Canning for Preppers: Survival Basics, #1

By Bill Cobb

Canning, Prepping, and Food Preservation

Preppers know that one of the most important things in their stockpile is a steady source of food. But most people just go out to the store and waste money buying a bunch of boxed garbage that isn't healthy and won't provide the proper nutrients you need to survive any situation.

But there is a much better way - canning!

With this guide, you'll learn the ins and outs of canning and preserving food for any survival situation. You'll learn:

- What exactly canning is
- Why you should worry about canning and preserving
- The many benefits of homemade canned foods
- Basic food preservation methods (canning, drying, freezing, etc.)
- The differences between Pressure Canning and Water Baths
- What equipment you'll need to do it the right way
- Much, much more!

So, don't wait. Pick up Canning for Preppers today and get started right away. You and your family's safety may just depend on it!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Roja Publishing
• Release date: Jan 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9781507072271

Book preview

Introduction—What is Canning

Canning is something that is second nature for true preppers. It is a way to boost one’s food pantry without spending a lot of cash. Preppers are typically gardeners and anybody who has ever grown tomatoes, cucumbers or strawberries knows they tend to be prolific. A couple of plants can produce quite a bit of food—more food than you can eat before it spoils. This is why people can.

Canning is the act of preserving foods through a process of boiling the food in glass jars and sealing the jars with lids. Once the food is processed, it is safe to sit on a shelf for years. Canned food is ideal because it is pretty close to the original state of the food, but it won’t spoil. Imagine being able to reach for a jar of home-canned tomatoes in December? Of course the canning process will alter the original state of the food, but it is one way preserve the bounty of harvest without resorting to freezing.

If you ask your grandparents about canning, they will tell you it was something nearly every household did back in their day. People weren’t quite as willing to waste food and worked hard to preserve it. Older generations were not quite as hung up on convenience as we are today. They didn’t have microwaves and couldn’t prepare a full meal in under a minute. Our grandparents and their parents were okay with the canning process, which can be a bit time consuming. They were okay with it because that was just the way life was.

In our technological world, we have gotten away from some of the basics, like canning food. We opt to drive our cars to the store to pick up commercially prepared food. Those foods are typically laden with nitrates and other preservatives that are not always healthy. It is time to embrace a hobby our grandmas enjoyed and get back to canning! Canning is fun, rewarding and most of all—cost effective! Let’s look at all the different aspects of canning and why you, as a prepper, need to learn how to can and make it part of your prepping routine.

Canning for Preppers

To truly build up a supply of food that will last your family for several months or years, you need to learn canning. Canning is one way to fill your shelves with the foods your family loves without spending a small fortune. One of the joys of canned food is it can be enjoyed straight from the jar if needed. Unlike freeze-dried or dehydrated food, you don’t need to waste precious water making the food edible or into a normal meal. An open fire or even a little heat from the sun is all you need to transform that jar of stew into a delicious, home-cooked meal.

Preppers are striving to be self-sufficient. That likely includes learning to hunt and growing a garden. Depending on your state or county hunting laws, you may discover you can harvest more deer, elk or whatever meat than you can eat. Having the meat you harvest from the wild professionally cut and wrapped can be expensive. But, canning that meat is basically free! Imagine have 50 pounds of meat sitting on the shelf that only cost you maybe $15 total.

Preppers tend to enjoy getting back to basics. Food preservation is one of those skills that allow a person to feel as if they are more in control of what goes on their shelves. They will have the knowledge of how to can their own food to pass down to their children. Depending on the disaster that strikes, food preservation will be one of the skills that is in high demand. You never know when the food supply chain will be fully restored or if it will ever return to normal. Folks will have to learn to be self-sufficient. It is difficult to grow a garden in December. Therefore, people will have to rely on their preservation skills to carry them through the long winter months when it isn’t possible to pick dinner from the garden.

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Why you should preserve your own food

Do you put away leftovers after you have made a big meal? Do you put the milk back in the refrigerator after you have filled your cup? Most of us have been taught from a very young age not to waste food. By leaving the milk out or leaving leftovers sitting on the counter overnight, you are wasting perfectly good food. Our great grandparents who lived through the Great Depression were staunch supporters of the waste not, want not mantra. They learned the hard way that food was not always going to be in the pantry. Food was a luxury. It was unthinkable to let anything go to waste. Our older generations experienced what it was like to go into a disaster unprepared. The financial collapse was one of those events that is possible, but most never thought it would happen. Sound familiar?

We prep today because we know nothing in this world is a guarantee. We know that we could very well find ourselves in a similar situation as our ancestors did during The Great Depression. We are learning from our ancestors mistakes. We don’t want to get caught with an empty pantry and nothing to feed our families. Food is plentiful right now. We can hunt, garden and raise livestock. There is plenty of land, water and food available. Now is the time to take advantage of the abundance and preserve every bit we can.

When you preserve your own food, you have complete control over what goes into that food. You are preparing your food with more care than a person who has no inkling of who you are would. When you can your own food, you are making sure you are removing any portions of the food that are not up to your high quality standards. You are making sure your hands are clean, your utensils are clean and you are not allowing rodents and other pests to contaminate your food. Sadly, in huge factories such controls are not possible.

It is crucial you take advantage of everything we have at our fingertips today to prepare for a future where things like pressure canners, electricity and even lids for the jars are impossible to come by.  Home preservation is the only way you can control the quality of food you feed your family. By stocking up on food today, you are ensuring tomorrow your family will still be able to eat healthy food that you have prepared yourself.

Benefits of home food preservation

Preserving your own food gives you the luxury of creating recipes that are suited for your family’s particular tastes and diet restrictions. You don’t have to dump a bunch of chemical preservatives in your jars to ensure freshness. Canning your own food allows you to keep your food as close to natural as possible. You are ensuring you are getting as much of the nutritional value out of the food as you can.

Home food preservation is much cheaper than buying food off store shelves. Isn’t that reason enough to learn the art of home canning? Buying produce in bulk and then canning it at home is still going to be cheaper than buying cases of canned corn or canned chili from the grocery store. If you can grow your own food, a pint of corn could be as little as .10 cents a jar. Compare that to the .50 or more at the grocery store and you can quickly see the cost savings adding up. Assume you have 50 jars of corn on the shelf