Simply crack the wheat in a blender, grinder, or mill on a coarse setting. Cook your hamburger, drain the fat, then add 2 cups of water and a half cup cracked wheat. Stir and simmer for 20 minutes, then add to your favorite recipes. Sprouted wheat can be added to top off sandwiches and salads. Flour can also be used as a thickener in soups. Anyone who invests in wheat as part of their food storage program should also invest in a grinder.
If possible, obtain both the quick electric mill and the less expensive hand mill which can be used with just hand power.
Now all you need to do is select a recipe, grind your wheat to the desired texture, and you're ready to go. Why is it so great? Wheat is packed with vitamins and minerals. Unfortunately, processing used to produce and refine white flour removes most of the valuable nutrients. Wheat kernels have three main divisions; the bran, the endosperm, and the inner embryo or wheat germ. The bran is packed with vitamins A, C, and E, calcium, iron, and iodine. The bran also happens to be the best source of dietary fiber which aids in digestion and helps ward off disease.
The wheat germ layer is an excellent source of vitamin E, as well as other vitamins and protein. Many important nutrients are removed when layers are separated during processing. For this reason, it makes sense to put whole wheat back into your diet. Pound for pound, wheat is one of the least expensive foods available.
And, since grain products will expand in your stomach--satisfying you even if you eat less--using wheat products can help you stretch your budget by eliminating the need for store-bought, overpriced, and over-processed goods.
If you are concerned that your food storage may be lacking in protein, a good supply of wheat and beans will form a complete protein. Just a half cup of uncooked wheat contains 8 to 10 grams of protein. So, not only will wheat give you the protein needed for muscle growth and repair, but you will have a low-fat complex carbohydrate to give your body the energy it needs to make it through the day. As you begin to use wheat regularly you may be surprised by its versatility, and you will soon see that wheat really is the staff of life.
Tags: Food storage , Food storage tips. Previous article Next article. Denise Forand September 03, at am In "I was 44 years old and i had anemia with low blood pressure" I started to use wheat, the hard red one, about four months after using hard red wheat I realized I had a lot more energy and my skin was rosy and healthy. Jo June 17, at pm You say wheat last a long time in storage, can you give me a better of exactly how long it lasts in storage?
Walt May 21, at am What I want to know is one cup unground wheat, makes how much ground wheat flour, cup wise. Follow us. Categories food storage gear and supplies getting started with prep in the news natural disaster preparedness preparedness skills preparedness stories staff picks water preparedness. I had the book in hand a few days later and I was off to the races. I sat out on the porch and read his book cover to cover — an easy read — and then, I got it.
First of all, let me say that the book is the perfect primer for someone who wants to get started in learning about wheat as well as other whole grains and legumes. I learned about the different types of grains and legumes, the nutritional considerations, and the storage requirements. I even learned about anti-nutrients which are compounds that interfere with the absorption of good-guy nutrients.
Did you know that there are both live grains and dead grains and that the storage requirements are different? As John explains in his book, you do not store live grains in Mylar bags with oxygen absorbers.
The live grains need oxygen to sprout. There was also an extensive section on sprouting. Even if you are not ready to jump in and purchase a grain mill in order to grind your own flour, there are plenty of nutritious and delicious ways to use sprouted wheat and grains as raw food or in salads, soups, or other foods.
As a matter of fact, sprouting can actually increase the nutritional value of these items and enhances the bioavailability of the nutrients. Which leads to the recipes. Want to give sourdough a shot? There is a recipe for making your own starter. Cast iron cooking and baking? Yep, a whole section on that. And finally, there is huge section on resources: where to buy, how much to store, and essential tools and supplies.
I always thought that other than bread, wheat was primarily used in baked goods, the sugary fattening stuff. Of course, since baking my own bread see Simple Comforts: How and Why You Should Make Your Own Bread , I knew that whole wheat flour could be used for lots of things that are not necessarily bad for you but now the world of wheat berries, wheat sprouts, and other wheat related goodies has been opened up for exploration.
