Eat Healthy and Help Your Food Budget!

Most folks today are looking for ways to save money in their daily lives. Today, long-term food storage options can be good both for your health and for your budget. This article has helpful tips on how food storage can help anyone eat healthier and cut their food bills.

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Long-term food storage options can be good for your health and for your budget. Keeping food long-term may require you to remove air from the packaging. It's also critical that you monitor the time the food has been stored to use it within its expiration date.

Storage Tips

The first step to successfully putting away food for long-term use is to carefully monitor the purchase and use-by date. Once you've marked that on the storage container, consider investing in a vacuum sealing tool to make it easy to protect the food against insects, bacterial growth and ice crystal formation. Rice sealed in an airtight canning jar can last up to six years with no sign of insect growth. Bugs are fond of rice, but the processing prior to bagging should kill both bugs and larvae that may live under the husk or germ. According to Vacuum Sealers Unlimited, vacuum sealing food removes air from the food which helps prevent bacteria growth, and prevents ice crystals from forming that allows food to stay fresh for much longer.

Processing the Food

Storing prepared food is a simple process, but the steps must be undertaken carefully. You can dehydrate food for both short-term and long-term storage. For the short term, store your dehydrated produce in glass jars so you can keep an eye on it and put it to use quickly. Eat Cured Meats suggests that when preserving meats with salt it's best to take care to procure salt that's low in nitrates for safe use later. It's also critical to keep the meat at a constant temperature that's above freezing but below 40 degrees Fahrenheit.

Using Up Your Stock

Preserving food for long-term use won't help your budget if you lose track of it and don't use it within a safe period of time. Whether you're using glass jars or vacuum-sealed plastic storage bags it's critical that you carefully label the food and date it. Try to organize your stored food in bins that you can easily rotate the product and use the first-in, first-out method of food preparation.

Conclusion

Whether you're soaking beans or making a meal featuring smoked meat, you want to avoid any food-wasting by forgetting it at the back of the cupboard. Food storage can help anyone eat healthier and cut their food bills. Whether you live near a grocery store or need to drive for an hour to buy a gallon of milk, having food put away for lean times or bad weather can give you confidence.

Speaking of meat, check out this article for tips on how to select the best beef.

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