Survival Pantry

The Ultimate Guide to Home Canning, Preserving Food and Water Storage

Table of Contents

Introduction

BONUS: Your FREE Gift

Chapter 1 – Preserving Food

Chapter 2 – Water Purification

Chapter 3 – Canning

Chapter 4 – Advanced Canning

Chapter 5 – Dehydration

Chapter 6 – Advanced Techniques

Conclusion

FREE Bonus Reminder

BONUS #2: More Free Books

Copyright Notice

© Copyright 2015 by Samuel Allen - All rights reserved.

This document is geared towards providing exact and reliable information in regards to the topic and issue covered. The publication is sold with the idea that the publisher is not required to render accounting, officially permitted, or otherwise, qualified services. If advice is necessary, legal or professional, a practiced individual in the profession should be ordered.

- From a Declaration of Principles which was accepted and approved equally by a Committee of the American Bar Association and a Committee of Publishers and Associations.

In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher. All rights reserved.

The information provided herein is stated to be truthful and consistent, in that any liability, in terms of inattention or otherwise, by any usage or abuse of any policies, processes, or directions contained within is the solitary and utter responsibility of the recipient reader. Under no circumstances will any legal responsibility or blame be held against the publisher for any reparation, damages, or monetary loss due to the information herein, either directly or indirectly.

Respective authors own all copyrights not held by the publisher.

The information herein is offered for informational purposes solely, and is universal as so. The presentation of the information is without contract or any type of guarantee assurance.

The trademarks that are used are without any consent, and the publication of the trademark is without permission or backing by the trademark owner. All trademarks and brands within this book are for clarifying purposes only and are the owned by the owners themselves, not affiliated with this document.

Disclaimer

While all attempts have been made to verify the information provided in this book, the author does not assume any responsibility for errors, omissions, or contrary interpretations of the subject matter contained within. The information provided in this book is for educational and entertainment purposes only. The reader is responsible for his or her own actions and the author does not accept any responsibilities for any liabilities or damages, real or perceived, resulting from the use of this information.

Introduction

Thank you for downloading Survival Pantry: The Ultimate Guide to Home Canning, Preserving and Food and Water Storage. This guide is an overview of both basic and advanced techniques to preserve food to stock your pantry.

Two methods we will not focus on are refrigeration and freezing of foods. In real survival conditions, refrigerating perishable items will not be possible. Separate structures like icehouses will be difficult to maintain and defend. As a result we are going to focus solely on how you can keep food safe on the shelf without chilling or freezing.

Before we get started, I want to quickly review some important tips and techniques related to the easiest form of food preservation. The manufactured foods that fill the center aisles of the average grocery store are designed to be shelf-stable. And for the most part that means they will sit on your pantry’s shelf for months or years without a noticeable degradation of quality.

That’s our goal. Preserving edibles in a way that allows us to eat and drink and stay nourished, even if the world has gone to hell outside our doors. We can talk about food security in the face of disruptions to the food supply chain, but what we are really getting at is the ability to provide for yourself in an emergency.

So let’s get started.

BONUS: Your FREE Gift

Thank you for purchasing my book: "Survival Pantry". I want to show you my appreciation by offering an exclusive eBook “Earthquake Survival Tips” for FREE.

Simply Click the Button Below

OR Go to This Page

http://survivalmasterycamp.com/free/

Chapter 1 – Preserving Food

Food preservation is what made survival of our civilization possible. When the early humans were still hunting and gathering, they had to follow the herd or go hungry.

As we learned how to cultivate and store foods, we could set down roots (in both the literal and figurative sense) and cultivate higher order thinking and acting. Without the ability to have a steady supply of food close on hand we’d be back to those days of scratching out a meager existence hunting game and gathering nuts and berries from wild growing plants.

Folks like you and I recognize that cataclysms are always possible. If a disaster disrupts our fragile modern food manufacturing mechanisms, how easily could we adapt the old fashioned means of keeping food on our tables? The answer we know is not fast at all. So we prepare.

