food grade buckets?? help

question, Im storing all my foods in Mylar bags with the oxygen absorbers, do I still need game lids for sealing?

 

I'm so happy for you that you picked up free buckets from WalMart. Way to go!!! I'm using the buckets more to keep the mice from sharing our stashes with us. Every fall they come in by the groves. I'm new to this so take what I offer with a grain of salt but.... I've been storing produce in 1-gallon mylar bags with oxygen absorbers. I then place assortments in the 5-gallon buckets with lids to keep the critters out so I'm definitely using the lids. Mice can chew through mylar and I'm pretty sure they would given the opportunity. The buckets with lids.... to me at least.... are necessary protection. They stack nice too.

 

Im sorry, I meant I also will be putting them in the 5 gallon buckets to. I am using 1 bucket for each food. ( filling each bucket with mylar bags filled with 6 serving foods.so far I have a bucket filled with minute rice, precooked beans, powdered milk. ( costco buckets filled with packets of foods in mylar bags for set amount of servings.)

• 20 year shelf life
• Packaged in convenient 5 serving foil pouches
• 250 total servings ( 50 individual pouches)
• Easy to make
• Stored in an air tight 5 gallon pail for added protection and storage

I have buckets of pancake mix in small mylar bags ( in the buckets) ,mashed potatoes, pasta's and a ton of canned goods and meats.
will have lots more , but this is my starting point. I am also ordering a years worth of dhydrated foods from emergency essentials, and 30 days of MRE's in the next 3 weeks ( thank god for income taxes LOL I will continue to fill my stock each week until that day comes I have to stop .

 

just what I wanted to know thanks

 

You're doing great!!! So many folk get their income tax refund checks and blow them purchasing silly things. "I am also ordering a years worth of dhydrated foods from emergency essentials".... you can dehydrate your own foods, Excalibur Food Dehydrators Official Factory Website - Commercial Dehydrators & Living Foods Dehydrators For Raw Food Dehydration. I've been doing it for over a month... non-stop. Dehydrating in our own homes saves all the costs of shipping and handling associated with mail order and I've learned that pretty much anything they can dehydrate and sell to us we can dehydrate ourselves. Maybe consider setting aside a little of your money to buy a quality dehydrator to carry you after the money's gone? Taking advantage of produce sales has been a big time help to me getting our pantry looking like a pantry.

 

i purchased this in September and will be using it soon

 

i was planning on the doing the same my question is do you just put the dehydrated fruits in the bucket and pump Nitrogen gas in them and your good to go??

 

No...what you do is place the foods in mylar, drop in an oxygen absorber (aka a hand warming packet) and heat seal it closed. Since the air we breathe is comprised of Oxygen, Nitrogen and Nobel gasses (Oxygen 20%, Nitrogen 70%,Nobel gasses (argon, freon, etc.) - 10% - these numbers are approximate), the chemical process that fixes the oxygen to the contents of the absorber leave behind a nearly pure Nitrogen and Noble gas atmosphere in a sealed mylar bag. This reduces rancidity - because rancidity is caused by oxidation, no oxygen, no oxidation-, as well as making the atmosphere incapable of supporting pests - no oxygen, no life.

 

i ask only cause i am now starting to work with food. so would you seal the mylar bag or just wrap it up with a garbage bag wire? and also the oxygen absorber pack is drop along with the food?

 

