Bouillon Cubes vs. Veggie Broth Mix Taste Test

After I posted about an interesting alternative to bouillon cubes that used nutritional yeast, I quickly ordered a can of the mysterious substance. I couldn't wait to get my hands on it so I could put it the supposedly-delicious broth mix through its paces.

When the nutritional yeast arrived, I have to admit that I was blown away by just how much nutritional yeast lives up to its name.

Nutrition facts for KAL nutritional yeast.

I'd like to see you match that, salty, junk-filled bouillon cube! I took a tentative taste of the yeast flakes and found that they actually taste pretty good. It has a savory, almost cheesy taste.

I measured out 1-1/2 cups of the yeast and followed the recipe as written in my previous post. All of the other ingredients for the broth mix are common pantry ingredients.

The finished mix 

The next step was to see how the broth mix fared in a test with that most basic of survival foods - rice.

The cast of characters: bouillon cubes, chicken broth, a rice cooker, broth mix, and white rice

Here's how it worked: I cooked 2 cups of rice in 2-1/2 cups of liquid - chicken broth, reconstituted chicken bouillon or reconstituted veggie broth mix. I didn't add any additional salt or seasonings. I used my rice cooker for all batches for consistency's sake.

After all three batches of rice were finished, I turned my crack team of taste testers loose (ie. my children and husband) and asked for their honest feedback.

Clockwise: Chicken broth-cooked rice, bouillon rice, veggie broth mix rice

The verdict 

The rice cooked in chicken broth was the winner. It was well-seasoned and tasted chicken-y. It was a definite improvement over plain rice.

The rice cooked in bouillon was the big loser! All but one of us put it in last place. It didn't taste anything like chicken and was overwhelmingly salty.

What about the rice cooked in the veggie broth mix? Well, it was definitely tasty. The problem was that I had a hard time looking past the textural problems. If you look at the photo above, you can see that the rice came out mushy and a bit over-cooked. I'm not sure why that happened since cooking rice in a rice cooker is usually foolproof. The rice didn't taste like chicken, but it was definitely flavorful. Hubby Dear said it kind of tasted like Rice a Roni, which is NOT a compliment coming from him. Besides the funny texture of the rice, my major issue with the veggie mix batch was that it lacked salt. That's an easy fix. I'll just add more salt to the broth mix than is called for in the original recipe.

Conclusion

Chicken broth was the overall winner, but it is bulky and relatively expensive. The cheaper alternative, bouillon cubes, produced results that were deemed unpalatable. The veggie broth mix is a viable alternative to bouillon cubes. It tastes good (when you tweak the recipe a bit), is healthy, and has an equal storage life to bouillon cubes.

I think I'll stick with chicken broth for my everyday cooking but kick the bouillon cubes to the curb. My food storage just got a little healthier. :)    

Using Your Food Storage: Dirty Rice

I love it when I cook a great meal for my family and no one knows it's from food storage! I made food storage-friendly dirty rice the other day and thought I would share this simple and tasty recipe with you.

In case you are not familiar with dirty rice, it is a dish that hails from Louisiana. I spent three years in Louisiana as a teenager, long enough to pick up a cute southern accent and a predilection for Cajun food. The accent didn't stick around very long after I moved away, but I still love Cajun food. The version of Dirty Rice that I make gets its "dirty" look from ground beef rather than the chicken giblets and liver that are traditional.

One thing I should mention is that this recipe includes a bit of ground red (cayenne) pepper. We don't think it is spicy - my children scarf it up without complaint - but I have some relatives with weaker palates that would think I was trying to kill them. If you are sensitive with heat, start off with just a little cayenne or skip it and add Tabasco to taste at the table.

Dirty Rice - savory and delicious

Dirty Rice

1 lb lean ground beef (OR 1 pint canned ground beef, drained OR freeze-dried beef or TVP, reconstituted)
2 garlic cloves, minced (OR 2 t. garlic powder or freeze-dried garlic)
2 celery ribs, chopped (OR 1/4 c. dry celery, rehydrated according to package directions)
1 medium onion, chopped (OR 3/4 c. dry onion, rehydrated)
1 T chopped fresh parsley (OR 1 t. dry parsley)
1 green bell pepper, chopped (OR 1/2 c. dry bell peppers, rehydrated)
1 t. salt (Omit if using bouillon)
1/4 t. ground red pepper or to taste
1/4 t. ground black pepper
1 T. Worchestershire sauce
1 c. white rice
1 can beef broth (OR bouillon prepared to equal 2 cups. Omit salt if using bouillon.)
3/4 c. water

Cook ground beef and next 5 ingredients in a large skillet or Dutch Oven over medium-high heat, stirring until beef crumbles and is no longer pink. If you are using canned beef and reconstituted dry vegetables, simply cook together until items are warm.

Stir in salt and next 3 ingredients; stirring well. Add rice, broth, and 3/4 c. water, stirring well. Bring to a boil; cover, reduce heat, and simmer 25 to 30 minutes or until rice is tender. Stir as necessary to prevent sticking to the pan and add a bit of water if it gets too dry before the rice is cooked through. Taste and adjust seasoning if necessary. Enjoy!

Could the Japanese Tsunami Deepen the Global Food Crisis?

While I was up with Baby Dear in the wee hours of this morning, I happened to turn the TV to CNN. I listened to accounts of the horrifying earthquake damage in Japan. I watched the tsunami waters consume homes, vehicles, and countless lives. The magnitude of the disaster is stunning.

