Ok, here’s the scenario to imagine: its the dead of winter and, for whatever reason, you’ve been forced to head to your fallback location. Really, all you could take with you was whats on your back and not much else. Being the harshest part of winter, its a bit of a slog but you make it to your destination. You let yourself into your cabin (or whatever) and you’re wet, cold, and hungry after the stress-filled challenge of getting there. You grab a propane bottle off the shelf and get your buddy heater going so you can sit in front of it and get some immediate warmth while you wait for the fire in the woodstove to start warming the place up. You drag a plastic bin out from under the bunk and change your wet pants and socks for dry. So far so good. But..still hungry. This little haven has been empty for the last three months, so there’s been no heat. Whatever food you have in place is going to have to be something that can withstand freeze/thaw cycles without becoming inedible or simply exploding its packaging. So with that in mind, here’s my question for the collective hive-mind: If you were going to store foods in a location that was going to be subject to freeze/thaw cycles, what foods would be best choices? Obviously anything that is liquid is probably not gonna fly since jars will freeze and burst. Also, some foods simply do not handle being repeatedly frozen and thawed. To my way of thinking this means that youre restricted to things that are dry and have no liquid or semi-liquids to worry about….soup mixes, instant potatoes, freeze dried foods, rice, beans, etc, etc. Canned goods are probably off the list since they run the risk of the cans bursting from the cold, and the wet contents may not remain palatable through the freeze/thaw cycles.
No doubt someone will opine that the end-run around this is to have some sort of heat system in place that will run while the cabin’s owner is absent. A large propane tank and a thermostat, or some such setup. Thats not in the cards…while mechanically it is do-able, thats kind of putting a lot of eggs into a basket that may, at the worst time, simply fail.
And, also, keep in mind I am not asking about the quantity of food. Thats not really relevant here, Im asking what actual foods would be indifferent to storage in an environment where there is nothing standing between them and freezing.
Thus far, I’ve come up with dried pasta, rice, beans, hash browns, drink mixes (iced tea, Gatorade, Tang, etc.), egg mix, pancake mix, salt, sugar, most spices, hard candy, oatmeal, cornmeal,canned bread, mac-n-cheese, and a few others. MRE’s and freeze drieds are certainly an option and are part of the overall answer, but what else?
Lard ( Manteca) in cardboard packaging should be ok.
With canned items the freeze/thaw cycle may introduce condensation internally and compromise the product? Really think the freeze/thaw is the watchout…
Dig – root cellar /hole and get to static temps – another use for a compact excavator but I drift your thread …
My first thought in regards to the above scenario was instant oatmeal – could get that going with very little prep work and it has enough carbs and sugar to keep you going to prep the next meal. Freeze dried after that.
Another thought would be to dig down if possible. I don’t have much experience living in the cold so I’m not sure how deep you would have to go, nor how many rocks you’d have to go through. But, that would be a fairly bulletproof way to keep things above freezing in the winter and cool in the summer. And it would help for storage of non-food items as well. Now if you were really lucky and there were a cave on your new property….
I keep a lot of instant oatmeal and #10 cans of farina (Cream of Wheat) on hand. Farina has a lot of iron in it.
I would investigate what the freeze line is in that area…
How deep do you need to go to get away from freezing temps…
Then dig out a real root cellar which would be located under your structure…
In other words, decide where you’re going to erect your structure, and build a real
root cellar first… then the structure on top… This should protect your stores from freeze and pests, both 2 legged and 4…
The old “wooded trap door” under the rug scenario…
You can build a root cellar which can be both damp free and cozy…
Doesn’t need to be a dirt pit which leaks and has other challenges…
The Mountain House #10 cans are probably going to be your best bet, however they are far from the cheapest thing out there. I think freeze dried protein with rice to supplement is going to be the solution here.
And/or add some Jello pudding mix and powdered milk and you can whip up some MRE-type shakes.
Paste this into chatgpt. It has a great response.
Provide a listing of non perishable foods that could be stored long term and not be impacted by freezing conditions.:
I have used this site before https://steadfastprovisions.com/collections/all
We had the scout troop use the pemmican as a base and the scouts had to go soup or stew with fresh and dried/freeze dried additives.
