9 Easy Ways to Build an Emergency Food Pantry

Do you have an emergency food pantry? If not, how long could you and your family eat if, for some reason, going to the grocery store wasn’t an option?

It’s a sobering question. And although no one likes to think about their family being in a crisis, preparing for such an event is an important step in becoming more self-sufficient and prepared for common emergencies.

Why You Need a Long Term Food Pantry

I don’t mess around when it comes to emergency food storage. I have a well-stocked pantry and too many containers of Augusan Farms foods in my kitchen, where my pots and pans should rightfully go. There’s also a wall of Mylar-lined 5-gallon buckets filled with beans, rice, cornmeal, and oats where most people living in such a tiny house would cheerfully hang their coats.

I don’t consider myself a prepper by any means. And I don’t have a bunker with enough food to keep us going for several years. However, food security is vital to me, so I keep enough in long term storage to get us through several months if we had to.

So, why should you spend time and money on building an emergency food pantry? There are several benefits to having a robust, long-term emergency food pantry.

1. Prepare for Different Types of Emergencies

Having plenty of food on hand means that you’re prepared to stay home for a significant length of time if you ever had to. This could be due to a natural disaster, extremely severe weather, another pandemic, or other unforeseen circumstances. It also helps you prepare for personal emergencies like job loss or short-term emergencies like a week-long power outage.

When the pandemic hit in March 2020, almost everyone flocked to the stores to stockpile food because they didn’t have much stored at home. With stay-at-home orders looming, many people panicked and bought whatever they could, which led to significant food shortages in some areas.

Having enough food to feed your family long-term is an empowering feeling. It makes you more self-sufficient and less dependent on outside help to meet your needs. In addition, you don’t have to worry about heading to the store when an emergency is on the horizon because you’re ready.

2. A Long Term Food Pantry Helps You Save Money

According to the USDA March 2021 Food Price Outlook, food purchased in the grocery store is 3.3% more expensive than it was 12 months ago.

Food prices continue to increase each year. And according to NBC News, grocers are limiting sales and coupons to moderate still-heavy demand, which is still running strong from pandemic stockpiling.

In other words, food is expensive and prices are going to continue to rise. So, stocking up on shelf-stable foods when you do come across a great sale or coupon is a great way to save money and protect yourself from future price spikes.

Best Foods for Emergency Food Storage

There are three ways to build a long-term food pantry.

1. Purchase Freeze-Dried Meals

The first way to build up a long-term food pantry is to buy freeze-dried “survival foods,” like those buckets of Mountain House freeze-dried dinners or Augason Farms Lunch and Dinner buckets.

Purchasing emergency freeze-dried meals can save you an enormous amount of time. These meals are already cooked and assembled, and only require boiling water to reconstitute. Another advantage is that, when stored correctly, they can last 20 years or longer.

In an emergency, these meals are great to have on hand because they require very little time or energy to prepare. However, the downside is that they’re costly, especially since the pandemic began and demand shot up exponentially.

I purchased all of our emergency freeze-dried meals and Augason Farms ingredients long before the pandemic began and only when they went on sale. Most retailers have their emergency foods back in stock, but prices are still very high.

2. Stock Your Pantry

The second way to build a long-term food pantry is to stock up on everyday foods you can find at the grocery store. These are the foods that you buy every week and cook with on a routine basis.

The benefit to stocking up on everyday ingredients is that it’s much more cost-effective than purchasing freeze-dried meals, especially when you shop strategically and buy items on sale.

The downside to this approach is that shelf-stable foods have a shorter shelf life, typically one or two years. So, you must rotate foods in your pantry and stay on top of your inventory to ensure foods don’t spoil.

3. Store Home-Grown and Home-Processed Foods

The least expensive, and healthiest, way to build an emergency food pantry is to grow the food you need in a garden and then process it for longer-term storage. You can use home canning, salting, dehydrating, fermenting, freezing, and smoking to preserve the food you grow. And, using tools like a Food Saver vacuum sealer or pressure canner will expand your options and extend shelf life.

To learn more, pick up Leda Meredith’s excellent book, “Preserving Everything.”

How to Build An Emergency Food Pantry

Building a long-term food pantry from scratch can feel overwhelming. It can also get expensive if you’re not careful. So how do you start without spending a fortune?

1. Figure Out Your “Why”

Before you start randomly buying canned beans and dried fruit, stop and think about why you want to create an emergency food pantry. What exactly are you preparing for?

It’s an important question because your answer will inform what and how much you buy going forward.

