This method to use dry ice to store food is slightly more complicated than using Oxygen absorbers, but it is cheaper. Additionally, depending on your location, this method is easier to do. This is because most large grocery stores as well as welding supply companies have dry ice and most people have to order O2 absorbers online. You do want to make sure you are buying food grade dry ice since you will using this to store food.
Dry ice is just frozen carbon dioxide gas. A block of CO2 warms to room temperature it turns into the harmless gas. One pound of the ice will turn into almost 8 and ½ cubic feet of gas. Therefore, it does not take much to fill the air spaces around your tiny grains of rice or wheat berries.
As a matter of fact, when using dry ice to replace the oxygen in your food storage buckets the biggest threat is that you use too much and pop the top of your bucket.
The big thing to remember when using dry ice to purge out and replace the air in you bucket is that quality matters. If you get dry ice that has water frozen inside it, water will be trapped at the bottom of your bucket… What you want to avoid is opening your wheat 30 years later to find the water has combined with your food to make nasty mold sludge instead of taste wheat goodness. You can tell you have water crystals in your dry ice because dry ice is light blue and frozen water is white. So when you are bringing your ice home keep it in a plastic container. Next, use a tight (but not airtight) lid. This is so that the constantly escaping CO2 will push water away and let it form frost on your container and not your block.
How to Store Food With Dry Ice
Materials:
- Bucket with tight fitting lid
- Dry ice in plastic container (do not use glass or anything that will shatter if under pressure as you cannot get the Dry ice cold enough at your home to prevent it from turning back into gas)
- Hammer to break block
- Small scale – no need to be exact, but you need to be close
- Gloves (unless you want frost bite do not handle ice with bare skin)
- Food to be stored
Procedure:
- Break your ice into small chunks (one ounce by weight will be about 1/6 cup by volume – approximately).
- Pour one ounce (or two if you feel generous) into the bottom of your bucket and mound in a small pile in the center of your container.
- Cover pile with a paper towel to keep your dry ice away from your food (not strictly necessary, but it makes my wife feel better.
- Fill bucket with food to ½ inch of headspace from top of bucket
- Set the lid lightly on top and wait for ice to melt. If you seal lid the expanding gas will “explode” the bucket. Probably just popping the lid, but it could spew food throughout your house especially if your sealing powders like flour. You can seal the lid all the way around except for one small side.=
- Feel the bottom of the bucket. If it is ice cold you still have solid CO2. It should take 1 or so for the ice to dissipate.
- As soon as the ice is turned to gas, seal the lid completely
- Wait about 15 minutes and carefully check your buckets for signs of gas pressure. If the lids or sides of the bucket are bulged then you still had dry ice in the bucket and need to crack the seal carefully. Check again after 10 minutes.
- After the bucket is sealed a vacuum may be present in your bucket and the sides may suck in a bit. This is normal and can be a good thing as no bugs will survive in a vacuum for long.
Yield:
5 pounds of ice (normally the minimum purchase) will do 40 buckets at 2 ounces per. Or 80 buckets at the necessary one-ounce per 6 gallon bucket.
Note:
This is not a project you can buy the materials and then do later. The ice will dissipate into CO2 even if stored in your deep freeze. If you buy dry ice plan on using it within 5 or 6 hours.
Other ways to use Dry Ice:
The other hazards involved with dry ice are that it is 1100 below zero when solid. Additionally, CO2 will displace the oxygen in the air. Consequently, you need to do this outside or in a very well ventilated room. A good piece of information to keep in the back of your head is that PETA and other animal “rights” groups find suffocation by CO2 to be the most humane way of dispatching small livestock (such as chickens). Putting them in a bucket with a little CO2 will suffocate them quickly.
Actually, dry ice can be a lot of fun. Put a cube in a glass of water and kids will watch the thick cloud that boils off. It will compete with your TV, at least for a while. In the 50’s some people put dry ice in home made root beer to make it fizzy.
Remember when I said a pound of solid carbon dioxide was about 8.5 cubic feet of gas? Well 8.3 is closer, and since a 6 gallon bucket is 1.46 cubic feet of space, a single pound would fill a lot of buckets. Add in that the FOOD also takes up space. And you will only need about .5 cubic foot of gas per 6 gallon bucket. You can fill about 80 buckets with 5 pounds of dry ice. At one ounce of solid CO2 per bucket this is actually a LOT more than you need.
If you have some dry ice left you can use it to do some neat things like make a fog if you drop it in water, or if you drop some in a bowl of rubbing alcohol you can get the alcohol cold enough to make a “poor man’s liquid nitrogen”
Summertime food may be dangerous! Bacteria like picnics as much as we do, and summer heat will quickly raise the temperature of refrigerated food into the 40s and above – where bacteria grow like, well, bacteria.
