Mylar bags are a popular way to store long term food storage. But did you know not all mylar bags are created equal? They come in different sizes from 5 gallon size down to small enough for a 9 volt battery. There are different thicknesses of mylar bags as well, usually ranging from 3.5 mil (thin) to 7 mil (thick). Some are color coated, some have zipper seals, and all of them are shiny and crinkly! Want to meet the various members of the mylar bag family? Check out my video below:
Keep preparing! Angela
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Where do you get mylar bags?
How do you SEAL them? Can they be sealed with a FreshSaver or other vacuum packing system?
You can get mylar bags at some food storage retailers like Honeyville or online. I got the bags in the video from the LDS dry pack cannery (they only have 7 mil gallon size), mylarbagsdirect.com and discountmylarbags.com. I’d buy from either of those sites again–both shipped within 24 hours and were super to work with. You can also find the bags on amazon.
They need to be heat sealed. You can use a commercial sealer or a clothes iron or a hair flat iron. I’ll have to test out sealing with my foodsaver. I have some bag sealing videos coming up next week.
FreshSavers seal by heating along an edge — hot enough to melt the freshsaver plastic bags closed, but not enough to separate the edges (I sometimes re-seal potato chip bags, they seal, but the outer edge is basically ‘burnt’ off.)
Excellent sources of mylar bags. I use my FoodSaver to vac and heat seal any mylar bag that will fit along the machine’s heat sealing strip.
You can only store dry foods in Mylar or can you store and freeze vegetables?
You could store and freeze vegetables if you wanted to. You’d want some way to get most or all of the air out of the bag–don’t use oxygen absorbers with fresh food. Maybe seal the bag with a vacuum sealer using the vacuum before sealing. I don’t know how if it would increase the freezer life any over using standard plastic foodsaver type bags though.
What about sealing water in mylar bags? Maybe the CapriSun bags? Or even a five gallon mylar bag in a bucket?
Would a food grade 5 gallon bucket be ok to store water in? Seems like that would be one of the cheapest water containers you could get if that was the case?
Dispensing the water from some of those could be tricky, but yes, any of those could be used to store water.