Now, I'm obviously not an economist, agronomist, or any other -ist that means anything. I'm just a paranoid mom who knows that the world is already on the brink of a massive food crisis. With that caveat in mind, here are my thoughts:

1. If you watched any of the tsunami footage, you saw the waters engulf what appeared to be fields and greenhouses. A quick check on Google confirmed that Sendai, ground zero for the disaster, is in the midst of the Japanese agricultural heartland.



A rice paddy

2. The same Google search showed that one of the major crops of this area of Japan is rice.
3. Salt water, debris, any chemicals picked up by the water, etc. are bad for crops! Not to mention the huge societal disruption Japan is facing. This could disrupt agriculture in the area for some time to come.
4. Japan consumes a massive amount of rice.
5. Up until now, the Japanese have imported very little rice and mainly consume what they grow themselves.
6. With a large portion of their rice crop in jeopardy, Japan will be forced to import rice.
7. This could lead to a spike in the price for rice, or perhaps even a rice shortage.
8. Even worse: If the unthinkable happens and those damaged nuclear plants have a Chernobyl-type accident, crop land in Japan could be contaminated for years to come. This would continue the food shortage/price increase scenario in addition to all the other tragic effects of such a disaster.

Again, these are just my own thoughts. Who knows if they have any real validity. I do know one thing. I'm buying a bunch of rice the next time I make a trip into town. I was going to do that anyway, but this gives me added motivation.

Month Four Preps: Long Term Storage

For our food storage this month, I decided to stock up on some of the most important things a prepper can store - staples. No, not the kind you use to attach paper together, but staples of your diet. My part of the country doesn't have places where you can buy bulk wheat or other such items, but I do have Sam's Club available to me. They stock a few items that I can package myself and thereby save some money.

I grabbed a flat-bed cart at the front of the store and awkwardly wheeled it over to the aisle with dry goods. I kid you not when I say that I nearly took out the jewelry counter with that runaway flat-bed. Next time I think I'll stick to a regular shopping cart. I loaded up with 50 lb pinto beans, 100 lb rice and 50 lb all-purpose flour.

You would think that you could avoid scrutiny when you buy items in bulk at Sam's, but I attracted several curious glances as I pushed my load up to the checkout counter. One lady asked me what I was going to make with all of this. Then the checkout girl asked Hubby Dear if all those kids were his. Not ours, his. Some people just don't have any home training! But at least I neatly avoided answering the first lady's question.

Anyway, back to the point. I bought a bunch of real-deal survival food and Hubby Dear and I spent last evening packing it for long-term storage.  

There are two main ways to store basics like these for long-term storage. 

1) #10 cans - Rodent and bug proof! As long as you keep them from rusting, they have awesome longevity. If you have access to an LDS cannery, you can put up beans, rice, wheat, etc. in these cans. The other option is to buy them from a food storage company. It's pretty pricey to get all of your food storage canned like that. 

 

2) Food-grade plastic buckets and/or mylar bags and oxygen absorbers - Some people feel that a plastic bucket is enough to store hardy items like wheat and rice. Others use only the mylar bags for storage since the bag is actually much less permeable to oxygen than the bucket. Oxygen = spoiled food.

The amounts and types of oxygen absorbers to add are also a matter of debate. James Wesley, Rawles, author of  How to Survive The End of the World As We Know It  and survival guru, even goes so far as to advocate using buckets, bags, oxygen absorbers, a dessicant, AND dry ice. I have no doubt that food packaged that way would last for a long time.

We took an approach somewhere in the middle. We obtained a bunch of 6-gallon food-grade plastic buckets and lined them with mylar bags. Then we filled each bucket  to within 1" of the top. There was still plenty of bag leftover, which was a good thing. 

We thought the flour would be the messiest item to transfer to the buckets, but surprisingly it was the rice. Oops!

Before I began sealing the bags, I made sure to label each bucket. I used these labels from Food Storage Made Easy.


It is essential that you move quickly during the next few steps. Once you open the package, your oxygen absorbers start working immediately. If you do not seal your bags stat, the absorbers can lose their mojo. I don't know much, but I do know that it's not good when O2 absorbers lose their mojo.

So, we quickly threw in the O2 absorbers

and sealed the bag up. It is helpful to have two people for this part.

You can use a fancy (and expensive!) sealer made for this purpose or just heat your iron to full blast. We placed Hubby Dear's metal level across the bucket, expressed as much air as possible from the bag, drew the sides of the bag up, and pulled it taut across the level.

I ironed the bag using the level as a stable surface to create a seal. Be careful! The mylar (and level) heats up quickly and stays surprisingly hot for a while afterwards.

I left one side of the seam open, Hubby Dear expressed more air out, and then we sealed the rest of the bag.

Check the bag to make sure it sealed all the way across, push it down in the bucket, place your lid on and seal tight. Over the next 24 hours, the O2 absorbers will get to work and remove the remaining air from your bag.

I bought three Gamma Seal lids to use on the buckets that I will be using immediately. The rest received standard lids. Gamma Lids snap on like a regular bucket lid, but then you can screw the lid on and off. Much easier than having to fiddle with a regular lid! I figure I should make things as easy as possible if I'm going to use my food storage for more than a dusty insurance policy.

So, now that I've gone to all of this trouble, how long will it last? The rice and beans could very well be good for 30 years if I keep them stored in a cool, dark place. The flour has a much shorter short shelf-life, but by packing it in mylar with oxygen absorbers, it should be good for at least two years.

Now these are some preps I can take pride in - we did it ourselves. And the Fed Ex man is pretty happy, too.