There are lots of dried foods out there that might surprise you. I have dried soup from Bear Creek and also Progresso in my storage. These are far beefier and better than the old Lipton onion soup mixes. Then there are pouches of flavored rice and pasta from Knorr for $1.26 at Walmart. I don’t like these for long-term storage, but they are in my bugout bags. Zartarain’s has rice and rice-and-bean mixes in boxes. They want you to add a protein, but you can get by with just adding water. I would store most of these in buckets or jars to keep vermin out.
Then there are pouch foods that are like Civilian MREs. We like the Madras Lentils and the Chickpea Masala from Tasty Bite, plus they have other menus. I’ve never frozen them, but its worth a try.
You mentioned pancake mix, but that is just a start as there are many kinds of mixes. Get some flour. You can make bannock and many other kinds of flatbread with little more than flour, water, a smidge of salt and baking powder. You can even wrap dough around a stick and cook or an open flame if you must.
Peanut butter in a plastic jar can be frozen. Crackers might only be good for six months or a year, but you can rotate them out. Same with nuts and dried fruits. We also have #10 cans of applesauce powder, peach slides and banana chips.
There are also many kinds of beans, and your spices should chili mixes and ingredients for bean soup. We also like split pea soup, sometimes called peas porridge. And if you get tired of oatmeal, consider grits or other hot cereals.
Finally, in #10 cans, I recommend ABC Soup mix as a stand alone or to add meat from a small critter, and Augusson Farms offers botch a chili mix and a black bean burger mix that are worth having.
Jerky sealed in food saver bags, then sealed in glass jars to keep out vermin and reduce odor. Pemmican. And almost everything you listed will need water to cook or rehydrate it (as you already know) so plan on storing water in a manner that will resist freeze/thaw damage. A bottle or two of whisky might be nice too.
I have a dry cabin in the interior of Alaska. When it was built by my uncle back around ’76 or ’77 (I was pretty young back then) the area didn’t have power so it was built with just a wood stove and propane oven and lighting (I wish it still had the propane lighting). It has a Toyo stove now but since I often can’t get to it in the winter I don’t try and keep it heated, not worth the fuel or fire risk.
As far as food out there, I’m in Alaska so there is, of course, Pilot Bread but other then that I mostly have dried good. There is case each of most everything from the LDS store (not a member but agree with them on this sort of thing). It gets to -40 and even lower here every winter but some how there are some cans in the cupboards that “look okay”, I need to test them, they are from back when my grandmother lived there full time, 15ish years ago. I’m also still trying to figure out what all I should bring out there and what I should add for security, it’s close enough to town it’s not hard to get to but far enough out that I don’t really have to worry about junkies looking steal stuff.
The freeze line is a good ten feet in Alaska if not more
Food stored in metal cans will eventually become unpalatable, because they pick up that harsh metallic flavor. This is true even if the food isn’t spoiled or degraded. This seems to be true even for cans that have a lining (which isn’t that many).
I’ve tried baked beans that were stored for about 15-20 years, and they were inedible because it tasted like you were chewing on rusty nails and copper pennies.
root cellar is the way to go. my Grandfather has 2 of them. one close to the house, say 30 feet away and a back up one about 200 feet away. the far one had a smoke house on top of it. he smoked a lot of meats in there. I think both of his root cellars where stone walled. he also had a spring house with cold water running thru the middle of the floor like. also made of stone.
my Dad said it was because of fire that grandpa made two of everything.
and every one was spaced apart so he wouldn’t lose everything if fire did breakout.
one barn was for cattle and the one across the road held horses.
it all gone now as they broke it up and sold off a lot of my grandpa farm.
I have often wonder what became of all the bee hives he kept between the root cellar and the one barn. he had like 5-6 hives. I still can remember sitting down to honey and biscuits at grandmas after running around as a kid there.
the root cellar was deep I remember that much a good couple of feet above my dad’s head and he was 5′ 9″ in bare feet.
That man knew how to live.
Peanut butter and jam or jelly come to mind, crackers or hard tack to spread it on. That’s food that doesn’t require rehydration or cooking to eat, which can be very handy. I personally would have fruitcake, but it would be my homemade recipe infused with rum since I am not sure how a commercial fruitcake would hold up.
