KeithCross
Well-Known Fanatic
What kind of foods are you storing and what methods are you using to preserve them?Beans, rice? Bay leaves and dry ice?
I'll see your 20 and raise you 10I have about 20 lbs of it stored on my waist line.
Last weekend I opened up a stash of commercial canned goods I put back in 2007.
Everything was in good shape (ie no dents, swells, or broken seals) so I taste tested the following items:
Jiffy Peanut Butter (Best By date: 8/2007) - Tasted horrible. I think the plastic container somehow migrated chemicals into the food, because it was gag-worthy. It was incredibly difficult cleaning the spoon I used to taste - consistency was similar to construction adhesive. Do not store Peanut Butter.
Dinty Moore Beef Stew (Best By date: 6/2008) - Everything mushed together. Potatoes, meat, carrots all kind of took the same form and taste. Taste overall was off and less salty than normal, but it would work in a SHTF situation.
DelMonte Canned Green Beans (Best By date: 10/2007) - The texture was soft and the liquid was really cloudy, but they tasted pretty close to a fresh can.
Generic Ranch-Style Pinto Beans (no decipherable date. yikes.) - I'd estimate these were between 6 - 8 years old. They were really dark and shiny compared to a fresh can, but the few spoons I tested were palatable. Dump some hotsauce on it and you'd not notice the age.
Chicken of the Sea Tuna Fish (Best By date: 2/2008) Definitely tasted off compared to new cans. Texture was a runny, slimy mess- so that might have put me off to start with, but I would not eat this if other options were available.
Ok...so my wife found a couple of links on Pinterest (who knew?) that are kind of interesting and I thought I'd share them with you all. These are not your usual "prepper" sites so look past the kiddie/girlie backgrounds and pay attention to the information supplied. It seems to be real-world stuff that anyone can use. In full disclosure, I have not yet tried these myself but they look easy/practical enough.
http://cheftessbaker...l/52 jar method
http://imacubmasterw...4/be-ready.html
http://www.classyclu...-as-little.html