When you bake your own bread, you can even get creative and use up tiny amounts of other foods that you have lying around. You can cook whole wheat berries in basically the same way you cook rice. To cook wheat berries, cook 1 cup of wheat berries in 3 cups of water for approximately 45 minutes, on low-medium heat. You can use your cooked wheat berries in a multitude of ways. Use them any place you would regularly use rice. For example, ladle a stir fry over them, toss them into soup, or use them in a casserole.
For breakfast, warm the berries up in some milk and top them with your favorite hot cereal toppings. You may be wondering if you can skip all the grinding and just store flour. After all, if you plan to bake with it, it seems like a lot of extra work to procure the berries and process them before you can make a loaf of bread. My pal Ron Brown explains. The answer is shelf life. You may be able to store flour for a few months or even a few years. But sooner or later it will turn rancid.
In contrast, unground wheat berries given the right moisture content, protected from insects, etc. The moment a wheat berry is ground, it begins to lose its nutritional punch. Not only does flour lose its nutritional value, it begins going comes rancid very quickly, Rancidity occurs within months for whole wheat flour and within approximately a year for processed white flour.
This happens because the oils begin to oxidize. The rancidity is actually quite dangerous. Lipid specialist and University of Massachusetts professor Eric Decker says there are two problems with rancid products.
They are also widespread in the food chain. Coming up with an action plan for adding wheat to your long term food storage is easy.
As with anything else, having some 10 tins or 5 gallon buckets of wheat will not do you a whole lot of good if you wait until a crisis or TSHTF to learn how to use it. When that happens, you will have too many other problems to deal with to even think about learning to cook or bake with wheat.
In the simplest of terms, red wheat, when used in baking bread, will result in a dark, dense, whole wheat loaf whereas white wheat will be more delicate in both taste and color. Both types are fairly equal nutrition-wise with the exception that red wheat has slightly more protein. To get a bit more technical, the terms red and white are used to identify the color of the kernel and not of the flour that is eventually milled from those kernels.
Most people do not know this, but hard white wheat was actually developed from hard red wheat by eliminating the genes for bran color while preserving other desirable characteristics of the red wheat. A major difference between the two types of wheat is flavor. For some, red wheat has bitter taste that does not exist is white wheat. For that reason many people prefer white wheat because reduced bitterness requires less additional sweeteners in the final product. So what does all of this mean?
At the end of the day, the type of wheat you choose for baking and for long term storage is really a matter of preference. Whether you choose an electric grinder or a crank grinder is entirely up to you. There are pros and cons to each. Obviously an electric grinder will not work during a power outage, so you need something that you can use in the event of a long-term down-grid situation. I like the Wondermill Junior for this. Avoid storing wheat in moist locations like your basement. Wheat berries have to be cooked before you eat them, but they are good for more than just being ground into flour and baked.
You can also boil them to eat like hot cereal and sprout them for nutritional greens. Following are 13 foods you can make with Wheat Berries. Pre-soaking the berries is not necessary, but they do have to be cooked.
Flour has a relatively short shelf-life, so you are better off grinding flour as you need it versus doing large batches. You will need a grinder for this. Most preppers use an electrical mill when the power is on because grinding wheat by hand is hard work. Prepare for some sticker shock when shopping for quality grain mills. Hard-Red-Winter-Wheat berries are said to be the best for sprouting.
You get a shelf life like this by packaging berries in an Oxygen-free container with proper storage. Cool, Dry, and Dark. For the DIYer, there is no better method of storing dry goods than with the awesome container trio: Mylar bags, Food-grade buckets , and Oxygen Absorbers. When Storing wheat in an oxygen-free environment, it is not necessary to freeze wheat before storage.
The oxygen-free environment will kill bugs, bug eggs, and pupae, including weevils. Use containers that provide an oxygen barrier like a sealed Mylar bag with an oxygen absorber to protect food from oxidation and to kill bugs, eggs, and pupae. Mylar bags, Food-grade buckets, and Oxygen absorbers are the best wheatberry storage containers. Mylar bags provide an Oxygen barrier; Food-grade buckets act as armor for your bags.
Oxygen absorbers remove oxygen from the Mylar bag, prevent the oxidation of food and kill bugs, eggs, and pupae. Old school preppers often freeze-dry goods before storage. This kills all stages of bug life present in grains.
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