We also are able to save our resources by preserving food that we buy in bulk. What we buy in large quantities can be prepared more efficiently and preserved an mass so when we want to eat it, we don’t use up as much time. These savings can be poured into additional preps for the disasters that we foresee.

Food preservation begins with the basics. Where and how the food will be stored is the top concern. You will need proper containers to store preserved food. Always look for food grade bins or buckets to store beans, rice, and other hard grains. When you have the receptacles picked out, you will need to clean then thoroughly. Mix a tiny amount of bleach (a teaspoonful at most) with a liter of water.

Then use a brush to cleanse the inside of the container with the solution. Rinse, dry and then wash with warm soapy water. Rinse and dry again and you are ready to store your dry goods. Make sure the container is scrupulously dry. Any moisture in the buckets will promote the growth of molds, spores or other fungi within the food.

So what goes in the bins? You can add anything that will store easily loose: grains, beans, or pastas that will keep well when stored in airtight containers. Don’t just dump the food in and close it off. After moisture the next thing that disrupts the edibility of stored food is air. So drop in one of those packets that absorb oxygen before you close off the container.

After buckets, you will need zip top bags. You can get a lot of stuff into these bags. They can also be stored in the bins for better organization of your pantry. So stock up on quality standard and freezer grade storage bags. You may be inclined to go with the generic store brand. Skip the store brands. Buy superior quality. The worst case scenario is when you expect that you have plenty to eat and discover the five cents you saved on a bag has cost you a week’s worth of food to eat. Is a good deal, bargain buy worth your life? I think not.

Most modern homes have a tiny pantry for food storage. That isn’t going to work if the goal is to keep long term provisions on hand for an extended period of time. So if you have a home with some extra room, we can do some great stuff to build adequate storage for our food. Two things need to be top of mind.

First you need to have a room that is secure from intruders. Human intruders are easy to guard against. Vermin are a little harder to keep out of your stuff. So the room needs to be clean, dry, well-lit and easy to maintain. Shelving units should be off the floor and whatever goes into the larder needs to be sealed. Your regular pantry is likely to have crumbs and other debris from food. Your survival pantry cannot have any of those things, ever.

Second, you need a room free from risks of flooding, overheating or exposure to outside elements. Your survival pantry should not be in basements that get cold, damp or flooded. Nor should food get stored in uninsulated attic spaces prone to overheating in summer months. With those concerns to the safety and security of your food in mind, we can begin filling the vessels and stocking the shelves.

Important to note, building up a survival pantry is a gradual process. If you stack food on yourselves all at once, it will tend to go bad all at once. As good as these preps are, they won’t last forever. At best you are buying between a month and a couple of years’ worth of shelf life. Our goal is to steadily replenish what we take off the shelves as it reaches an optimum time to be consumed. Saving for a rainy day means eating what you store up on those rainy days.

We have some basics that will get you a little ways. But after that we get into the vital techniques. The two primary areas we’ll cover are canning and dehydrating foods. Canning requires a high level of commitment to cleanliness. The resulting well preserved tastes last several months or years. Cans acquired at the grocery store have been heat treated to cook the food destroying any pathogens that may have been captured when the can was sealed. Curing, pickling and fermenting all involve the alteration of the composition of food to make it inhospitable to bacteria and other microbes. These are not arts, but are in fact science. Ignorance of proper procedures will result in illness at best.

Properly dried foods can last several months. You can extend the shelf life of fresh meats, fish, dairy, fruits and vegetables by storing them properly in your refrigerator. This will buy you a week to a month. Smoking is an ideal means of preserving meats. This can be accomplished at home, without fancy equipment. Smoking is a little bit curing, a little bit dehydration and a little bit of smoke.

