Food Storage: The Actual Shelf Life of Granulated Sugar

Sugar is a foundational ingredient in a long-term food storage program. It enhances the flavor of basic dry ingredients and provides calories. White sugar is also used as a preservative to extend the life of fruits when bottling or making home preserves.

Sugar is often a highly sought-after commodity when things get tough. Sugar rationing is common during food shortages, which makes it an excellent barter item. In this video, we will review the basic facts that you should know about sugar in your long-term food supply.

Check out: Food Storage - What Is the Actual Shelf Life of Granulated sugar? to learn more.

If you are interested in learning more about how to correctly store food for emergencies, check out these posts at The Provident Prepper.

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How to Package Dry Foods in Mylar Bags for Long Term Storage

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Thanks for being part of the solution!

[nicnic]

I store my sugar in Mylar bags, date it and put them in a 5 gallon bucket with a lid. Thank you for teaching me over the years on how to prep better. Your knowledge and recommendations have helped.

[bugoutbubba]

I think that I mentioned this before but we store our sugar (and everything else) in vacuum sealed mason jars. You'll need the jars anyway. Properly washed, they leave no odor and you can easily observe your product. In thirty years of prepping, I've found nothing that beats jars for long term storage.
Oh and there's this, if you do lose a seal and your product is compromised you only sacrifice a small amount. Its heart breaking to open a bucket with a failed seal to find that you've lost five gallons of your preps.

[eileenredfern]

I vacuum seal sugar in their original package in food saver bags. And put in a dark colored tote to keep light out.

[coltsoutdoors]

I’m a 13 year old prepped and your teaching me so much

[goofsaddggkle]

In the South you will see grains of rice in the salt and sugar dispensers in restaurants. Its to keep clumping from forming. Works for all small grain seasonings.

[organizedchaoslife]

That is just the cutest thing about using the sugar bucket for time out to "sweeten up"! LOVE it! And sound like your kids enjoyed it also. We have a sugar bucket in our pantry, I need to start doing this! Thanks for the tips on sugar storage Kylene!

[leeannwicker]

Recently I opened some lumpy sugar and tried using an old-fashioned flour sifter and it worked great at getting rid of the lumps. Simple solution that I've missed for years.

[JAYWAY]

Home Depot sells food grade buckets and lids with a rubber gasket. I’ve used them for years with no sugar clumps.

[moviemakerwannabe]

Tip: if you store sugar in the original bags wrap the bags in cellophane wrap or a freezer bag. Tape shut if needed. It will help protect it from drawing moisture and smells.

[sadriski]

My mom always told me NOT to keep it in the bags. She said sometimes the bags carried tiny little bugs around the seal of the bags. Clean pasta jars have a built in seal, so you can use them. I put sugar in zip bags squeezing as much air out as possible then put them into jars. My mom used a micro-planer and grated her sugar if it got hard.

[thebeans]

Great info! In the OLD days (1700s), sugar was sold as rock hard bricks or cones and a special tool (sugar nipper) was used to break off chunky pieces for use in cooking/baking. The only hazard in using lumpy & chunky sugar is it's easy to mess up the measurement of it in tried and true recipes. Here in the humid south, I try to only buy during the dry winter months and immediately transfer to 5 gallon buckets with gasket lids for storage and a large Tupperware canister for the kitchen pantry. For years I used gallon size glass jars but the lids were never as air tight as I hoped they could be ... and it's just not safe to be stabbing a butter knife into a block of sugar to break it up inside a glass jar!

[easttennesseeexpat]

This video contains great deal of information that is surprising to me. Most especially that we need 70 lbs per person, per year. I habitually use about 8-10 lbs of sugar per year in cooking and thought I was being extravagant. This includes cookies, brownies & whatnot that I might make for friends at holidays. I also make wine at home and might use 20-40 lbs per year for that purpose.

I tend to store sugar in its original package in ambient conditions. It does get hard but not so hard that I can't break it up with my hands before opening the package. I have used both sugar and salt as moisture scavengers in barrels of rice and beans. Salt seems a little bit more effective for this purpose.

You may know that in the 18th & 19th centuries, sugar was sold to the public in solid cones. Special tongs were made to pinch off the amount that was wanted for a recipe and cooks might crush the pinched lumps with a mallet. Granulation is a modern convenience but isn't absolutely necessary.

[cgt]

I loved the "time out on the sugar bucket until you sweeten up"!!! lol - they sweetened up in more than one way!

[JM.]

Most of the sugar Americans consume is in processed foods like ketchup, cereal, baked goods, even yogurt. If you are baking everything from scratch, you will use a fair amount (although less than the commercial food producers). We definitely made more cookies than usual, during last spring's shelter-in-place order!

[spankymagee]

Store sugar with rice in pairs? Since rice soaks up moisture. Might be a good combo in a sealed tote.

[gsantini]

We recycle glass jars of sauce, jams, etc & they work great for sugar, once they're empty they get refilled from the food grade buckets that lets us store more volume. Jar system keeps us from introducing air to buckets so less clumping. Loved your video.

[terriw]

if you just sift it through a metal fine mesh strainer when you take it out of whatever container you've stored it in, before filling up your regular use canister it will bring it right back to its store bought texture. Really an effortless process that takes only a couple minutes to complete

[rockbay]

Thank you for this advice! I just tranfered all of our stored sugar to 1/2 gallon glass jars. I will date them tomorrow and place them into storage. I had been storing in the paper bag they come in and then place them in 5-gallon buckets with Gamma seals. After your video, no more! From here on out, only glass. Again, thank you!

[tnpisme]

Beautiful cupboards by the way!! Thanks a bunch!

[blackkittens.]

Ive had white sugar sitting in the pantry in its original paper packaging, half opened and just folded over abit for years and years and nothing bad happens to it. Seems to be indestructible stuff.