You feel that jelly/jam/peanut butter will not suffer from being frozen and thawed repeatedly?
I’m in the Ozarks, so am much further south and lower elevation. The coldest it has gotten at my place is -8F, and the lowest sustained temperature has been 0F for a few days. That was not enough to cause issues for the non-perishables stored in a shed outside, including rice, beans and yes peanut butter, jam and crackers. Everything is in plastic containers, so I cannot say if glass would be a problem.
Regular saltine crackers do go stale after a while, I replace them yearly (chickens are happy to have the old ones).
I would go with oatmeal, rice, noodles, freeze drieds.
Make sure you have some veggies and some protein. Mountain House still makes canned protein (beef or chicken) but they stopped making freeze dried veggies. They focus these days on entrees, presumably due to cost.
Don’t forget a water purification methods and a way to collect water/ melt snow or ice.
Due to the relatively simple nature of a second or tier bolt hole (and cost!) I would not plan on requiring a root cellar, though if you had one or a caviit would be a useful plus.
Don’t forget sturdy storage, probably in metal, to avoid vermin problems.
Life boat bars, made for hot cold cycles, being stored in a life boat on a ship. I have some, not these. No idea if these are any good. Listed as an example. https://www.lrse.com/products/seven-oceans-emergency-ration
Make some pemmican. Then get several pillow packs of beef heart. Trim off the membranes, etc. Slice, marinate, then jerk. You can vacuum seal it in jars or bags. Will last a long time, and its less than $3/pound. At least here in the PNW.
I think freeze dried, or oatmeal, or any jerky type product would be good. Having a cave would solve a lot of issues. Just most caves started as a 58 inch deep hole and if it is your site b which probably is on a mountain you can only dig down around 30 inches before you hit mountain.
There are many choices for you.
Whey protein powder. Your list is currently light on protein sources and whey is cheap. Mine has been fine stored in an outdoor shed in 20F winters and 100F summers.
Jack Daniels and Snicker bars, which is what I am living on now.
Vitamin C,Reds and Cocaine.
Sorry wrong crowd
“Ghee”, clarified butter that stores almost forever.
Following. The readership has provided ample sage advice. The root cellar as a build out design feature under your cabin domicile should be a serious agenda item undertaking first for many dual use scenarios. If that is doable and is available that will extrapolate out your options for long term larder storage and security of your other kit items.
https://mredepot.com/collections/military-surplus
This one has mil spec type #10 cans of freeze dried foods, many meat entrees etc that look interesting. I have not patronized them, yet, but it looks like .gov/.mil bomb shelter rations rotated out or over runs from contracts sold to the public.
https://pleasanthillgrain.com/?srsltid=AfmBOoqKct3izlo5RG8mXnfU8oluh6SBu5zJMzq1bCzFWKoCWPUkztAp
This one is a good outfit that has a lot of prepper related kit as well as chow. I get the canned butter, cheese, and powdered eggs from them. They have canned ghee as well. Worth a visit folks.
Stay fed stay frosty
I bought some freeze-dried food at Sportsman’s Warehouse. it lasts almost forever and is totally sealed in foil mylar. I STORED them SAFELY on the floor by the couch.
They sat there SAFELY for a few days, then I decided to put them some ware else.
they were untouched except the powdered eggs. the cat had torn the foil mylar envelope open and ate them. no residue.
there is a base in antarctica that has food stored there for over 100 yrs, still good. look and see what they used.
Shelter, food and water. Critical needs if you’re fleeing to the fallback site.
Most above answered shelf stable mostly dry foodstuffs.
I’d add MOUSE PROOF them. They will eat through Rubbermaid tubs, MRE packaging and so on. And shit-piss on what they don’t eat.
I’d really like to know how folks would deal with heading to the fallback site and finding a group of folks already there eating your rations.
I think I told a story about tweekers visiting a friends deer camp. Human (barely) version of rodents.
After we repaired the damages, we removed the doors and windows and stored them under the cabin. That way not an enjoyable campsite for them, and we can replace them in an hour or so.
I strongly suggest the under the cabin hidden and NEEDING tools (also hidden in oily rags etc.) to open the floor hatch storage space. Tweekers move carpets and would find the floor hatch.