Sugaring fruits that have been dried ensures a consistency of taste and longer shelf life. Additionally, the process of preserving fruit in jellies or jams is based on boiling the fruit with sugar to release pectin that creates a gel. That gel and the sugar suspended in it makes microbial infestation impossible.

Water remains the most vital aspect of the survival pantry preparedness. Storing water is the first priority. Second are means of collecting, treating and filtering available water sources. And because water is so important, it’s what we will talk about next.

Chapter 2 – Water Purification

Having clean drinking water is crucial for stocking the survival pantry. We can make due for quite a long time without sustenance, however people can only last a few days or maybe a week without water. In ideal conditions, an individual can go around three to five days without water. In the event that you are in a brutal environment or are not healthy, your chances for survival dwindle to nothing without enough water.

Water controls your body temperature and passes on supplements and oxygen to your cells among numerous different capacities. When you get to be extremely dried out, your pulse drops and your body starts shutting down.

When you are searching for water for survival, realize that even the clearest looking water is not safe for people to drink it. Untreated water can contain microscopic pestilence that could lead to infection and other types of illness. In a crisis, the water from your faucet may have been tainted. To deal with that threat we must make some arrangements that guarantee we get the water we require.

The most effortless approach to guarantee you have drinkable water is having adequate stores of filtered water. The ideal amount is one gallon of pure water for every individual every day. Start with a baseline of 30 days of drinking water for you. If you are part of a typical family of4, you will require 120 gallons of water. You can purchase those, or you filter water to make your tap water more drinkable. Bottle and store and you have the water you need. Those two means are the least complex approaches to store water at home for use in a crisis.

On the off chance that you run out of water or cannot reach your supplies by the unfolding crisis event, you can purify water through boiling. That will kill any microscopic organisms, parasites or other microbial hazards that could be lurking undetected in your water.

The second option is utilization of water purifying tablets. Stock your storeroom and go bags with an adequate supply of decontamination tablets, alongside directions of how much water should go with each tablet. You will need filter out any visible contaminants from your water before using the purification tablets.

If you exhaust your supply of tablets, you will need to know how to use bleach to cleanse the water you can scrounge. Again filter out any visible impurities that are in the water. Some cheese cloth or a strainer will get most debris. Then take a small amount of non-chlorine, unscented bleach – at most two drops for every liter of water – and let it sit for a half hour prior to drinking.

One can also reclaim water from precipitation. Many stores sell rainwater barrels for the collection and storage of water that can be used to water plants or one’s lawn. That water is not safe to drink, but once treated through boiling, bleaching or use of water purification tablets will work in an emergency.

Water is key to survival. Whether you are trying to ride out a crisis at home, or bugging out to a remote location, you require a supply of clean, drinking water to survive. No survival pantry worthy of the name has less than a 30 day supply for each person in the home. And you really should have enough to last longer.

Chapter 3 – Canning

Canning is storing food in containment vessels. For industrial food manufacturers, these are often steel coated with tin. Some cans are aluminum. But at home, we prefer to use jars. Mason jars to be specific. These jars have thicker glass than the average glass jar. Glass is non-reactive and will not take on odors like plastic does.

Canning at home is a science. This is not an art open to experimentation and improvisation. If you fail to follow the necessary safety protocols you are going to get food poisoning. Best case scenario for food poisoning is you get really sick. Worst case is death. Since we’re storing food to survive, storing tainted food qualifies as a fail.

We have two methods of canning. Hot water bath and pressure canning. Both methods are designed to minimize microbes. Hot water bath canning can only be used with pickles, jellies or other preserved foods. These foods have already been preserved and are inhospitable to microbes.

Pressure canning requires special equipment. Specifically, you will need a piece of hardware called a canner. A canner is a pressure cooker designed to cook mason jars filled with food past the boiling point of water, thereby killing any potential bacteria within. The primary pathogen we are concerned about with canning is botulinum toxin.

