Home Food Storage explains in simple understandable language how to store your food. You may just want a way to store the giant bag of walnuts you bought at Costco. Or you may want to create the ultimate prepper food storage system for the end of the world. Either way this book has you covered.
The author separates her storage into three types: kitchen pantry, short-term storage and long-term storage. Kitchen pantry is what we all have to make everyday meals. Short-term storage is food that can be safely stored up to 12 months. Long-term storage is anything that can be stored more than a year. The goal is to cycle through the storage types so nothing spoils. You eat your kitchen pantry, you shop in your short-term storage, and you refill your short-term storage from your long-term storage.
Within those areas, the book explains step-by-step all the different storage methods from freezing to canning to dehydrating to freeze drying. It also suggests what foods are best for each one.
Despite reading extensively about prepping previously, I still learned quite a few things in this book. For example, once you open the oxygen absorbers’ outside bag they start losing their effectiveness. Resealing the bag as soon as possible is the key. I really liked the idea of making your own vacuum sealed MREs (meals ready to eat) from supermarket precooked pouches and cups. There are also some excellent ideas about how to build this system on a budget and how to know what and how much to buy.
Overall, Home Food Storage is an excellent easy-to-read reference to the whole process of food preserving, storage and prepping. 5 stars!
Thanks to NetGalley and Storey Publishing for providing me with an advanced review copy.