Oil. It's another component of basic food storage that people don’t get
particularly excited about. It’s not
like you actually eat oil. Most people
don’t store enough, because they say they never use that much. It’s true.
It’s like salt. When most of your
food comes out of boxes or bags or cans, you don’t use much oil. The manufacturers already put the salt and
oil in for you.
But it’s an entirely different story when you start making everything from scratch, or when you’re having to supplement your food stores with plants scavenged from the yard or woods. An awful lot of wild plants are rather unpalatable raw, but become pretty tasty when sautéed in a little oil. (At my husband's Christmas work party last year, Brussels sprouts sauteed in bacon grease and with bacon bits was served as one of the appetizers. I have never been one to get excited about Brussels sprouts. After going back for thirds, I was too embarrassed to go back for fourths. So I asked my husband to get me some more. They were so, so good. I might even try to grow them in the garden this year.)
But it’s an entirely different story when you start making everything from scratch, or when you’re having to supplement your food stores with plants scavenged from the yard or woods. An awful lot of wild plants are rather unpalatable raw, but become pretty tasty when sautéed in a little oil. (At my husband's Christmas work party last year, Brussels sprouts sauteed in bacon grease and with bacon bits was served as one of the appetizers. I have never been one to get excited about Brussels sprouts. After going back for thirds, I was too embarrassed to go back for fourths. So I asked my husband to get me some more. They were so, so good. I might even try to grow them in the garden this year.)
Because many people don't give much thought to the importance of oil in their food supplies, I'm including an excerpt of an article written by F. Enzio Busche over forty years ago about his experiences regarding food during and immediately after World War II. I posted more of the article last week, but this paragraph about oil bears repeating:
"As for what we needed, the food item
we relied on most was vegetable oil. With a bottle of vegetable oil,
one could acquire nearly every other desirable item. It had such value
that with a quart of vegetable oil one could probably trade for three
bushels of apples or three hundred pounds of potatoes. Vegetable oil has
a high calorie content, is easy to transport, and in cooking can give a
tasty flavor to all kinds of food items that one would not normally
consider as food—wild flowers, wild plants, and roots from shrubs and
trees. For me and my family, a high-quality vegetable oil has the
highest priority in our food storage, both in times of daily use and for
emergency usage. When vegetable oil is well-packed and stored
appropriately, it has a long storage life without the necessity of
refrigeration. We found ours to be in very good condition after twenty
years of storage, but circumstances may vary in different countries and
with different supplies."1
So let’s talk about some specific oils and why you might
wish to store them.
Vegetable (soybean) oil. Around 100% of the soybeans grown in this country are “Roundup Ready,” GMO. The only soybean oil I have here is ten years old, and is waiting to be used in oil lamps.
Peanut oil. It’s what I use for most of my baking and cooking and making mayonnaise. It is not GM, so far anyway. I buy it in large containers at Sam's or restaurant supply stores and then pour it into half-gallon and gallon canning jars and vacuum seal.
Olive oil. It has a long shelf-life, but it's a bit more expensive so I don't have as much. A lot of it is sold in glass bottles, so that's a plus.
Butter. Buy it when it's on sale and store it in the freezer if you have the space. Butter eventually becomes freezer-burned if not stored in freezer bags. If the power goes out, it will still be fine in the short-term. If the power is going to stay off for months, try to keep it as cool as possible. While freezer-burned butter won't work for buttering your toast, it's still fine for baking chocolate chip cookies.
Shortening. It's not my favorite oil to store. We don't use a lot of it here, but it is essential for making buttercream frosting for cookies and cakes. If you are storing much of it, you might wish to consider melting it and pouring it into glass jars and vacuum sealing for longer-term storage.
Lard. All lard is rendered from the fat of pigs. The commercially-prepared stuff has preservatives added. It's used for frying and makes the best biscuits and pie crust. Do not try substituting lard for shortening in frosting recipes, unless you hate yourself or the people you are feeding.
Coconut oil. I don't know if I'm saving the best for last, but coconut oil is definitely one of my favorites, and that is because it is an excellent substitute for butter. And I mean excellent. It works great in cornbread and chocolate chip cookies. Where it doesn't work perfectly is in buttering your toast or popcorn, because it doesn't have that butter flavor. However, if you're putting any jam or honey on your toast, you probably won't notice the absence of the butter flavor.
Dehydrated butter powder. This is pretty pricey stuff, and it doesn't reconstitute quite well in my opinion. It definitely doesn't look like butter when you mix it up. And for us, it is far too expensive to store for use in baking, especially when coconut oil will do the job so admirably. But if you really need butter for your bread or popcorn, this is what you do: Instead of using water as directed on the dehydrated butter can, use coconut oil (melting point is 76 degrees, so it shouldn't be difficult to work with). Coconut oil will provide the perfect butter consistency and texture, and the butter powder will provide the butter flavor.
Life is good again.
1.https://www.lds.org/ensign/1982/06/how-beautiful-to-live-in-these-times-and-be-prepared?lang=eng
23 may 2021
