I strongly believe that we learn more from what doesn't work. What I am about to share really emphasizes the importance of rotation in storage, using what you store.
I am willing to try things to see how they work. As I was working through storing various types of milks in the beginning, I seriously tried many things. i don't drink milk, but I use a lot of milk in my cooking. So I started trying to find thins to store, I already knew that I wasn't a fan of low fat milk.
i have a habit of literally searching high and low on the grocery shelves to see what pops out.
This is a collection of some of the milks I gathered to test out for storage. i stored a few of the Ultra High Temperature (UHT) pasteurized milk. UHT is the process of heating milk to approximately 280 °F for just 2 seconds and then chilling it back down rapidly. The result is milk that's 99.9% free from bacteria. You have a shelf stable milk that doesn't need refrigeration until after you open the package.
The Nido and the canned milk have held up well so far. But, since I don't use lower fat milk in cooking, the Parmalat milk didn't last. To be fair it wasn't designed for long term storage.
If you rotate and use the product it will be fine, but it doesn't work for long term storage.
Here is the proof, this was stored in 2012 & over three years later the milk was curdled:
I wasn't a fan of the various tastes of these milk and that is why I decided to figure out if I could dehydrate and pressure can milk. That is how I got started on the journey of How to Dehydrate Milk for Long Term Storage and pressure canning White Stuff from Cows. While dehydrating milk takes up less storage space and is more convenient to travel, note that you will still need stored water to reconstitute. Overall, now I only pressure can my milk. You will also what to read What the USDA Actually Says About Pressure Caning Milk.
I had a cabinet that was extremely deep and honestly it existed before I started prepping. It was separate from my prep storage, so I wasn't rotating. When I was cleaning it out for the move I found some really frightening things that I will be honest about and share though it is a bit embarrassing. But, I felt it really emphasizes why rotation is very important.
Below are two pictures. The one on the left is a jar of really old mayonnaise and the one on the right I honestly have no clue what it was, but it was a can of something. Learn from my mistakes.
The one on the right I actually treated s a very hazard item. i used rubber gloves and wrapped the can out in several layers of plastic before disposing. The cabinet was actually going to be trashed anyway.
There will be mistakes that you able able to learn a lot from. I think one of things that separates me from others is I am not afraid to try and I do share the successes and the things that didn't work which I learned from. I wanted to end by sharing something Mandi wrote to me.
"If I had any one tid-bit advise for any one journeying into endeavors not yet experienced before, it would simply be: Don’t ever grow discouraged because there is no such thing as perfection; the more you try and try again and again, the more experienced you will become. No matter what you attempt it will never be perfect but instead it will be much better because it will become your own, a unique creation that only you can create."
So go forth and do something, learn something, get your prep on...
Items I used or ordered this week:
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