Originally Posted by Huskerpatriot
...I should probably test some of my older ones to assure they are still good.


Yep. When I first started drying foods,I seriously overestimated how long they would last, and ended up wasting a lot of food. (Not entirely wasted, I suppose, since they ended up in the compost pile.)

Don't trust the storage times they give you in books and magazine articles. A lot depends on weather, humidity, how they're stored, and even their freshness when you dried them.

Treat them like the rest of your food supplies, and make your dried foods a regular part of your diet. Rotate them out to ensure none of your food is going bad. And yes, that includes your store-bought freeze-dried foods as well. They may say they'll last for 25 years, but I wouldn't want to put that to the test.

Onward and upward,
airforce