Shelf-stable pantry meals for snobs

hbic - June 28, 2020

there are lots of lists online of meals that you can make from your emergency or long-term food storage, but a lot of them cover the same, uh, familiar American ground. i thought we could brainstorm some more exciting ideas for eating out of your emergency pantry. I’ll start off with a couple on my list:

Meatless mapo tofu — (silken tofu in aseptic packages is shelf stable!)

Soondubu jjigae (soft tofu kimchi stew)

Masoor (red lentil) dal — red lentils cook so fast

what do y’all make out of your pantry?

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Check out The Storm Gourmet: A Guide to Creating Extraordinary Meals Without Electricity.  It will give you a lot of good ideas of what to keep on hand for grid down emergencies that will allow you to prepare an array of meals.

 

Love the topic, although I don’t have much to add. @HBIC are you making those tofu examples from scratch? Is tofu hard to make in a no-utilities situation?

 

Two of the shelf-stable meals in my long-term food storage piles are kitchari (which is mainly about having enough of the mung dal and spice mix, everything else is pretty basic) and chana masala/chickpea curry (again, mostly about having the spices on hand, not super adventurous). I should probably add mercimek corbası (Turkish red lentil soup) to the long-term storage list, since everyone in my house enjoys it and would happily eat it under non-crisis circumstances, but when I last did my math for purchasing quantities I felt like I had too many soups already.

 

Great topic!  I really like to have arrabiata pasta sauce and high end rigatoni pasta.  I add fresh basil from the garden when available.  It is simple, spicy and satisfying.  I tried buying canned soups and raviolis but they are SO salty.  One thing we utilize a lot since this whole pandemic/social isolating shindig went down is to buy parmesan blocks and lots of prosciutto.  I use them to add to simple pasta with a good olive oil.  Unless you freeze the cheese and meat, it doesn’t work for a longer solution.  We’ve made a lot of focaccia bread while at home that only requires yeast, flour and olive oil and have used that to spread olive or mushroom tapenade on. The kalamata olives were jarred and we just minced them.  As for long-term food stores, I’ve included seasoning packets for our rice and beans as well as spices.  Not glamorous but hopefully flavorful.

 

May I present for your shelf-stable snobbiness pleasure: Canned Sardines in Lobster Oil. (This site actually has some amazing-looking stuff I’d love to try but MAN the prices….)