A case of Ramen noodles will get you quick, hot food if you’ve got water. We add in freeze dried “toppings” of veggies and meats. We freeze dry our own toppings now and vacuum pack them but started with something called Ramen Bae.
Put in a concealed root cellar. Constant temp.
We have a ski-in no heat/no fridge cabin in the Garnet Range, so we do this every winter. In no particular order:
-you are correct, glass jars with liquids (pickles for example) are generally a no-go. Non-liquids like jams and jellies (PB&J!) are usually fine. You can test specific items at home by putting the jar in a ziplock in the freezer.
-granola. Dried milk (‘Nido’ is waaaay better than other brands). Dried fruit – raisins, etc. Costco has dried cherries, blueberries, mangos, yadda. As mentioned, oatmeal, dates, nuts from costco.
-We like grilled cheese. You can wax chunks of cheese. We just get the blocks from costco and cut them into pieces big enough for a few days use. Frozen cheddar gets crumbly when you slice it; swiss etc don’t.
-If we can still drive in fairly late in the season, we’ll leave some loaves of bread in a cooler (somewhere the bears can’t get it!!!). By then temps are low enough the bread usually keeps until late spring.
-crackers – triscuits, grahams for with p-nut butter, cookies, chocolate, biscotti from costco, trail mix, all keep find
-canned stuff is fine in our experience. If you freeze/thaw it enough it can get mushy (but edible), but in our cabin it doesn’t cycle as much as in say a car. Sardines, Costco chicken, salmon, oysters, vegetables, soups, chili, etc all last a winter or two w/o degradation.
-it’s gone way up in price, but the canned butter is a real luxury. Sometimes we’ll backpack in a couple of sticks because it’s cheaper.
-pancakes, maple syrup.
-‘Bob’s Red Mill’ instant potatoes have a lot less salt if the other brands seem oversalted
-a couple #10 cans of freeze dried carrots/peas/etc let you spice up meals
-you can get juice – grapefruit, tomato, whatever floats your boat in little cans or don’t need refrigeration plastic bottles. Fruit in cans or (esp for one person) the little plastic single serve lunch cups.
-bags of chips to go with the grilled cheese
I’m probably forgetting things. Tastes differ, but we have found everything we need at regular grocery stores w/o resorting to MREs, Mountain House, lifeboat rations, etc. It’s a pretty normalish diet.
The US Forest Service has lists of food stuffs that are to be kept stocked in the guard shacks that are scattered through the wilderness here in Montana. I’m sure some of these lists are available online. Some of the stuff I’ve seen stocked in the cabins are rice, pasta, pancake mix, oatmeal, hot chocolate powder, coffee, tea, dry soup mix, crackers, chocolate bars, butter powder, powdered eggs, ect.
Dry goods
Granola or protein bars
MRE’s
Crackers
I think modern commercial canned goods would be fine if you roasted them at a 6 month interval.
Rodent proof containers and traps are essential for al food storage areas. Root cellar is a nice bonus. I would not build a new living space without an 8×8 concrete block root cellar below the frost line. (We had to retrofit our place with one and it wasn’t inexpensive.)
Mice, rats, squirrels, and coons crap on what they cannot chew up. Redundant packaging is key. We use 30 gallon metal trash bins with tight lids in all outbuildings. The rodents will chew thru wood to get inside your building so keep some small mesh hardware cloth on hand for quick repairs. Chicken wire is handy too but mice can get thru that large mesh.
Whole wheat berries store well but take a while to cook. Ditto buckwheat and whole oats. All are good nutrition. Beans store well for 4-5 years; afterwards they get mealy and hard to cook. Split peas and lentils are good options that cook quickly.
Root cellar and rodent denial are job one for rural living off grid.
I was in a village where the bottom couple of feet of the buildings were shingled with food cans. The natives would take the empty food cans, cut the lid and bottom off, cut up the side and flatten the whole thing out. Then nailed it up like shingles. Larger rodents -could- chew through the cans but he what was a rare instance.
CZ,
I went to Grok and asked your question: “Prepper question: If you were going to store foods in a location that was going to be subject to freeze/thaw cycles, what foods would be best choices?”
