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This page deals only with dry bulk foods, whether they started out dry (grains, rice, seeds) or were dehydrated. They can be stored in a variety of containers. Some of the most often used are: Plastic buckets You can purchase food-safe 5 gallon containers. The cheapest I've found cost around $8.00US plus shipping, and because of their size, the shipping can be more than you'd expect. But it's usually possible to get them for free, or a very nominal amount, from fast food places, grocery stores, dairies and bakeries. Our local Hardees gives their pickle buckets away to anyone who asks for them, though you have to wait until they have empties. In a small town, that can take a while, and in a larger city, the fast food joints may have multiple requests for them. Our supermarket says so many people have requested buckets from their deli that they will no longer save them for anyone. It's strictly first-come, first-served. The best sources I've found are dairies and bakeries. Dairies that make ice cream get the fruit and flavorings in food-safe 5-gallon buckets, which only need to be washed out thoroughly. Bakeries are more likely to have two-gallon buckets that frosting comes in, but those are handy too. The only drawback in getting buckets from food-service outlets is that the lids are often damaged when the buckets are opened. So you have to acquire lids from another source. The inexpensive buckets from emergency suppliers such as USA Emergency Supply have lids, but I buy gamma seal lids for my buckets anyway. So I prefer to find a free (or very inexpensive) local source for buckets without lids, and use purchased gamma seal lids with them. By the way, I have no connection to USA Emergency Supply or any other company I may provide links to, except for a few products offered by Amazon. I'm just a satisfied customer passing on my experience.  You can also use paint buckets from the hardware store, but put the food inside something else first. A 5-gallon paint bucket will hold a 25-pound bag of flour, divided into two 2-gallon freezer bags and a single 1-gallon bag. The buckets in this picture are holding two 25-pound bags of flour. I would not do this for long-term storage, because I still have some concern about chemicals from the bucket getting into the food. But it could be a useful short-term solution if you need to store something in a hurry and can't get your hands on food-safe buckets. There's nothing more frustrating than finding a good buy on a hundred pounds of something, hauling it home, and then discovering you have no more food-safe buckets. Been there, done that, and with the mouse problem we have here, we don't leave anything in sacks or bags.
 By the way, there is a common misconception that anything labeled with the HDPE-2 symbol is food safe. This is NOT the case. Paint buckets from the hardware store generally have this label, but they are not meant for food. If the bucket doesn't say "Food Safe" somewhere on it, or it didn't originally have food in it, don't store food directly in it.
Another option is to buy "ale pails." These are 5 or 6-gallon plastic buckets sold for brewing beer. Gasketed lids are available as well. These are essentially identical to the food storage pails, but taller. They use the same size lid, and can be used with gamma seals. Any company that sells wine and beer supplies will have them. If you buy a lid from the same place, check it carefully, because the standard lid for a brewing pail has a hole in it to accommodate an airlock. You obviously want a lid without a hole. Both are available but you may have to ask for the solid lid, or special order it. Of course, if you plan to use gamma seal lids, you don't need to purchase a lid with it. One other drawback of the ale pails is that for some reason, the bail handle is often not long enough to fit over a gamma seal lid. But these pails hold so much that it would be difficult to lift them when they're full anyway, so they're a good option for a long-term storage container that won't need to be moved once it's filled. Plastic pails will deter mice, but rats and other rodents may chew through them. I was storing bird seed on my porch in a rolling plastic pail intended for dog food. One day I found deep scratches around the lid, and careful observation revealed a raccoon trying to get into the container. I put some nasty smelling ointment around the lid, and the raccoon departed. But he would have gotten through the plastic if he had persisted. So don't count on any type of thin plastic container if you have to deal with rats. Glass jars Glass canning jars have proven to be a good storage option for smaller amounts, or for that last little bit that wouldn't quite fit into the 5-gallon bucket. I grab boxes of 1/2 gallon jars any time I find them for sale, and currently have rice, pasta, oats, rye and dehydrated potatoes stored in them. In some of the smaller rural hardware stores you may also find oversized versions of the old clamp-top canning jars, such as these.  This is holding the remainder of a large bag of rice that wouldn't fit in a 5-gallon bucket. It has a small footprint in storage, though of course it doesn't stack well. But it fits into a small corner that couldn't be used for anything else, and it could be laid on its side to go under a bed or other piece of furniture.
