When COVID-19 made its first rounds, I went out go get groceries after seeing some of the horror stories online. It will be sometime, if ever, before I forget walking into a super market and seeing many of the food sections stripped bare. Rationally, I knew it was temporary. I knew I wasn't going to starve. It knew it wasn't the apocalypse. I knew neither me nor my children were going to go hungry. I understood all of this rationally.
Yet... just seeing the empty shelves was really unsettling—really unsettling. While having adequate food storage has been something of a family and religious tradition my whole life, the truth is that as a child of the 1980's living in the USA I've never known hunger. Food storage for me was a "some day" item and while having children pushed it closer to the front of my mind more often it has been a very easy thing to "tomorrow" on.
The empty shelves were enough. What if it wasn't temporary? What if it had been weeks or months? I would have known hunger and so would my kids. That's quite scary.
So, I resolved to not be in that position again. It's time to take food storage seriously. And here's the thing, I don't want to live off rice and beans. In fact, switching my diet up to what a lot of people use for their emergency foods would probably result in me getting ill. I eat a lot of meat, eggs, and dairy. I eat a lot of fresh vegetables.
As a result, I invested in a freeze dryer and have been experimenting with it for about a month. I've mostly been focusing on what I consider to be high value, high nutrition foods. I know places like Costco are actually starting to sell emergency food kits in 5 gallon buckets, but if you look at the contents it's a lot of rice, pasta, and beans. Yeah, they keep well, but in terms of nutrition it's pretty weak. (And then, of course, there's the commercial preservatives and other such things.) I've become very used to controlling my food and it's done wonders for my health and my waistline.
So, let me say this: BBQ and freeze drying go together in so many good ways—in particular the "pulled" type meats. It works really well for a few reasons:
Sous-vide is excellent for this purpose too. You can sous-vide steaks to your liking, freeze dry them, and then reconstitute with water, and just do a quick sear.
Finally, I moved to a new house last year with fruit trees: apple, fig, and lemon. It's going to be nice to actually harvest this stuff for year round use.
Anyone else familiar with freeze drying? I intend to try out some other food preservation techniques, but I can't think of a better method if you want very quickly build up a store of food that lasts a long time, reconstitutes well, and retains almost all of its original nutrition. The price is kinda high for the units (I got mine from Harvest Right) but I think it's a worthwhile investment. It's pretty cool to be able to preserve 16 cups of cheddar broccoli soup in a way that will make them usable in years if necessary.
Yet... just seeing the empty shelves was really unsettling—really unsettling. While having adequate food storage has been something of a family and religious tradition my whole life, the truth is that as a child of the 1980's living in the USA I've never known hunger. Food storage for me was a "some day" item and while having children pushed it closer to the front of my mind more often it has been a very easy thing to "tomorrow" on.
The empty shelves were enough. What if it wasn't temporary? What if it had been weeks or months? I would have known hunger and so would my kids. That's quite scary.
So, I resolved to not be in that position again. It's time to take food storage seriously. And here's the thing, I don't want to live off rice and beans. In fact, switching my diet up to what a lot of people use for their emergency foods would probably result in me getting ill. I eat a lot of meat, eggs, and dairy. I eat a lot of fresh vegetables.
As a result, I invested in a freeze dryer and have been experimenting with it for about a month. I've mostly been focusing on what I consider to be high value, high nutrition foods. I know places like Costco are actually starting to sell emergency food kits in 5 gallon buckets, but if you look at the contents it's a lot of rice, pasta, and beans. Yeah, they keep well, but in terms of nutrition it's pretty weak. (And then, of course, there's the commercial preservatives and other such things.) I've become very used to controlling my food and it's done wonders for my health and my waistline.
So, let me say this: BBQ and freeze drying go together in so many good ways—in particular the "pulled" type meats. It works really well for a few reasons:
- It's very easy to cook a lot of meat at once using this method. I've started doubling my usual cooks using a one for now, one for later. If I started using my WSM instead of kettle, I could probably do 4-6x the amount.
- A lot of the moisture is already removed from the meat, which makes the drying process much, much faster—especially if you freeze the meat before using a freeze dryer.
- Shredded/chopped/pulled meat has a lot of surface area which also aids in in the drying process.
- Reconstitution is dead simple: add warm or hot water to rehydrate. It's smoked and rubbed so even without sauce you have an excellent starter.
Sous-vide is excellent for this purpose too. You can sous-vide steaks to your liking, freeze dry them, and then reconstitute with water, and just do a quick sear.
Finally, I moved to a new house last year with fruit trees: apple, fig, and lemon. It's going to be nice to actually harvest this stuff for year round use.
Anyone else familiar with freeze drying? I intend to try out some other food preservation techniques, but I can't think of a better method if you want very quickly build up a store of food that lasts a long time, reconstitutes well, and retains almost all of its original nutrition. The price is kinda high for the units (I got mine from Harvest Right) but I think it's a worthwhile investment. It's pretty cool to be able to preserve 16 cups of cheddar broccoli soup in a way that will make them usable in years if necessary.
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