CANDY> I’m pretty sure I know that dehydrator. I recognize it by the number and style of shelves. I’m crossing my fingers and toes that you’re a good natured person who won’t shoot a messenger>>>? That’s a cheap Chinese knock off of the high end 9-tray Excaliber with a timer. It’s maybe the Good4U brand>>>? I dunno…. they keep coming out with different names flooding our market but it’s all the same dehydrator. How do I know…. I BOUGHT one and couldn’t wait to send a photo of mine to a coupla friends who got me hooked on dehydrating. I started right in on them boasting about how I got MY dehydrator for $100 less than what they paid for theirs by “shopping” around. Phone rings…. I hear laughter. Oh… not a good sign.
Part of the problem for me with the Chinese dehydrator was the size and placement of the fan and well…. it’s a knock off so even though it looks like we bought a unit with a timer… we didn’t. It runs until we shut it off because all they give us is a temperature control which I tested by putting a thermometer in the unit. You may have to check temps yourself… I had to turn the dial up 1 or 2 notches to get the temps the guides suggested. My temperature gauge was off by over 15F…. yours might not be. The biggie was the heating element though…. which never shuts off…. it’s constant on. That dried the outside of foods too fast leaving the insides not fully dehydrated. I saw some rather interesting jars of dehydrated food that could compete with any piece of rotten fruit lost in the back of a frig. It was visible because I’d used glass jars for storage but…. inside a silver mylar bag and I wouldn’t have found out there was a problem until it was too late. I had been forewarned about “issues” with drying so I started cutting the food into pieces half the size recommended by all the guides and that did help a little but I resented spending twice the time slicing, chopping, and dicing. I figured out real quick that I had to rotate and turn their trays every half hour which helped too. For me…. the Chinese models are more of a snack dehydrator. They’re ok for things like sweet potato chips and dried fruits that we’re going to consume very soon after processing but…. I don’t think the knock-offs are good for long term storage of anything IMO. I was going to hang onto mine because I figured out I could use my microwave’s timer to remind myself to shut it off but we took off one weekend and when we came back…. it was still running. That did it for me. Back it went for running 3 days straight because I forgot it and… no timer.
Sorta glad that happened. I broke down and ordered the Excaliber with a timer. I wasn’t happy because well…. it’s a lot more expensive unit. I was grumbling on the phone about the price and the associate cheerfully offered me a blemished unit for $50 less. Ohhhhhh….how nice…. a price break….. something to rub in the face of a friend who paid full price for hers. I ordered a blemished unit since they came with the same 10 yr warranty. On a positive note…. my friends who mocked me couldn’t figure out what the blemish was and that was with all of us “inspecting” my unit and one of theirs side by side. I sorta noticed mottled off white coloration on the top of my unit but they didn’t. Who cares…. it works and it has a timer and I don’t have to screw with it all that much once it’s running. One thing though…. on the 9 tray model I do have to rotate and turn the trays at least once every 2-3 hours otherwise the uppermost and lowest trays would require running the unit a few more hours.
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[FONT=&quot]franks71vw> I use 1-gallon mylar bags and place a 100cc oxygen absorber inside the mylar bag before sealing it…. then I place the mylar bags into the 5-gallon buckets with lids. When I do this I do not add additional oxygen absorbers to the bucket.
I have been using 3.5 gallon buckets with lids for rice, unbleached self-rising flour, whole grain flour, kidney beans, and sugar. I am breaking down 25 and 50 lb bags into more manageable quantities for me. When I place a drygood straight into a 3.5 gallon bucket without using mylar, I lace the drygoods with two 300cc oxygen absorbers.
I have been freezing all dry goods for a week before storing them for long term. My husband has a thing about little black bugs or I'd skip freezing drygoods when using oxygen absorbers.
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A seal is superior to a tied closure.

 

I do the same thing!!! and your a girl,!! Im glad to meet you!!! Thanks for all the good advice, I am glad to meet another woman to.

 

Really sorry.... I can't tell you that you got the right one since I learned the hard way there's only one Excaliber... all the rest are knock offs manufactured at the same plant in China with different brand names slapped on them. I did get it to work by cutting everything to half the size recommended in DIY hydrating books and.... the timer isn't that big of a deal unless you're easily distracted like me. It did most vegetables ok. If you really want to give it a test run to see what kinda problems I ran into.... try dehydrating a couple different things at once.... you've got enough trays. I'd go for a maiden voyage to see if you're gonna be ok with it by trying to dehydrate one tray of each at 125F: sliced bananas dipped in real lemon juice, diced onion, diced celery, a tray of herbs maybe parsley, grated cheese on a paper towel, oranges, apple slices, grapes, and small cherry tomatoes cut in half.... give it a trial run with the more common things we cook with regularly and what kids like that you'll be dehydrating once you get the "bug" and start buying fresh produce on sales so you can dehydrate it.... farmers markets are only a coupla months away. Aywho...you're the only one who counts. If you're ok with it... then it's perfect for you. Spinning my electric meter for 3 days because I forgot it was not ok with me and I'm sorta lazy by nature and didn't take kindly to having to reduce the size of everything I was dehydrating. I don't know if you ever ran across this dehydrator but I've used it before in a class and it was fine, The Official Online Store for Nesco Dehydrators. I just decided I had a need for a larger unit I could run daily is all or I would have bought that one. I've also dehydrated tomatoes the old Eastern European way by putting them on my driveway.... it works. All you have to do is put a window screen on bricks over your tomato slices so the flies don't get to em. We should be able to dehydrate just almost all veggies and fruits on dark shingled roofs and asphalt driveways. Not so sure about meats or jerkys though.
Yes!!! I'm female. I'm so glad there's folk like you starting to play with dehydrators here you have no idea.

