Tips on Using and Rotating Your Food Storage!

You may have read from articles I have written in the past that being prepared for Emergencies and having an emergency food supply on hand is very important to me. But, having these things on hand and not using and rotating them into your every day life can make your investment to protect you against emergencies turn into waste if never needed. Don’t worry! It is easy to use and rotate in your food storage items into your every day cooking and meal preparation. Here are some of my tips for keeping your food storage foods up-to-date and a part of your every day use.

Tips on Using and Rotating Your Food Storage!

1. Stock What You Use! One simple method for creating a food storage plan is to stock up on the products you use already every day. You can take a typical one month meal rotation and multiply all the needed ingredients by 3 or 6 and stock up to have a 3-6 month supply of the goods you need for your everyday cooking right on hand. Perishable products can be stored in a deep freezer. Chop of vegetables into usable portion sizes and freeze them so they are ready to add to your dish or purchase food freeze dried for longer term storage.

2. Clear Canisters With a Seal! – We purchased a set of clear PETE containers with a tight fitting lid to help us rotate and use our dry bulk food storage items. When you open up a big can of goods, you can pour out the contents in a clear container that will help keep the fresh, easy to see, and clearly label the container with what’s inside as well as how to use it if directions are needed to make it simpler to use for everyday cooking. Just by doing this simple step, we now solely rely on our food storage cans of rice, wheat, flour, oats, macaroni, powdered milk, and more for use in every day recipes! Is is a huge plus to have everything in bulk really easy to see, refill, keep track of, and grab to use!

3. Start Experimenting! Getting use to using, cooking with, eating, and understanding the products you may have purchased for an emergency food supply will be essential knowledge should you ever need to rely on those foods. Simply stocking up on long term storage foods with no idea on how to use them won’t help you much should a disaster strike. We started rotating in our food storage really small by just substituting in food storage ingredients in the place of other ingredients in recipes. For example, powdered milk works excellent in a pinch for cooked meal and your family won’t likely notice a difference at all! Rather than purchasing any special noodles when we make Tuna Casserole, in our home we just use and rotate our canned Macaroni Noodles since we are already making our own sauce this is a simple swap! You can start with just trying or replacing one or two ingredients into your everyday recipes until you are ready for full food storage meals!

Do you have great tips on how to use and rotate your food storage? Leave them below so we can all learn and improve our current methods of practicing preparedness!