The canner works to create that same wasteland for microbes in otherwise unpreserved food. Then with the jar vacuum sealed, the food will be preserved for at least a year and in many cases well beyond. Our rule is, if the food is already preserved, hot water bath canning is fine. If you are canning the food to preserve it, you need to use the pressure canner.

What makes canning so versatile to the survival pantry prepper is that just about any fresh food can be preserved through canning. Fruits, vegetables, meats, and fish can all be canned and preserved for extended life in the survival pantry. There is even a food manufacturer that cans bread!

Canning kits will provide you with all the necessary equipment, including jars, lids, rings, jar lifters and assorted other tools. Jar lifters are particularly important. Other items like jar funnels can be useful.

So let’s tackle a simple canned food application. Some of the fruit preserves we discussed last chapter. The process begins with submerging the jars in a hot water bath. Since the preserves are already secure from microbial invasion, we can skip the canner and just boil the jars for ten minutes.

The lids and rings get to simmer until we are ready to use them. But the jars need to boil. Make use of a jar lifter to extract them from the pot and set them on a clean, dry kitchen towel. Now we add the preserves. Leave space at the top (approximately a quarter inch for jams and jellies) and then seat the lid atop the jar. Twist the ring to tighten and your jar of preserves is sealed.

Once your jars are full it’s back into the bath!

Let them boil per the recipes instructions and then cut the heat to the pot and lift out the jars. The jars should sit for a few minutes to adjust to the temperature. Then set them on the towel so the seal can set. This will take at least overnight, but you are best served if you can let them go a full 24 hours.

Once the seal as had time to set, you can check the lid. A sealed jar will not flex up or down when pressed. The second test will be to unscrew the rings and try to lift the lid using just your fingertips. If the lid holds, you have a good seal. If so, screw the ring back into place, wipe down the jar and store in your survival pantry for a year.

With fruits and vegetables canned and plenty of cured and smoked meats, your survival pantry is looking pretty full. There is just one more thing we need to make sure we have plenty of.

Chapter 4 – Advanced Canning

Meat, fish and other foods are cured by the addition of salt and/or sugar. Chemical compounds known as nitrites and nitrates are also added to further make the food inhospitable to bacteria as well as provide a pleasing color and flavor. The effect is to create food with the same basic properties as dehydrated. In fact, dehydration is a very simple form of curing.

The inclusion of nitrates in food has become somewhat controversial. Nitrates have been linked to cancerous precursors called nitrosamines. As a result, food manufacturers are now offering more choices of uncured bacon, ham, and hot dogs.

Those products all carry strict warnings on the labels that specify the items must not be kept at higher than forty degrees Fahrenheit. Without nitrates the food is susceptible to various bacteria. As a result, nitrate levels are highly regulated to minimize the potential presence of nitrosamines and food borne pathogens.

Salting is the most common form of curing. Salt has several positive effects on flavor, in addition to its role in disrupting the growth of microbes. For starters, salt forces proteins to the surface of the meat. When heat is applied the proteins react with sugars to caramelize the surface of the meat. This is the famed Maillard reaction, which is what makes browned meats particularly savory and delicious.

This is why when preparing regular cuts of meat it is advisable to season the meat with salt. Even the relatively small amount of salt sprinkled on the chop or steak will create the potential for golden brown deliciousness.

Salt’s value to curing meat is far greater, due in no small part to the amount of salt added to the cure. To be effective at curing meat, the salt concentration needs to be close to twenty percent. With that high a ratio of salt, the meat will force fresh water out of microbes and replace it with a more briny solution. The microbes cannot grow and thus cannot spoil the meat. The cure also disrupts the process of fat oxidation so the meat will not go rancid either.

In addition to salt, sugar is included in most cures. Sugar balances the salty flavor commonly found in cured foods. Sometimes the sugar contributes to the flavor, such as in Virginia Ham. But most often it is almost unnoticeable.