Answers from others covered many of the same details, but there were a few nuggets. Here is the link;
https://grok.com/share/c2hhcmQtMg_08ac3f13-be9a-4318-9f5c-414c3dd7fe41
Long-term water storage in that scenario also seemed a good one to ask AI. I modified your question as follows: Prepper question: If you were going to store water for drinking and rehydrating items in a location that was going to be subject to freeze/thaw cycles, what storage options are there?
Grok: https://grok.com/share/c2hhcmQtMg_3d172e70-403d-47df-bb39-8a7ebaa5fad3
Short answer: “In short, the go-to prepper solution is tough food-grade HDPE containers (like Reliance Rhino or Scepter military cans) filled to ~85% with the lid adjustable for venting. This handles occasional freezes without special “freeze-proof” gear while keeping water potable and ready for rehydrating meals. If you’re dealing with frequent/deep freezes, prioritize insulation or active protection over relying purely on container choice.”
These AI answers are pretty good, but echoing the previous rodent comments I would probably put these HDPE containers into a galvanized trash can, a used Ridgid style toolbox or purpose build and welded up storage box.
Good thought provoking questions and answers!
Phillip
4.5 gallon septre ice cubes not a big help until August when they would be great for cooling
Sorry but packets or #10 cans of mountain house or another brand of freeze dried meals are for what this scenario is for. You already are using the propane heater and won’t take more effort to boil water while it’s running. Second option are those coast guard ration bars, heat\cold tolerant. Crumble up into hot water to make a gruel soup and consume. Everything else has a shelflife, not very hot\cold tolerant and if cached, how are you going to access it with frozen ground and 10″ of snow?
Knorr pasta and rice pouches always develop little pinholes and tiny armadillo like bugs. Dunno if the bugs are inside and come out thru the holes or if the holes corrode thru the paper foil of the bag and that attracts the tiny bugs, but they ALWAYS fail that way eventually.
I like several kinds of pouch meat.
Chata makes some flavored meats that are pretty tasty.
I’ve got Isadora on the shelf, meat and beans.
Hereford is tasty and has several flavors.
Amazon lists them under “meat in a pouch” but I buy them locally at the HEB grocery store.
Mine live in a bin on the patio and are subject to 100F+ and the occasional freeze. They may degrade over time, but I’ve eaten them years past best by and they are fine. They seem to last better than cans in the condensing humid environment of Houston.
There are chicken, tuna, and even spam portions available in plastic pouches too, although I don’t eat enough of those to have an opinion. Just don’t love tuna.
nick
It would be an interesting experiment to try with canned meat in and out of the home deep freezer several times. I would guess that tuna packed in olive oil might do just fine. Canned cheese and butter might also be ok, but it would be an expensive failure if not.
Like the others said: it would be best to dig a basement.
Mountain house pouches (variety, Costco has free delivery) in metal 5 gal cans. Uline has them. Throw in some Berky filters.
https://www.uline.com/Product/Detail/S-7344/Hazardous-Materials-Packaging/Steel-Pail-with-Lid-5-Gallon
Paint store is where you get the steel 5gal buckets
Wow! Lots of excellent advice for you. I agree with jh, to start with after your journey, you need a mountain house pouch, that you can add boiling water to, that’s your first meal. After that, all the other suggestions were excellent. Living this lifestyle for almost 40 years, the guys who mentioned ‘rodent proofing’ your food are spot on. We have experimented with many things over the years. We do some metal containers as mentioned, but have found some see through sturdy plastic containers with a screw lid, sold at Walmart in their canning aisle, as rodent proof. One mentioned was freeze dried mashed potatoes, at Sam’s they carry the 3.25# box, by Idahoan, it’s real potatoes, and tastes great and stores very long term, we repackage them into the sturdy screw lid plastic container from Walmart, they will last 10 years+. We rotate them and use them regularly. Very good product. We, of course store a lot of grits, in the same containers, as mentioned above. Meat wise, (excluding canning) we have stored the canned beef, chicken, tuna as mentioned by CZ and others. My wife is a big butter fan, so we have stored the canned butter (from New Zealand, I think), as mentioned above, (as well as pounds in the freezer). We do store a quantity of coffee, in beans, as well as stove top coffee percolators, we do have some instant freeze dried Folgers for the first cup, while waiting on the percolator to work it’s magic! Agreed, a small concrete or stone block cellar would be ideal, and a great asset.
