Can I cook up pasta and sauce or Mac and Cheese and vacuum seal them for safekeeping without worring about them turning bad? I know that i can freeze them and all is good, but what about storage in the basement, a little colder than 'room temp'.
I know that canning is probably preferred, but dont have the stuff needed or expereince. Why do MRE's stay for years, can I do the same? Do I need to add a food preservative? Am I way off base here? I read about MRE's that need to be submeressed in hot water and shazam they are ready. Can I do the same???
Thanks The Beav
What I have done is make up dry mix meals and vacuum seal them and keep them in the cold room storage or dry storage. In a main bag have your pasta noodles, then in a smaller sealed bag have your sauce ingredients. seal them together in the main bag and write cooking instructions on the bag.
But this is all pre-cooked . Right?
Im looing to do the work front end...? is this possible? Simply boil water and place the pouch into it, standby and then eat. is this possible for me?
TB
MRE's are made using a technology called retort packaging. I borrow from Wikipedia...
"A retort pouch is constructed from a flexible metal-plastic laminate which is able to withstand thermal processing used for sterilisation. The food is first prepared, even raw or semicooked, and then sealed into the retort pouch. The pouch is then heated to 240-250°F (116-121°C) for several minutes under high pressure, inside retort or autoclave machines. The food inside is cooked, similar to pressure cooking. This process reliably kills all commonly occurring microorganisms (particularly Clostridium botulinum), preventing it from spoiling. The packaging process is very similar to canning, except that the package itself is flexible. The lamination structure doesn't allow permeation of gases from outside into the pouch.
The short answer is you can't make meals similar to MRE's. You CAN utilize freeze dryed foods for home made mals that you can prepare with a minimum of effort. I would recommend using small mylar bags if you plan to keep them on the shelf for extended periods. You can vacuum package them for the short term but plain plastic bags will allow the exchange of air and humidity with time.
JAB
Nope 🙁 Sad isn't it. The best you can do is cook it and dehydrate it so you just need to add hot water to reconstitute it. There's another thread going on about doing this with chilli and apparently it works really well. Look for backpacking meals on google and you should get some ideas.
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Thanks all for the posts, much appreciated.
TB