Salting meat can be done through immersion in salt, such as with the example of salted cod from the Beginner’s Guide. But more commonly, brines are used to infuse the meat with salty, sugary liquid. Brines can also carry aromatic flavors, such as garlic and onion, as well as spices and woody herbs into the meat.

Cures act over a significant period of time. Dry rubs, such as those to make homemade bacon, will need to be applied for at least seven days. Likewise wet cures require at least a week. Wet cures will tend to distribute the salt throughout the meat more evenly.

Though meat is most commonly associated with cures, vegetable can also be cured for longer storage. With vegetables we call the process pickling. You can pickle meats, such as the pickled pork you’ll find in a bowl of red beans and rice.

Pickling is essentially brining with a little fermenting thrown in. A solution that includes pickling salt, filtered water and assorted spices and herbs becomes the home to the vegetable of your choice. Since you’re already thinking of cucumbers, I will oblige your craving.

Begin with a pickling crock. Wash and thoroughly clean both the lid and the crock. A clean crock makes well-preserved pickles. Into the crock go whatever flavoring aromatics you find pleasing. The most common is dill, but you’ll want things like garlic, peppercorns, pepper flakes and other tastes you like in the brine.

The cucumbers are washed and trimmed and placed into the crock. Atop that goes the solution of water and pickling salt. Store the crock in a cool, dry place and let science work its magic.

Once the fermentation process begins, skim the brine daily to remove the thin layer of scum from the top. After a week the process of fermentation will stop and you can move the crock to the refrigerator where the pickles will keep for up to two months.

Cucumbers are the most common pickles, but olives, cauliflower, even tomatoes can be pickled. Pickled onions are a fantastic garnish for sandwiches. Popular dishes such as sauerkraut and kimchi are also pickles.

Pickles made with vinegar will not ferment and therefore not produce probiotics that aid in the digestive process. But you don’t need to be preserving pickles to use fermentation. The same technique that makes beer and wine also contributes to a number of preserved palette pleasers.

The most well-known product of fermentation in food form is yogurt. Yogurt is made through the fermentation of milk to create a naturally tangy taste and creamy texture. The fermentation begins with the introduction of bacterial cultures.

The transformation allows the milk product to store significantly longer than regular pasteurized milk. Additionally, the inclusion of healthful probiotics make yogurt a fine food for the health-conscious.

The at home survival prepper can ferment foods at home. As with pickling, the goal is absolute cleanliness in the preparation process. The most commonly consumed products of fermentation are beer and wine. They can be made at home as well, but rather than spell out how to do so here, I’ll recommend a brew-it-yourself starter kit.

Curing, pickling and fermenting are related methods of preserving food for extended periods of time. They are valuable techniques not only to put more varieties of meals on your shelf, but to keep them their longer than their component products will last.

Chapter 5 – Dehydration

Dating back nearly 14,000 years, dehydration is the oldest known means of preserving foods. Early settlements would preserve meat through air, sun or wind drying. The process would cause water to evaporate and thereby inhibit the growth of bacteria, yeasts and mold.

Smoking is often considered a form of dehydration, but it is distinct in several senses. Primarily the infusion of hard wood smoke will chemically alter the food being smoked, in addition to evaporating the water within. Smoking is covered in depth in the advanced guide.

Drying meat was the best method to preserve protein for many centuries. Dried fish, hams or beef stored in a cool dry location will resist bacteria for years. Likewise most dried fruits will last at least six months and in many instances up to a year.

Dried fruits are an ideal snack choice snacking for hikers and campers. Trail mixes combine dried fruits and nuts to give a balance of protein, fat and carbohydrates. They make a great addition to the survival pantry as well.

Vegetables can be dried. Though the two most commonly dried vegetables are technically fruits. Chili peppers can be dried to produce more intense and complex flavors. It also allows them to be stored longer. Tomatoes are frequently sundried for both preservation and taste reasons as well. Both are actually berries, rather than vegetables.

