Cooking questions

[Eri c]

Had some questions about ingredients.

How long do powdered eggs and powdered milk last once the container is opened? I made a few premade biscuit / cornbread type things and want to know how long they will keep. Also with leftover powdered eggs/milk that I am not taking on the trip should I store that in a freezer? Vacuum seal it?

Vegetable shortening – if I want to use shortening in my baking (vs oil) can I just mix it with my dry ingredients before hand without causing issues?

And in the “not a question” category, I did enjoy some nice cornbread when testing my steaming setup in the kitchen. https://goo.gl/photos/jKExLT8ohbkmAkkq5

[Bill Giles]

My experience with powdered eggs and dried milk is that they will last a long time, if kept dry. Frozen dried food may last forever. I try to keep fat out of my dried food to avoid rancidity. I can add fat later. I can’t speak to your question on shortening other than I don’t do it, I don’t see any real problem with fats in dried food that you intend to use soon. I get some freeze dried foods in large cans and repackage them in heat sealed plastic bags. If I’ve got room in the freezer, I put them in there. I keep nuts and seed meals in the freezer to slow down rancidity. I have difficulty digesting large nut pieces or seeds, so I generally grind them to meal.

[Nick Smolinske]

Do you have a vacuum sealer?  If so, buy the wide-mouth mason jar attachment and seal everything that way.  If not, I’d recommend buying a vacuum sealer.  :)  I’ve found it to help just about everything last longer.  Here’s a photo of some of my backpacking food cache (artfully arranged for a blog post I wrote about my vacuum sealer):

[Eri c]

I do actually, so for freeze dried or dried anything you just put the attachment on and vacuum seal stuff in the jar huh? Is there a ballpark on how long stuff will last like that? Would you do store dehydrated meat like that?

[Nick Smolinske]

Yeah, it just vacuums all the air out of the jar.  Works great!

I haven’t had mine long enough to give you a ballpark figure – the longest I’ve stored something is 3 months.  But I can tell you that I’ve had food stored in mason jars versus ziplocks, and I’ve had both jerky and dried mangos degrade in the ziplocks while their counterparts in the jars showed no change.  This happened by accident because I didn’t unpack one of my stuff sacks of food after a backpacking trip.

My guess is that anything dried would last a very long time in a vacuum sealed jar.  Probably years for low-fat items, maybe less for something with fat.  But I don’t really know for sure.

[Laura O]

Thrive has powdered eggs, instant milk, and shortening powder. Once you open the can the eggs and shortening are good for 1 year while the instant milk will be good for 2 years opened.

Right now the whole egg powder is out of stock but their scrambled egg mix works very well for frying. It tastes like regular eggs.

 

I am an Independent Consultant for Thrive Life.

[Link .]

Laura, you have only made 3 posts on BPL and all of them about Thrive, you might want to add to your posts that Thrive is your company for transparency, it can be a hot topic to not post your interest in  company that you make money from and write about it in every post like a commercial pushing your product.

[Laura O]

Thanks for the help. A few years ago I was active on BPL through my husband’s account but have just now created my own. I don’t want to spam people’s posts but only provide relevant information.

[JCH]

Laura,

OK, so your intentions are honorable.  Thank you for the info.

But what exactly *is* your connection to thrive.com? The URL you supply in your profile indicates some official connection.

[Laura O]

Sorry about the confusion. I have received an official email on how to post this sort of information and in the future I will follow those guidelines.

 

I am an Independent Consultant for Thrive Life.

[Author]

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