My Canned Food Rotation System

Canned food is a great thing to have on hand for everyday situations as well as emergency ones.  After learning that canned goods last about 3-6 years beyond the date stamp on the can, you're probably realizing--like I have--that keeping as many extras on hand as possible is a pretty wise thing to do.

From impassable snow-packed roads to pre-hurricane panic buying and even a worldwide pandemic, you just never know when having some ready-to-prepare meals stored might come in pretty handy.

It's important, though, to keep track of what you have and by when it should be used.  I started doing this years ago by first buying a separate storage cabinet and then filling it with canned goods.  I had dry soup mixes and cans of tomatoes, beans, corn, peaches, pears, soup, tuna, chicken, etc.  (This certainly doesn't have to be stored in a special cabinet like mine, especially if you have a large pantry.  However, this is what works for me.  I've heard of boxfuls under beds, so do whatever works for you.)

MY CANNED FOOD ROTATION SYSTEM
If you search "food storage system" on Pinterest, there are a lot of cool things you can build (or buy) that will automatically rotate your canned goods.  There isn't one "right way," so just be sure you find something that works for you.  My method is just the one that works for me without a lot of effort.

First of all, I rotate all my canned food every two years.  So everything I buy in 2020 will be used in 2022.  Everything I'm using in 2020 was purchased in 2018.  To keep track of all this, I put stickers on the cans.  Like this.

Each sticker is for a different year.  You can see 3 here--one I'll be using this year (2020), one I'll be using next year (2021), and one I'll be using in 2022.  I've used star and heart stickers before, too.  :)  And I even have a master sheet letting me know which stickers I used for which year so I don't forget.  My brain has a lot of things in it, so sometimes the small ones fall out.

I keep the different years on different shelves.  I use that year's cans throughout the year, restocking my regular pantry with them until they're gone.  (Then I have room on the shelf to buy this year's food.)  Buying a few extra cans each shopping trip just about does it.

I definitely recommend some longer-term canned goods, too, that you don't have to rotate as often.  Dry canned goods in bigger #10 cans like oatmeal and rice and dried apples can stay in a dark, cool place for 20 years or more!  I just write the purchase dates on the labels on these.  I only use the sticker method for the ones I'm rotating every few years.  I really like having a few things I can buy and just forget about for a decade or two.

ONE BIG THING I LEARNED
I learned a few things about my canned food storage during COVID-19 isolation.  The pandemic (and questioning whether I really wanted to go out to go to the store or not) made me consider my stored food for actual daily use instead of just in theory.  I discovered that my method could use a little bit of improvement.  It was pretty good, and I'd been doing this for 15 or 20 years, but one thing I could do a little better would be to have a solid plan.

I'd heard the advice "store what you eat," which is great advice, and that's what I'd been doing.  But I realized I didn't have an end goal.  So we have extra peanut butter and jam, but do I have a plan to be able to make bread?  I have tomatoes and pasta sauce, but is it in the right ratio to the noodles?  What would I do with a can of evaporated milk?  I've heard it's a good substitution for milk, but have I tried it in a recipe?

So I have made some notes about how to improve what I store.  I started experimenting with recipe substitutions, as you know from reading this blog.  :)  But I also realized what I could use more of or didn't need as much of.

I have decided that to make my canned food storage more efficient, I would make a meal plan with enough meals for 3 weeks--all made just from my canned food storage.  I can do that from a lot of the recipes I have here, in fact.  (And canned soup does the trick, too.  So does a bowl of oatmeal.)  And that's how my 21-Day Meal Plan was born.  You can head over to that link for a (free) printable, too.

Having an actual plan means that when I buy those extra canned goods for my storage cabinet, I will be making sure I'm not left with a cake mix and a can of pinto beans at the end of the day.

Have you found a good method for rotating your canned goods?  Do you have a good plan for using them?  I'd love to hear about them--let me know in the comments below.  

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My 21-Day Pantry Meal Plan

It's a great idea to have some meals on-hand that you can make in case of emergency or just in a last-minute hurry, and that's what this blog is dedicated to.  

I'm so excited to share something fantastic with you today!  

This blog began in March as a quest to find great recipes for meals that didn't require shopping trips for fresh ingredients--because in March (hello, COVID-19) it was pretty hard to get much of anything for a while.  (Remember the creepy feeling of the empty shelves in the grocery stores?  It took me 10 weeks to find yeast and another 8 to find it again!)  