My home-canned meats and soups go to my BOL first and then get cycled back home to be used as I replace them with new canned goods. My BOL gets down to around 26 degrees in the wintertime so there are certainly freeze-thaw cycles. I’ve never noticed any difference in taste or texture in any of my canned goods that wintered up there.
Don’t know if I missed these in the replies, but powdered milk to cook oatmeal in oder to add protien and also dry peanut butter powder. Althogh some ots folks mentioned dry beans, i would speciffically think of green and yellow split peas and lentils; protien and iron rich smaller beans that don’t need soaking and cook with less water than larger beans.
Also jerky’s and dried fish to break up add to the powdered soup mixes
Couple things popped into my head while reading all these good comments and suggestions, in no particular order.
1. You need to constantly cycle Ramen, goes rancid fairly quickly in my experience and therefore not good for long term storage unless you’re really hungry and if you’re planning for the long term, why plan on the unpalatable?
2. Use now what you plan to use later, to avoid having to use later what you don’t like now. In other words, experiment now while you can make adjustments or changes, not later when you’re stuck with bad choices. You don’t want to be hard up against circumstances, staring at a pile of stuff that’s hard to use or worthless.
I have several hundred cans of food, both vegetables and meats, maybe 500 at the moment, here in South Texas. Then I have about a hundred freeze dried foods, both Mountain House packages and Augason #10 cans. And then I have at least 32 cases of 24 pack bottled water in the garage that we continuously circulate through.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LBGQ0CY?tag=ttgnet-20
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084P72LJS?tag=ttgnet-20
Plus I have a propane camp stove or two and several propane bottles.
Is this enough for the long term ? No. But it is long enough for six months for four people assuming that some level of infrastructure will be still available. After that, it will get grim.
BTW, Robert Thompson used to say that in case of an emergency, be sure to go to the public food handouts and stand in line for the hours of free food distribution. Otherwise people will know that you have a food stash.
Yeah… no
Temperature swings and critters are the enemy. Before you get fully set up (cabin, sheds, root cellars, etc) to quickly get something on site a couple open head steel drums with tops and locking rings could give you something. Over a three year period a freind of mine did this with 2 55 gal – one he tarred an buried with a box covering the top and the other he kept on pavers in his dirt floor tool shed.
Rice will keep 20 to 30 years if sealed in mylar or glass mason jars with oxygen absorbers. Beans are 20ish years I think.. other things would be lentils, well just about any bean. Oats, grits, anything freeze dried is good to go if protected from environment and pests.
You really need to look it all up.. lots of sites with all the info on them..
thing I can tell you is mice and rats are hell…. I have lived where I am almost 30 years and every winter a mouse would come inside in the fall and we would catch him quick and not much of a problem. About 5 years ago I don’t know what Happened but we had a mouse apocalypse. We caught mice for almost a year. 50 or 60 of the bastards. Glue traps, snap traps, poison, we did it all. We had to throw away a ton of food in pantry and storage. Spent a lot of money on storage containers that everything could go in in pantry and for storage we bought the rolling/metal/stainless cabinets sold at sams for a 220 each. Wheels keep them high enough mice cant reach and door cracks are minimal and keep them out anyway.
we have found that in general heavy plastic oring sealed plastic containers we get at sams and on amazon are just fine and we have not had mice penetrate them. That doesn’t mean they cant just that ours didn’t.
on the flip side we have some very nice rotomolded containers in chicken pen we put their food in to scoop out of and something ate a perfect hole in the side of one to get at the scratch in it. This is 3 times the thickness of a 5 gallon bucket. We have some 5 gallon buckets with stuff in them .. though that stuff is sealed in Mylar.. that nothing has tried to chew threw.. If you want it safe metal is the only thing that will be guaranteed. For us the big steel rolling cabinates were the best peace of mind.
DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE DAMAGE RODENTS CAN DO TO YOUR HOME.
My soft hearted girl children now call for the death of baby mice it was so bad. When we started trapping it was all catch it and release it outside dad.. now its make sure it’s dead dad!