Home Canning – In #10 Cans

I came across this great post today on the Safely Gathered In blog about canning your own food at home in #10 cans. The blog itself is well written and provides a lot of really great info about Food Storage and Emergency Preparedness. They have weekly posts on Tuesdays that guide you in purchases to build up your 72 hour kits and food storage. If you have a hard time deciding what you need to purchase, or you feel overwhelmed by everything you need to buy to be prepared, these kind of guides are invaluable!

Today they have a great write-up on canning food you’ve purchased in #10 cans. They have several pictures that walk you through the process of using a canner at home to dry pack food you’ve purchased at the store. This can be wheat, rice, pasta, sugar, salt, or any other dry food you can buy in bulk.

I have tons (almost :) ) of pasta that I need to dry pack and several bags of pinto beans, wheat, rice, sugar and salt that I want stored in #10 cans. Some of it will be going in 5 gallon buckets but by putting it in cans you’re able to use the product without exposing a huge quantity of it.

I called the Spanish Fork Dry Pack Cannery about a month ago to reserve one of their dry pack canners – this was in mid November. The SOONEST I could get one was early February of 2009! I reserved it and I’m now anxiously waiting for it so I can get lots of stuff canned and put away.

On the other hand, one of my prep buddies recently called the Lindon Dry Pack Cannery to get a Mylar Bag Sealer – he picked it up the next week! Mylar bags are a more expensive storage solution, but apparently the sealer is readily available. Either way – if you have bulk food you need to get into long term storage you should call asap! You can find the contact information for a few of the Utah Canneries in our bulk food resource page.