For example, I started our long term food pantry when we lived in the mountains of Western North Carolina. We lived at a high elevation on a twisty mountain road that the state didn’t maintain in the winter. As a result, even a minor snowfall made traveling into town hazardous, and we often experienced snowstorms that kept us house-bound for a week or two. So, my first goal with our food pantry was to have enough on-hand to get through three weeks of isolation comfortably.

To figure out your own “why,” think about the times you’ve had to rush to the grocery store for an emergency stock up in the past. What situation caused you to do this? Do hurricanes threaten your area? Blizzards? Tornadoes? Earthquakes? Floods? When these natural disasters happened, how long did it take until you could get to the store again? What’s a worst-case scenario for future events?

Other Factors to Consider

Preparing for natural disasters is important. However, it’s not the only factor you should consider when building your long-term food pantry.

A perfect example is the COVID-19 pandemic. Many people were completely unprepared for the food shortages during the early days of the pandemic. What might happen if a more virulent strain begins to circulate in the U.S? If states have to impose stay-at-home orders again, the same stockpiling mentality could sweep through the country again and cause additional shortages. Do you feel this is a real threat? Some people will, while some won’t.

You might also want to start an emergency food pantry to insulate your family from the effects of a future job loss or other financial setbacks. Unexpected life events can happen to anyone at any time, and having plenty of food in your pantry means that you can all eat, even if you don’t have money coming in.

The point here is that you need to consider local, state, national, and even global threats and determine which of these you feel is a possibility. And this is going to look different for every person, and every family. There’s no right or wrong answer. If you feel some event is a threat, then prepare for it.

2. Start Now

The worst time to start building an emergency food pantry is when a crisis is on the horizon. If you wait until then, you’ll pay more and have fewer food options because everyone in your community will also be shopping for food.

This is why it’s critical to start padding your pantry each time you’re in the store. Don’t wait until a hurricane is looming or there’s another local spike in COVID-19 cases. Start now.

3. Go Slow

Building a long-term food pantry takes time, and if you try to do it all at once you’ll spend a small fortune.

Instead, take it slow. Each time you go to the store, purchase a few extra items. A few cans of beans or an extra bag of rice won’t impact your food budget that much, and over time these extras will add up.

4. Watch for Sales

The best way to save money when building an emergency food pantry is to stock up on items when they go on sale. You can find great bargains on non-perishable food at your local grocery store, so check their sales flyer weekly.

You can also find great deals at discount stores like Dollar Tree. For example, I can get high-quality Goya black beans or Goya kidney beans for $1 a can at our local Dollar Tree. At Kroger, I’d have to pay $1.29 per can. You can also save money on non-perishable foods at stores like Big Lots or Ollie’s, or discount grocery stores.

It can be challenging to stay on top of sales and find the best prices. Use an app like Flipp (for iOS and Android) to see the weekly advertisements from the stores you choose.

Note: If you shop at discount grocery stores like Big Lots or Ollie’s, pay close attention to the expiration dates. Many of these retailers sell foods that are close to expiring, which doesn’t make them good candidates for long term storage unless you plan to use it immediately. And never purchase cans that are leaking, deeply dented around the rims, or bulging. Damaged cans can lead to botulism, a deadly illness caused by Clostridium botulinum bacteria.

5. Think About Your Water Needs

Humans can go up to three weeks without food. But, we can only go for three days without water. So, it’s essential that you have safe drinking water in an emergency.

In February 2021, the nation watched a crisis unfold in Texas as millions of people woke up after a severe winter storm and found they had no safe drinking water (and no electricity.) How would you handle a situation like this?

Ready.gov recommends that you keep extra water on hand for emergencies, and you need at least one gallon per person, per day, including pets. However, children, nursing mothers, and sick people may need more than this amount.

Consider Natural Water Sources

On our homestead, we’re blessed to have a pond, a creek, and a spring. We have a Berkey water filtration system that will filter this water if we ever lost access to city water, which has happened. Last winter, we lost water access after an ice storm and ended up using the Berkey to filter water from our rain barrel. The Berkey is an amazing water filtration system used by relief organizations like The Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders, and it will get everything out of your water. It’s worth every penny.

So, stop and think about how you would get water if it were no longer flowing cleanly from your tap. Is there a pond, lake, creek, or river within walking distance you could use? Do you have a rain barrel? If you did find a natural water source, do you have a way to purify this water, so it’s safe to drink? While the Berkey is an excellent investment, there are other high-quality water filters like the Sawyer Mini that are more affordable.

6. Buy Foods You Know

So you’re at the store and ready to start stocking up. What are the best foods to buy for an emergency food pantry?

