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Prepper Checklist for Cooking and Canning? Cooking and canning foods at home is so easy that even a beginner can quickly learn how to master it. Making and canning foods at home is also an inexpensive and healthy way to provide food for your family.
It’s a method where you can set aside provisions in the event of a disaster. But if you’re going to use canned foods, you’ll want to follow this checklist to ensure that you have the right supplies and follow the important safety guidelines.
Prepper Checklist for Cooking and Canning at Home
The first items that you’ll need to line up are enough jars to hold the foods you want to store. How will you know how many jars you need? One way is by checking out what the recipe says. Home canning recipes will usually tell you how many batches of food the recipe will produce.
You can find jars that are specific for home canning. When you have the jars you need, you’ll want to wash the jars along with their lids and bands like you would hand wash dishes. This is done to remove germs and sterilize the jars.
The next thing you’ll need is utensils. You’ll need spoons and a spatula. You’ll also want to make sure that you sterilize the utensils you use. When you’re canning foods, you don’t have to have many items, but you do want to make sure you have a sturdy stockpot.
You might find it helpful to have a funnel, labels, and a canning jar holder. If you’re canning fruits or jellies, you may also want – pectin, but some people can foods without it – it’s a personal preference.
Once the water has simmered in the pot, you’ll want to fill the jar to the level that the recipe calls for. Don’t put warm foods in cool jars because this will cause the jars to shatter. The jars need to be at least room temperature.
To get out the air bubbles, make sure you don’t stir – just run a flat utensil around the inside of the jar. Put on the lid toppers and the rings, then place the jars in the jar lifter. If you don’t have a jar lifter, you can use tongs in a pinch, but it’s easier for the jar to slip with tongs.
Using a jar lifter, you would lower it by the handle into the stockpot until the jars’ tops are completely covered by water. Let the water boil however long the recipe says to let it boil.
You don’t want to count the time before the water boils. Once the jars are cool, some people put labels that are dated on the outside of the jars so that they can rotate the foods while they’re in storage.
Which Prepper Recipes Should You Compile?
What Prepper Checklist for Cooking and Canning would be complete without talking about recipes? When it comes time to live off of your survivalist food stores, life might make a chance for you and your family at mealtime. You can no longer run up to the corner store for foods to go in a recipe – you have to have it on hand or make do with what you do have.
You’ll want to look for certain types of recipes that work with the kinds of foods most preppers store – but also locate recipes for your files that create meals your family loves.
The primary focus for many preppers is on beans, bread, and canning recipes. But that’s not your only option. You will probably be storing lots of rice, freeze-dried or dehydrated foods.
You want to be able to turn those staples that your family has worked hard to store into an almost gourmet meal that you’d be proud to serve to dinner guests during a typical celebration.
Start organizing your recipes offline. Many people have them stored on sites like Pinterest, but if there’s no electricity, you won’t be able to access those recipes at all. It’s better to print them out and save them in a small filing storage container.
Organize your recipes according to what staples your family has on hand. If you find a recipe that calls for something you don’t yet have, add that item to your checklist of food storage items to get. We like this list we found here: 45 Pantry Meals for Tough Times or Tight Budgets.
Put the recipes in categories for entrees, side dishes, bread, and desserts. You might even want to have one for beverages if you’re able to store different types of ingredients to make delicious drinks.
Too many preppers who are just starting out think that emergency food stores would mean you have to live on meals ready to eat or plan meals that offer no sense of enjoyment.
During a crisis, you want to provide your family with the most normal routine possible. Sometimes that means being able to serve up favorite family meals. You may have to create substitutions for certain things, but it’s better than living on a protein bar day after day.
Using your prepper food stores means rotating items out of commission, and you can invest in survival cookbooks and test out your prepper culinary skills using a variety of methods – including solar ovens and other forms of cooking without electricity.
If you have children, make sure you have them help you compile a list of their favorites, too. They can even help you make a test batch to see if it passes muster with the whole family and earns its spot in the recipe container!
Other articles you may find helpful:
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- Bushcraft Knives Essentials: Choosing the Right Blade for Survival Skills
- Nutrient-Survival Food: The Ultimate Guide to Long-Term Food Storage
- Five Ways to Survive a Harrowing Attack: How to Win the Fight
- Off-Grid Wind Power Systems: Harnessing Sustainable Energy in Remote Locations