 Glass jars are also good for storing various kinds of beans, most dehyrated foods, and of course spices, flours, seeds and meals. They're a good way to re-use glass jars that held other items. This half-gallon jar is holding dehydrated potatoes. I had more than I could keep in root storage last year, so I ran the extras through the dehydrator, stored them in half-gallon jars, and evacuated the air with a Pump 'n' Seal manual vacuum pump (the little yellow strip on the lid is the valve that lets air out and keeps it from going back in). As you can see, there is a lot of empty space in this jar. But the dehydrated potates were so sharp-edged that they cut through the vacuum bags I first put them in, and some became moldy before I discovered the problem. So wasted space or not, this was the best way to store them.
Decorative Canisters For items that you want to keep close at hand in the kitchen or pantry, household canisters make fine storage containers. I hesitate to include them in the category of "bulk" containers, since they seldom hold very much. Another potential problem is that they are not always airtight. I was storing raisins in what appeared to be a gasketed canister, and found it full of ants. There were minute spaces at the corners of the jar between the gasketed lid and the side of the jar, big enough for ants, obviously, and therefore big enough for other insect pests as well. But if you have truly airtight containers, or don't mind risking small amounts of food in order to have the decorative effect of pretty containers, you can find canisters to match any decor. The glass, ceramic and metal ones will be rodent-proof as well, of course. I use various canisters that I've picked up over the years to store salt, sugar, oatmeal and raisins near where they're needed. Plastic tubs seldom insect-proof and often not rodent-proof. I had bags of cornmeal sealed (I thought) inside a plastic tub. In the course of moving things around it, I found mouse droppings all over the tub and a coating of yellow cornmeal on the floor. Sure enough, mice had managed to worm their way around the so-called "sealed" lid and get into the bags of cornmeal, all of which had to be thrown out. But if mice are not an issue for you (consider that they could possibly be a problem in the future, however), and you want to use plastic tubs, I would still choose only the ones where the edge of the lid compresses down over the top of the tub--not the type that has any kind of lift-up closure. Even the "sealed lid" types often have small holes for ventilation that insects will happily use to get into your food. You may feel that tubs stack better than buckets, but the convenience isn't worth losing valuable food. In addition, the rectangular shape of the tub is more easily deformed than the round shape of the bucket. I learned the hard way not to stack tubs more than two high unless they were holding very lightweight items. Plastic bags The biggest problem with using any kind of plastic bag is that they are absolutely not rodent proof. Mice will chew right through them to get at your precious food. I do use plastic bags to keep small quantities of food separated inside buckets or other containers. For example, if I had a variety of dried beans in individual bags, I might store the bags inside a bucket or large jar. But bags are unwieldy, they don't stack well, and they have a tendency to fall down behind other storage containers and never be seen again (or at least not until the contents are rancid, or ravaged by rodents and insects). Vacuum systems that use plastic bags are very popular, yet there are some definite drawbacks to using them for bulk storage. For one thing, if you have an electric vacuum sealer, you may be limited to which bags and/or containers you can use. And of course the electric sealer will no longer work if the power goes off. Another problem is that the bags aren't large enough to hold substantial quanitites of food. I have both a Tilia electric sealer and the Pump 'n' Seal manual sealer, and love them both, but I don't use them much for bulk storage. Anything with sharp edges (like dehydrated vegetables) may puncture even the heaviest bags when a vacuum is drawn. Plastic containers that allegedly vacuum seal the contents are worthless, in my opinion. Most of the mechanisms won't allow you to remove enough air to keep the contents safe for more than short periods, and for a good reason--the plastic isn't strong enough to withstand much of a vacuum. They're good money-makers for the manufacturers, but money-wasters for the consumer. If you find them useful to store leftovers for a day or two in the fridge, fine. Don't count on them for any kind of long-term storage. |