Outdoor food safety is a must if you don’t want to end your picnic with repeated trips to the bathroom or the emergency room.
Follow the simple tips below to ensure your outdoor food safety:
- Think beyond picnics – many outdoor events serve food at this time of year, and not all are professionally catered. There’s the ball game, the company picnic, an outdoor wedding, even your kid’s graduation party.
- Step one to safe outdoor food is safe indoor preparation: make sure the prep area and utensils are clean. The fewer bacteria there are to start with, the fewer there will be to multiply.
- Wash the food prep area with hot, soapy water; soak it in a solution of one teaspoon of chlorine bleach per quart of water; rinse the area; pat it dry. Now you can cook!
- If food will be served outside, marinate it in a covered dish in the refrigerator rather than on the counter.
- Follow safe cooking rules: poultry, 180° (breasts only, 170°); ground meat and whole or ground pork, 160°; steaks, roasts and chops, 145°.
- Once hot food is hot, keep it hot – at least 140°. Once cold food is cold, keep it cold – no warmer than 40°.
- Never let food sit at room temperature for more than two hours; if outside, and it’s more than 85°, reduce that limit to one hour.
- Use a cooler, and once you’re at your destination place it in the shade. This not only keeps the food safer, it may hold off the ant attack for a while.
- The worst way to test whether food is safe is to taste it (duh!). When in doubt, throw it out!
However, if you reread the section on food safety and see that for botulism to grow it needs moisture as well as anaerobic conditions.
That means that the only items you should oven can should be dried. This makes it really good for items like pancake mix or flour.
This process should not be used with wheat berries or anything you plan on sprouting as the temperatures will most likely kill them. Luckily the process will kill any meal worms or other insects that tend to infest (and have allowable levels by FDA standards) wheat or flour process.
What happens is, the heat kills any live infestations, and as the air expands with the heat it is pushed out of the jar, so as it cools, the lids will seal creating a good vacuum seal – which prevents any moisture or bacteria from entering.
Equipment:
- Canning jars
- Canning lids and screw bands
- Wide mouth funnel
- Dried goods
- White rice, oats, and other grains
- Beans and lentils
- Flour
- Baking mixes
- Spices, salt, baking soda, etc.
- Oven
- Potholders and towels
Procedure:
- Preheat oven to 2000 Fahrenheit
- Fill your sterile canning jars with dried goods, leaving 1/2″ head space. Do not put lids on yet
- Place in oven and heat for one hour
- Use pot holders or towel to remove jars from oven
- Quickly wipe rim of jar with damp (but not dripping) towel
- Place metal canning lid on jar and screw metal band on tightly
- Return jars to oven and set timer for 30 minutes
- Remove jars from oven and allow to cool
- Check lids for tight seal
Yield:
Variable
Notes:
Do not use plastic canning lids
Oven canning is not a safe method of preserving anything other than dried goods. Do NOT use this method for canning wet foods such as fruits, vegetables, or meats unless they have been thoroughly dehydrated. Be sure to label your jars with the contents, date canned, and how to prepare.
Once your jars of dried goods have cooled, and you checked the seal to ensure it “popped” store them in a cool, dark, and dry location. The seal will prevent moisture from getting into the jars, but moist air will rust metal canning lids and bands.
Whole grains store better than grains that have been ground into meal or flour.
If you are canning baking mixes. Ensure they do not contain shortening (it will melt), oil (will turn rancid), brown sugar (has moisture).
We have made a Kale Chips Post before, kinda like the multiple brandied strawberry posts. However the first time I showed this William was a baby, and when Genny went to make this on Sunday William wanted to participate.
With WT wanting to cook with mommy, and Genny needing content for her Healthy Life group on facebook (its secret so you have to ask her to join) we decided to just go and tape him messing in the kitchen.
William is much more fun to watch than I am, even if he doesn’t really follow direction well.
We used the same recipe as out original post, because this is the one she always uses, but because the salad spinner go broken in an “experiment” Genny got creative and used a hair drier to fry her kale.
You don’t need to dry the kale, but the drier it is the crispier the result and soggy greens are not “chips”
To make kale chips:
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees F
- Pull Kale leaves from the stem and put in a pot.
- Ensure the kale bits are rather large.
- Add olive oil one teaspoon at a time and toss to cover. You want to cover the leaves but with the smallest amount of oil possible. Otherwise instead of crispy the leaves will be gooey.
- Mix in black pepper or other desired seasonings
- Put parchment paper on a cookie sheet
- Spread oiled kale in a single level on the cookie sheet
- Cook for 7 minutes
- Flip and cook for an additional 5 minutes