Fresh herbs are frequently dried as well to encourage a longer shelf life. As are teas, which are dried twice during their processing. First to whither the leaves and secondly to halt the process of oxidization. Some teas, like Japanese Matcha, are first dried and then ground to produce a fine powder.

Additionally processed foods can be dried for a longer shelf life. This includes instant soups and noodles, powdered milk and eggs and breakfast foods like oatmeal and coffee. These fit more with the shelf stable foods, as it is difficult to dry any of these at home. Still stocking them on your shelf is an excellent way to have greater variety of food options in an emergency.

Drying fruits is a relatively simple process. Whole berries such as cranberries, blueberries and grapes and stone fruits like cherries, plums, peaches and apricots can be dried. Other fruits, such as apples and bananas are sliced into thin strips before being dried.

The fruit is stored in a sunny, well-ventilated space. Steady sun, dry air and free airflow are critical to get the fruit dried swiftly. Antioxidants are applied to the surface of the fruit to prevent it from browning as it dries. Sulfur dioxide is a common antioxidant used in commercial drying processes and can be obtained for at home dehydration. Additionally, natural antioxidants, such as lemon juice, will prevent browning while the fruit dries.

Dried fruit is among the safest food products available. The low moisture content makes fruit completely inhospitable to bacteria.

Dehydrating meats and fish follows a similar process. Fish can be dried in the open air and sun to quickly remove the water content from the fish and preserve it. Fish can be preserved fresh or salted.

The most common fish that is preserved in such a fashion is cod. The traditional means of preparing salt cod began by surrounding a filet of cod in salt. After two days, the fish was removed from the salt, rinsed, patted dry and set out to dry in the sun and wind.

For meats the process was similar. Thin strips of beef can be treated with salt on both sides and then set out to dry to make jerky. Marinating the beef strips will infuse the meat with different flavors.

Pork can also be dried in this fashion, but generally, pork was preserved through curing, smoking and salting. You know this better as ham, and we’ll go in depth on how to make your own country style ham in the advanced guide.

Traditional methods are important to learn. If technology is unavailable, the skills will be invaluable. But if technology is available, using it can save time and produce a more consistent product.

If you invest in a food dehydrator, look for the following features:

Fans to circulate air

Top-mounted heating elements

Time controls

Round trays

These four features offer the best combination of even results and ease of use. Of course, why buy it when you can build it, right?

If you live in a dry climate you can get great results by just mounting a fan to an open cabinet with wooden racks. The cabinet goes in the sun, the fan is set to low and the fruits or meats are swiftly dried. More advanced do it yourself food dehydrators can be constructed, but it is as simple as getting consistent airflow over sun drenched food.

Making your jerky outside requires one final, critical consideration. The aroma of meat drying in the open air is a natural draw for hungry carnivores. Setting your dehydration rig in a secure location will help prevent the meat from getting poached by your woodland neighbors.

Dehydration is simple enough even a caveman can learn how to do it. They were the ones who invented it, after all. Stocking your pantry with fruits and meats preserved using this ancient method will ensure your survival in disaster situations.

Chapter 6 – Advanced Techniques

Smoking

Smoked meat has a celebrated place in our food culture with the beloved bacon holding court at the head of the table. Smoking meats was a mostly accidental discovery. Cavemen knew they could dry their leftovers for additional provisions in subsequent days. As a result, whatever remained from a fresh kill would be suspended to dry. When these strips of meat were downwind from fire, they were blessed with the added flavoring of the savory, smoky goodness and thus smoking was discovered.

People have found the flavor of smoked meat irresistible for millennia. It combines elements of curing and dehydration. But what sets it apart is the hardwood smoke that signals what type of tree gave a branch for your dining pleasure.

Many different hardwoods can be used in smoking. The most common is hickory, which we associate with bacon. However, oak mesquite, applewood, cherrywood and even maple make fine smoking woods.

