Posted: 4/22/2009 6:39:00 AM EDT
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I really like mashed potatoes, and rather have them made from scratch, but I don't mind instant potatoes sometimes.
Anyway, they seem like a decent thing to store for SHTF, as you can eat by just adding hot water, you get some decent calories from them, and the kids will eat them w/o whining. =) For example, I wonder how long a little metalized bag of instant potatoes would last. Right now, I've got a bag from 2 years ago that we forgot about, but I'm going to leave it for another few years just to see how it is at about 5 years old. Has anyone eaten 3 or 4 year old instant potatoes? I can't imagine that they would go bad too quickly, they are pretty dry in the bag. |
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The stuff I have bought has about a 1 year label. The biggest problem I saw was that the bags were filled with the dried potatoes and air. Hermetically sealed makes everything better, so if a guy wanted to get busy and repackage them in mylar w/ o2 absorbers, I would think you're looking at 5 years easy, likely more. |
| I would imagine 5 to 10 years would be quite doable if you opened the original containers and repack them either in mylar and 5 gallon buckets with 02 absorbers, or if you could seal them in #10 cans (probably the better option for tater flakes). Granted, you'd probably need to find a friendly LDS center to accomplish the later unless you want to shell out $1500 for a commercial canner. But stored in this manner, in a cool, dry area, they should keep well for years. |