The short answer to this question is: whatever your family is already used to eating. So whatever you usually buy at the store every week, buy a few extra. Buying foods or brands you haven’t tried before can waste money if you don’t like the way it tastes.

Here’s a good example. When I first started building our emergency food pantry, I bought a dozen cans of Libby’s canned green peas because I found them on sale and figured that, in an emergency, we’ll eat whatever, right? Well, the next time we were snowbound I cooked a can of those peas on the wood stove. And, they were disgusting. We all hated the taste and texture and ended up tossing them out.

Now, if the world was ending and we had absolutely nothing else to eat, you could bet we’d be happy to have those peas. But I wasn’t preparing for the end of the world, just a blizzard. The bargain peas ended up as a waste of money because none of us wanted to eat them.

So, stock up on foods and brands you know your family likes. If you’re not sure what your family eats, then keep a journal. Monitor what your family eats every day for a week or two and write it down. What snacks do they turn to again and again? Which meals do they like best? When you keep track of what everyone eats, it’s easier to see what you should buy extra of.

That said, you should also try new foods that you might want to add to your emergency food pantry. However, when you’re ready to do this just buy one can or box and see how it tastes. Then, if your family likes it, you can always go back for more.

7. Buy the Right Foods

It’s vital to have a wide variety of shelf-stable foods so that if a disaster occurs, you have plenty of options to cook and eat. Consider stocking up on some of the following essentials:

• White rice
• Pasta
• Oats
• Peanut butter
• Canned meats (tuna, SPAM, ham, salmon, chicken)
• Powdered milk (we love the Augason Farms powdered milk because it actually tastes good)
• Canned and dried beans and legumes (lentils, kidney beans, black beans, pinto beans)
• Fruit, canned and dried
• Canned vegetables, especially canned tomatoes, tomato sauce, and tomato paste
• Spaghetti sauce
• Crackers
• Dry cereals and granola
• Hot cereal like Cream of Wheat and grits
• Nuts like walnuts, almonds, and pecans
• Trail mix
• Pancake mix
• Canned soup
• Instant mashed potatoes and gravy mixes
• Protein bars, like Clif and Luna bars
• Drink mixes like Ovaltine, Tang, or Gatorade powder
• Canned fruit and vegetable juice, like V8
• Bouillon powder or cubes
• Cooking oils like vegetable oil, olive oil, and coconut oil
• Sweeteners like sugar, brown sugar, jam, honey, maple syrup, molasses, and agave syrup
• White and whole wheat flour for baking
• Yeast, baking soda, and baking powder
• Hot drinks like coffee, tea, and hot chocolate

Keep in mind that a lot of shelf stable foods are highly processed, and many are unhealthy. When shopping for shelf stable foods, look for options with the fewest ingredients whenever possible.

8. Store Emergency Foods Appropriately

Your emergency food pantry won’t do you any good if the food is expired or has gone bad when you need to use it. This is why it’s essential that you keep your emergency foods in the right storage conditions for optimum shelf life. Unopened food should be kept away from moisture, light, temperature extremes (very hot or very cold conditions), and pests.

This means you shouldn’t store food in a garage or shed where heat and humidity can soar in the summer, or in an unheated attic where temperatures drop below freezing in the winter.

You also need to use the First In, First Out (FIFO) rule with your pantry, just like a restaurant or grocery store. When you’re unloading your groceries, put what you just purchased in the back of your pantry, and pull what you already have up to the front. This way, you’ll use foods that are closer to expiring instead of the foods you just bought.

9. Know How to Cook Pantry Foods

Chances are you already know how to cook many meals with the foods you’re buying for your emergency food pantry. However, do you know how to utilize all those different cans of vegetables and beans to create new, delicious recipes? What about some different ways to use canned tuna or salmon?

When I first started building our emergency food pantry I didn’t know how to cook beans from scratch or how to use canned vegetables in a casserole. So several years ago, I picked up a copy of “The Prepper’s Cookbook,” by Tess Pennington. Pennington’s book is filled with 300 recipes that you can make using shelf-stable ingredients. What I love about these recipes is that Pennington also includes substitutions you can use if you don’t have a fresh ingredient. And, the recipes are easy to make and really delicious.

Last Word

Building an emergency food pantry can feel overwhelming at first. But this is why it’s so important to go slow. Buying a few items every time you you go to the store will make a big difference over time.

In the beginning, focus on building a pantry that will feed your family three meals a day for three days. Next, work up to a week, then two weeks, and then a month. Before you know it you’ll have reached your goal, whether it’s to have a three-month supply of food or a three-year supply.