Question about Food Saver vacuum sealing

[Lazyfaire]

I have used a Food Saver for the past 10 years. I have vacuumed rice into bags of about 2#, nuts, cranberries, trail mixes. All this plus frozen meats, fish and vegetables. Ground beef is still pink after 8-10 months (I do rotate and use meats accordingly). Salmon remains pink for a long time. Just went and bought boneless chicken breasts, chicken quarters and steaks. Vacuum packed them for future meals. On sale and at a good price.

But if SHTF I have a couple of buckets of emergency foods plus other dried goodies to augment them with. Freezer goes down? I've got lots of crab food.

 

[Camelfilter]

I have done some research on LT storage of food. Apparently the only way to make a 100% O2 barrier is to use metal, like a can or specially sealed heavy foil bags. Of course we want to use our Foodsaver vacuum packers and Mylar bags. What I have read is that plastic and Mylars have some degree of oxygen permeability and will eventually let oxygen in. Think about mylar balloons and how they go limp and flat after a few days.(Of course that is Helium leaking which occurs much faster than O2 would)

Apparently the best we can do is multiple layers of plastic and Mylar. I am making smaller bags of Rice and Beans and vacuum packing them. I am then placing those into a 6 gallon Mylar. I am flooding the Mylar with CO2 (My beer dispensing equipment is handy for that) thus purging out much of the O2 and adding O2 absorbers. Sealing the Mylars and placing them into 5 gallon heavy duty NAMPAC buckets with oring sealing lids.

When I need to open my bucket and slice into the large Mylar bag inside I will have smaller packets of food inside for dry, easy dispensing even under adverse conditions. This is of course a LOT more work than simply sealing everything into one big Mylar so I wont do this with every bucket I put away.

This will give me triple layer protection and drastically slow the ingress of O2. Who knows how long this will allow the items to last but it is about the best I can see to do. Combined with storing the buckets in a cool dark environment and some rotation of stock should keep you squared away just fine.

FWIW

Cyborg

Food grade Mylar bags are much thicker than Mylar baloons. Not a true comparison.

Fiodsaver bags are for short to midterm storage (months to a few years). 2 reasons, foodsaver vacuum storage still leaves oxygen & the plastic is permeable to air.

Food grade Mylar bags used with O2 absorbers removes all O2 AND are air impermeable. Mylar and O2 absorbers for long term storage.

 

[Siglvr]

I didn't even consider using the foodsaver (OK, it's a knockoff that cost $11 but works great). Use it for freezer steak packaging. Winco has O2 obsorbers, and I borrowed my kids snowboard wax iron to seal the mylar bags. So rice (or beans or oats) in - then O2, seal....then seal again just above the first seal. Put it in the freezer for a week to kill any potential insects. The O2 pack literally makes the mylar suck up tight as if it was hit with a food saver. Then the sealed/full (and marked in felt tip pen with date and whats inside) mylar packs go into a 5 gallon food grade bucket until it's full. Gamma seal the lid tight, mark it with a big label. Stack them vertically. Only have to move them @ every couple of months (or less once you get sick of whatever it is ).

Winco also has lentils, oats, rice, split peas and beans in bulk - usually in the back corner. A 25lb sack of lentils is very very difficult to work though in any reasonable time. You get sick of lentils first, and these bulk bags range from $20-$30. I know people who condemn that as wasteful and irrational but who spend more than that in a week at Starbucks for 1000 calories waist fat adders that they piss away. If any true food shortages occur like is being repeatedly predicted, they'll be wishing they'd have stuffed a bag of split peas and lentils away.

Here's a solid Lentil recipe https://www.northwestfirearms.com/threads/share-a-great-recipe.247296/page-2

 

[Defense Minister]

24 lbs. of rice is 46,000 calories, and enough food for two for 23 days based on a 2000 calorie/day diet if that's all I'm eating. There's no way a 24 lb. bucket of bulk rice is gonna go bad after opening before I can eat it if SHTF, so opening it and dividing it into 2# Mylar bags seems a waste of time to me…

 

[308]

We tried food saver bags for rice very early on but later found many bags to be punctured by a random jagged rice kernel. Now it's exclusively food grade buckets and double seal lids.

Okay, so you normally keep your grains, rice, beans in containers with oxygen absorbers, etc. Does anyone use the Food Saver vacuum sealing products to store rice/grain/beans? Do we have any info on use of that product for long term storage?

It would be nice to have rice in smaller portions in a 5 gal bucket that could be opened as needed instead of opening the entire bucket.

Any help and suggestions gladly accepted.

Sod

View attachment 206882

 

[joken]

I vacuum pack in canning jars as well as the bags with my foodsaver.

 

[aljames]

I used to vacuum seal rice in pre measured quantity's for backpacking/camping trips. One thing I found helpful was to mark the outside of the bag with a water line [think instant oatmeal] so that after you dump out the rice you can use the bag to measure out the exact amount of water to use for cooking. Worked well. I never had the rice poke problem but it was short term storage.

 

[Siglvr]

24 lbs. of rice is 46,000 calories, and enough food for two for 23 days based on a 2000 calorie/day diet if that's all I'm eating. There's no way a 24 lb. bucket of bulk rice is gonna go bad after opening before I can eat it if SHTF, so opening it and dividing it into 2# Mylar bags seems a waste of time to me…

The real question for me, Defense Minister, and for you it might not matter but to me it does, is this: If you bought (OK, lets say "overbought") a massive bag of rice for future food storage, WHEN is that massive bag going to be opened? That is, how long will it just lay around before it is used? Mylar and O2 sealed with a deep freeze in the freezer to kill any wayward insects will all but guarantee the stuff is good years later when I finally get to it. In a bulk sack....much much less.

How much is hard to say of course.

 

[Howard1955]

D

Okay, so you normally keep your grains, rice, beans in containers with oxygen absorbers, etc. Does anyone use the Food Saver vacuum sealing products to store rice/grain/beans? Do we have any info on use of that product for long term storage?

It would be nice to have rice in smaller portions in a 5 gal bucket that could be opened as needed instead of opening the entire bucket.

Any help and suggestions gladly accepted.

Sod

View attachment 206882

I've stored rice and beans in vacuum-sealed quart jars. It works fine.

 

[po18guy]

If you can package it using a nitrogen tank, it will last indefinitely. No oxygen, no oxidation, no vacuum needed.