Shortly after starting this blog sharing easy pantry-friendly (shelf-stable) recipes, I decided that my own pantry-friendly meal ideas could use an upgrade.  They could use a plan.  So I decided to put together a 21-Day Pantry Meal Plan based on these pantry-friendly recipes my family likes.  I'm really happy to have put it together this way because now I can store exactly what I'll need.  :)  

The meal plan includes recipes I've posted here at this blog plus a few non-recipe meals (like oatmeal for breakfast), and it's enough for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, plus dessert every 3 days, and will feed 4-6 people for 21 days.  Without any trips to the store!

And I'm going to share my 21-Day Pantry Meal Plan with you!  There's a printable document here with the meal plan which you can use along with all the recipes published here at the blog so far (with a few more coming in upcoming weeks).  Just click here and print.  

Feel free to make notes and adjust this meal plan to your own preferences, too.

I can't tell you how excited I am to have this cookbook--all the recipes from this blog in one place.  These can be go-to recipes in a pinch or in a big emergency.  My next step is to make a big shopping list, then make sure I have all the ingredients on hand.  I'll be set for a whole 21 days!

And stay tuned at the blog, too, for some good snack ideas coming up that can be added to your pantry-friendly meal plan.  These are foods that don't need to be cooked or even heated, so they are certainly good for snacks, but they're also great for a 72-hour emergency kit in case of power outages and such.

I'd love to know what recipes you've tried from the blog so far!  Comment below and tell me what you like.  

Then keep visiting!  I've got 5 more recipes to share in 2020 (wait until you see the elegant cookies coming in December), then in 2021, the recipes will be posted on the first Friday of each month, and will include more recipes, canned food rotation tips, and 8 recipes in a jar!  I love those!  They're SO handy (and they make great gifts, too!)  So keep on visiting Easy Pantry Recipes and find out why.  :)

See you next week!

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How Long Can I Store Canned Goods?

When a cut of meat says "use by," that's pretty straightforward.  Anything fresh like meat or dairy products should be used by the date on their labels, more or less.

Canned goods, however, have been preserved.  They have a different story than fresh foods.  The purpose of canning fresh foods is to be able to use them well beyond their fresh-shelf life which would only be a few days or weeks.  The preservation process makes them good for years, in fact.

Think about the difference between buying a fresh fish and buying a can of tuna.  You'll want to eat the fresh fish soon, but the can of tuna could stay on your shelf for months.

Keep in mind that "use by" (like you see on meat and dairy products) doesn't mean the same thing as "best by" that you might see on a can of corn.  (More here and here.)

Let's cut straight to the moral of the story, and then I'll give you the story.  The moral of this story is:

Don't be quick to throw away your past-date canned goods!

They are almost always good (and even nutritious) beyond their date-stamp.

My favorite study to back this up was conducted on the steamboat Bertrand.  Well, its sunken wreckage, that is.  In 1865 it sailed the Missouri River with loads of canned goods for delivery to gold mining camps in Montana.  It snagged on something on the river bottom and sunk under the weight of all it was carrying.  The wreckage was discovered about 100 years later.

Some of the canned goods from this wreck were retrieved from the bottom of the river in 1968, and in 1974, chemists from the National Food Processors Association ran tests on the contents of the canned goods.  100+-year-old canned goods.  They determined that although the foods had lost their fresh smell and appearance, they had no microbacterial growth and were just as safe to eat as when they had been canned.

*In a different century!*

There was a decrease in some of the nutrients, as the food was--after all--over 100 years old.  But the food was still safe to eat.

I don't keep my canned goods for 10 years, let alone 100, but the point of this story is that most canned goods last much longer than their expiration dates.

Jumping ahead to this century now, experts say that if you store your canned goods in a cool, dark place, they actually have about double the shelf life of what is printed on the "best by" label.  Most canned goods can still be eaten 3-6 years later.  (Here's another source.)

We're talking about wet canned goods here (like a can of peaches), but dried food (like oats) lasts MUCH longer.  (My favorite place for staples preserved in cans is here.  You can find canned oats, sugar, flour, apples, onions, and more.)  Some dry canned goods like wheat can last 30 years or more!

Don't waste money or food by throwing away cans that have been stored well (out of direct sunlight and extreme heat) and which have no damage.  Never eat the contents of a can with a bulging top as the food inside has likely been compromised, but don't be quick to throw away canned goods just because of a date stamp.  The food inside is almost certainly good for a few years yet.

This is great news if you want to keep a bunch of things handy in your pantry so you can make some of the easy recipes at Easy Pantry Recipes.  And it's even better news if you find yourself in a pinch.