Preserving Food in India - how do you do it?

Hello everyone (new here) nice to find a forum for Indians run by actual Indians (I hope).

Anyway, so I've been learning a bit about preserving food. Still very much a newbie but my purpose is to find people interested in similar things. +there's a lot of misinformation on the net started by American preppers who do really complicated things like 'Mylar' bags and vacuum pumps - most of it is fairly ridiculous (imho)!

Basically the idea is to remove

1. Oxygen - to kill insects, larvae

2. Remove moisture - to stop fungal growth

Sources of oxygen are external. Source of moisture are internal - via food and external.

So,

1.20L cannister

2. Small zip-lock bags.

3. Iron Powder and salt mixed and spread out flat in a small paper wrapper/envelope.

4. Dry foods

So put the dry-food in a zip-lock bag, put the envelope in it, put the zip lock in a 20L can - then pack it all with salt with a few more envelopes thrown in.

The scientific idea is that salt is hygroscopic and absorbs moisture seeping in - we can always heat it and dry it every few months. Salt+Iron powder absorbs oxygen and rusts.

(to dry wet foods you need a dehydrator but I've not actually got there yet) (hope you find this useful - let me know what you learn/try out please)

Which wet foods do u dry?

Method widely used in India is sundrying..from papads, vermicelli, potato chips, etc to veggies like methi, flat beans and a lot more ...we sundry them and store for around n year in any airtight container.

Pickles r preserved using natural preservatives like salt and oil.

Dry grains like rice, wheat..even pulses can be coated with castor oil and stored for n year.

Hi Niyati13,

I haven't gotten around to storing anything yet. I just did some reading and watched a couple of Youtube videos. I also called up and emailed a couple of shops selling glassware and packaging material looking for airtight containers to buy.

Hence the Q: I've been trying to source 'ball jars' (american jars used for canning and food preservation) They have a rubber seal under the lid to keep things airtight but indian glassware shop told me this is not available in India, In fact the lids can be bought separately from the glass-jar but even that's not available here.

To start off I think I shall sundry rice/grains in Plastic bottles with an oxygen absorber (ironpowder+salt+bit-of-water). Also biomall/maharashtra sells some chemicals/dessicants but it's difficult to buy that now.

Could you link to suitable airtight containers? How do you know they are airtight - do they hold a vacuum? (In ball jars the lid will dip/click because of the cooling vacuum created inside the bottle)