Underrated food items in the post-apocalyptic pantry

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Ever prepper knows the staples for his or her own post-apocalyptic pantry. Depending on your strategy and taste, this many include freeze-dried meals, canned food, and dried goods amongst other things.

However, some very useful foods may be easily overlooked once you’ve set up your survival plan. Once you’ve selected your staples, it’s easy to focus on gathering the quantity required for your plan, and overlooking other options that could be useful or add variety to your meals.

A few of my favorite survival foods are discussed below. These may not be suitable for all tastes or plans, but I’d encourage you to take the opportunity to double check your pantry and see if you can expand its contents. Your taste buds will thank you.

Orzo

I’ve recently discovered the brilliant strategy of substituting orzo for rice. While the textures are far from identical, I’ve found orzo to be a suitable substitute in many dishes. As this strategy was born from sheer laziness – orzo takes 9 minutes to cook, as opposed to 20 for rice – it also has the added benefit of being fuel-efficient. If your survival plan includes a lot of rice and beans, consider taking a look at orzo to prevent things from getting to repetitive.

Lentils

Lentils will allow you to add a huge depth to your survival cooking repertoire. Although they take a while to cook, you can make everything from salads to grain dishes to soups by keeping these in your pantry. They also come with an added nutritional bonus of being high in protein, which could be very helpful if game is difficult to come across (or hunting makes you squeamish).

Honey

In addition to adding way more flavor to food than sugar, honey is an incredibly flexible ingredient and can be used in countless dishes. It’s great as a sweetener in baking (i.e. if you have to make your own bread), makes a nice addition to a vinagerette, and adds significant flavor to oatmeal (see oats below).

Even if you don’t plan on using honey for any of these foods, I highly recommend it for its antibacterial properties, which make it a very useful addition to any prepper’s first aid kit.

Oats

In my opinion, oats are a highly underrated grain. They cook quickly and are full of fiber, so you can go for a long time on a small amount. They are also incredibly flexible and can be flavored by anything you happen to have on hand. Finally, oats can be used to make everything from bread to muffins to pancakes, which will make your flour store go a lot further.

Chocolate

The apocalypse is going to be stressful enough without having to deal with a lack of my comfort food. I can also get away with claiming this under the “health” category, as dark chocolate is very high in antioxidants. Provided you keep it dry, chocolate is easy to store and should last for quite a while. If you’re not a chocoholic, substitute with your own guilty pleasure.

What’s in your survival pantry?

-Kennedy