Smoke itself will produce antimicrobial and antioxidant effects on the surface of the meat being smoked. But because smoke only affects the surface of the meat, it alone will not work as a preservation method. It needs to be combined with one of the other methods.

The two most common methods that work with smoking are curing and drying. Smoking was able, for foods that spent many days in the smoker, to provide the drying. But in general smoking was a complement, not a supplement to curing and drying.

Salt and paprika can both be smoked. As can chili peppers, to produce the magnificent chipotles. The malts used in making whisky or beer can be smoked as well. Cheeses can be smoked. Smoked cheddar and Gouda have wonderfully complex flavors. But really, they are all companions for the real star of the smokehouse – meat!

Let’s talk bacon. Bacon is the most popular smoked food on earth. In some parts of the world, bacon qualifies as the most popular food, period. The sweet and smoky and salty aromas serve as a suitable alarm in my house. As simple as it is to collect several rashers of bacon from your butcher or the package of Oscar Mayer from the bacon case, making bacon is surprisingly easy and rewarding.

The process begins with a one pound slab of pork side or pork belly. Curing meat is science. It isn’t an art like baking cookies. Improvisation in the amounts of salt, sugar and nitrates/nitrites don’t win awards. They get you and your fellow bacon lovers sick. That’s bad survival form and I will not tolerate it.

So for every pound of proto bacon, you will need one and one-half teaspoons of kosher salt, one-half teaspoon of curing salt (you won’t go wrong is pick up Prague powder #1), four tablespoons of sweetener (this can be brown sugar, maple syrup, or even honey; maple syrup is traditional, but don’t skip the brown sugar), one and one-half teaspoons of black pepper and finally a quarter of a cup of water.

We’re building a wet cure. So start by combining everything except the meat in a sealable, ziptop bag. Agitate to combine. Add the meat and squeeze out all the air before sealing it in. Knead the bag and the meat to distribute the cure to all corners of the meat.

Then place the bag in a pan and refrigerate. At least once a day, massage the liquid the meat releases back into the meat and turn the bag over. After seven days test the meat. If it is firm and not at all mushy, you have achieved wet bacon.

Now we remove the slab from the bag, discard the liquid, rinse the slab and pat dry. You can roast your cured pork belly in the oven at 225 degrees Fahrenheit with some liquid smoke and you’ve got bacon. A smoker will capture the essence of our obsession with smoked meat. But you can use an at home grill to finish the meat.

To begin, soak your maple or hickory wood chips in water for two hours. You can go longer without any trouble. Once your wood chips are ready, build a tight mound of coals and ignite them. Once the coals are mostly gray spread them out on one side of the basin. Close the bottom vents and spread some of your soaked wood chips on the coals.

Replace the grill rack and bring out your slab of soon to be bacon. Place the meat over the side of the grill without coals. And then cover. This process will take several hours. As needed add more coals and more soaked wood chips. Do not pull the bacon until it reaches an internal temperature of 150 degrees.

Sugaring

Like smoking, sugaring is built off other preservation techniques. Sugaring begins with dehydration. The dried out food is then made utterly inhospitable to microbial life through the process of packing with pure sugar.

Raisins are an example of fruit preserved through sugaring. The sugar in which the food is packed can be solid form, like regular refined cane sugar you would put in a cup of coffee. Liquids, like honey or molasses, which contain a heavy sugar content will also work.

The challenge of sugaring is that because sugar is inherently hygroscopic, or thirsty for water, it can attract moisture that can reanimate lifeless yeast spores. The yeast then feed on the sugars and produce alcohols and fermentation has begun. But because you weren’t looking to ferment the fruit, it’s effectively spoiled.

An alternative to the challenges of straight sugaring is the process of preserving fruit in jellies or jams. Many fruits can be boiled to release pectin. When heated, pectin creates a gel that suspends the fruit in a sugary solution that we call jelly, jam or preserves. This sugary substance stores well and contains substantial food energy.