 

Tell me more about the handwarmer oxy remover...

 

Im trying the dehydrator now, its working on tomato's and oranges and mushrooms. we shall see. but I will be investing in a Excalibur come March !

 

I'm dehydrating oranges today. I was able to fit 16# on my trays. Yesterday I did spinach and I forget what I did the day before that. I'm trying to dehydrate 5 full loads per week to get myself going in the pantry department.... boy did I screw up big time not paying attention to the warning signs that food was going to become increasingly more expensive as well as not in supply as it has been in the past and that's without factoring in a possible disaster situation. Tomorrow I'm doing potatoes. Those were my bane for a while since I kept screwing them up when I was blanching them but I've got it down pat now. My composter got to eat my failures.

adding.... as soon as you've got time would you try dehydrating some bananas and tell me how you decided to do it and what your results were please? Bananas are not that easy for me and they should be. I've fed a few batches of those to my composter already after.... I stuck the trays in water to get them re-hydrated and "unstuck" so I could scrape them into my composter.

 

I just bought a bunch of dehydrated banana's today, walmart had them for 2.98 for a big container. I will use the dehydrator to do some stuff, but mostly I will be buying all of it through be prepared.com
with 2 small boys, full time work and a 16 year old girl I have so little time these days. My taxes will all go for foods, and heating and things I can not possibly afford right now. come on taxes!!! I had to send them off since Im claiming adoption credits this year.
so much to get so little time I fear. Im really glad I got a start on my cooking stuff, ( colman stove and fuel, and burner that uses propane. Im stocking on gas now and more fuels. Im having a time locating the military stove I should be able to use in an emergency but hope to find one soon!

 

Are you sitting down.... sit down. Those "dehydrated" bananas you bought are fried in an oil then dehydrated.... their shelf life isn't that great because of the oils. I know.... I decided to give up on bananas in my dehydrator because it was less aggravation buying them until I started checking into how commercially available banana chips were processed. Surprise surprise.... that's why I keep trying to perfect dehydrating bananas. One of these days... one of these days I'll get bananas perfect. Good God.... you're working full time with a teenager in the house and you're blowing me out of the water with all you're doing. Me go girl!!!! Ha ha ha ha ha.... you've been and come back and I'm eating your dust sitting here online waiting for my orange slices and a load of laundry to finish so I can hang it up.

 

OMG fried banana's ?? I sure hope the ones I bought off be prepared is not fried. I will have to go look. and Im so mad, this morning the dehydrator went out the door ( Im not kidding) it went bonkers in the middle of the night and omg the smell!! wish I had gotten the better one when I had the chance .
Im pretty sure your way ahead of me, Im still so mad about loosing 15 pounds of organic tomato's, and a whole bunch of oranges and mushrooms! UGH Lets keep each other busy, maybe we can get motivated LOL
Today is mylar day, we take all the flour, sugars and cereals and bag them, yesterday I got 3 more large containers of grits and way more pasta, this next week working on the dumb stove or find one that will work. soooo much to do. Also try to find someone under the radar to get my fire place open, its been blocked for 20 years, and I want it re opened to add the small stove. wish me luck! still need to get a hand gun for protection, no idea where since I will not get it regestered!