I’ve been interested in learning about storing and using corn as a prepper commodity for quite a while.
So recently I bought a 50 pound bag of yellow dent corn to experiment with.
I looked it over - it was clean and bug free.
I cleaned it a little more anyway and stored it in sealed mylar bags with oxygen absorbers.
I planned on opening the bags up at various intervals - like 3 months, six months, etc. - to see if they were still good.
When I opened the first bag after about 2 months the corn was crawling with bugs. Not just a few either - it looked like there were hundreds and hundreds - maybe thousands.
I opened the other bags and they were bad too.
The ducks and squirrels loved it.
Other food items, like pasta and rice, we store in the freezer for a while to kill bugs and larve before putting them up for long term storage.
Will that work with corn?
What other things can be done to store corn without it being destroyed by bugs?
I have read about putting diatomacious earth in with the corn. But it seems that would kill the bugs after hatching and I would only end up with a bag of bad corn and dead bugs.
I would appreciate it if anyone here could offer advice and share their experience on how they store corn successfully.
About 15 years ago I bought a 25 pound bag of popping corn (low moisture content) and a grinder, I wonder how it would come out today, it should still produce something edible.
I will never use it, it is kept in desert heat and in the original plastic bag, but I will keep it for deep storage as desperation food.
I use diatomatious earth in the grains that I store. Kills bugs, safe to eat.
/johnny
If you do not dry pack can with oxygen absorbers, it works with wheat to put a few bay leaves into a tightly sealed container. If push comes to shove, take the buggy (they are weavel nits)/wheat outside on a breezy day, hold the container with the grain at waist height- and pour into a large container on the ground. the wind will winnow out what you do not want. The grain will not hurt you. Any grain or flour I bring home from the grocery store goes into the freezer for a week or so, there are always eggs in the product.
What a disappointment!
First, I don’t see how the eggs in the corn hatched if deprived of oxygen - or how the bugs lived in an oxgyen-free environment. So perhaps the mylar/oxygen absorber situation had a flaw. (I’ve bought large mylar bags from Emergency Essentials that I could see pinholes of light through, right out of the shipping box. That could be one source of the problem.)
I’ve never stored whole corn like you are doing (only because I haven’t thought of it until recently). But what I’ve done for rice and beans is 1) freeze them for 2-3 days and then 2) dry in the oven at a low temperature (170 degrees) for an hour. This not only will kill any remaining larvae but will dry the stuff so it is low-moisture and ready to seal in mylar. (I didn’t put dessicants in the mylar bags.) I probably don’t need to do both steps, but since I had the time and freezer space, why not?
I wonder if putting it in the oven at 300 degrees for an hour, and then sealing it, would damage its nutritional value?