In a survival situation fruit jelly is a lifesaver. It’s easy to store, easy to eat and provides plenty of calories. Make sure you stack your survival pantry with lots of jellies made during the summer months when the fruits are at the peak of freshness.

The process of building fruit preserves is simple. Fruit is boiled with water and sugar. For best results mash, chop or in some way open the fruit to make sure the juice runs freely and the fruit pulp is open to the sugar and water. A simple rule of thumb is to measure equal parts fruit and sugar by weight.

Bring that mixture to a rolling boil and then by trial and error check samples to see if they are set. Once set they can move into clean jars for storage. We’ll go into greater depth on the jarring process shortly.

The process of fruit preservation can be extended to several more savory or sour applications. Chutneys and Confits allow vegetables and even meats to be preserved in a sugar based gel.

For at home, do it yourself cooks and preppers, making jams and jellies is the easiest and most common means of using a gelatin based encasement to store and preserve food. It’s not the only kind, to be sure. Confits in particular tend to be more savory than sweet and will use oil or fat as the base.

The savory confit allows for poultry preservation without refrigeration.  And since we need protein in our survival pantry we need to learn to make a confit.

Begin with the leg quarters of a standard fryer chicken. You can use the traditional goose or duck, but I’m most familiar with chickens. Turkey will also work. Trim the fat from the legs and reserve it. Season with salt, flavor with woody herbs (thyme, rosemary, bay leaves, etc.) and full garlic cloves and place in a glass baking dish atop the reserved fat. Cover and let chill overnight in your refrigerator.

The goal of a confit is low, slow cooking. The fat in which the bird will cook and be stored should not top 185 degrees Fahrenheit. So set your oven as low as it will go. 200 degrees at the highest. Then rinse the chicken while reserving the woody herbs and garlic. Spices and fat go into a cast iron baking vessel. Add salt and pepper, whole peppercorns are a nice traditional touch, and then the chicken. Top with enough olive oil to submerge the chicken.

Into the oven it goes, and there it will stay for at least ten hours. Twelve is better. Fourteen if necessary to get the meat to pull away from the bones. Extract the chicken from the fat and then strip the bones. You can store the meat in a small stone casserole submerged in the strained oil for up to a month in the refrigerator.

Confits and preserves rely on mummifying food in gels or oils that keep out the microbial marauders hell bent on wreaking havoc on your provisions. Up next is the process by which we entomb the preserved food for a lengthy stay in our survival pantry.

Conclusion

So now that we know what to do, begin your preparation now. When times are at their best, you can get a head start on all the people who won’t get serious until the crisis looms. If you choose to wait until things get bad like everyone else does, it’s already too late. This guide is all about giving you the knowledge to avoid the worst case scenario I’m about to describe. The reason you need your survival pantry well-stocked is fairly obvious.

I grew up in a community that had frequent snow storms and other winter weather emergencies. The common refrain every time a snow storm neared was get down to the store to pick up milk and bread. It was as if people really thought milk and bread were this magic survival formula. Keep a steady supply of milk and bread and you can survive anything.

The night the storm was supposed to hit, the stores would always be picked over. If you didn’t get there early, you were too late. And if you do arrive on time, you get to fight with other shoppers for things you don’t even want. You just need to have it because it’s the last of whatever it is on the shelf.

Don’t be too late. Start preparing now. The effort to secure your safety begins long before any disaster is imminent. Educating yourself now will make the biggest difference when disaster strikes.

FREE Bonus Reminder

If you have not grabbed it yet, please go ahead and download your special bonus report “Earthquake Survival Tips”.

Simply Click the Button Below

OR Go to This Page

http://survivalmasterycamp.com/free/

BONUS #2: More Free Books

Do you want to receive more Free Books?

We have a mailing list where we send out our new Books when they go free on Kindle. Click on the link below to sign up for Free Book Promotions.

=> Sign Up for Free Book Promotions <=

OR

Go to this URL http://bit.ly/1COlFPe