have to worry about any added chemicals to the food. In addition, it tends to taste quite a bit better than commercial canned food. It is also quite a […]

5 Tips for Storing Food in Harsh Conditions

Storing dry foods can be tricky. Ideally, you want to store your food at about 50-55 degrees Fahrenheit, with low humidity (less than 15%). Of course, that just isn’t possible for a lot of people, especially those who live in exceedingly warm or cold climates, floodplains, etc. So how can you improve your food’s longevity, even if you’re storing it in harsh conditions? Follow these tips. Be selective with expiration dates – Canned goods can usually last years past their expiration dates, but it’s a good idea to choose the ones with the longest dates to be sure that […]

5 Survival Foods That Virtually Last Forever

When stocking up a survival stash, it’s important to maximize your space with items that will last the longest. Below is a list of items that will virtually last forever… 1.Dried Beans Dried beans are probably one of the most common items to stock up on and for good reason. When kept away from moisture and light, they can last for decades. Vacuum sealing is a great option for storing beans, as they keep best in an absence of oxygen. 2. Vinegar Due to its high acidity, vinegar will last essentially forever. Vinegar is a great item to stock up […]