A Great Depression pantry isn’t just a nostalgic nod to the past—it’s a proven method for long-term food storage that helps you stay prepared for whatever crisis may come.
With the right skills and supplies, you can create a food reserve that will help you and you family survive through hard times.
Here are four essential steps for creating your own Great Depression pantry:
Get Back to Basics
The backbone of a Great Depression pantry is simple, shelf-stable ingredients. Instead of planning complicated meals, I store supplies for simple meals. Stews, chili, and soup are fantastic for combining your stored ingredients. Casseroles with pasta, rice, or potatoes are also options for complete meals to feed an entire family.
Be Economical
Building a Great Depression pantry is budget-friendly! Basic ingredients cost much less than pre-made meals and have a longer shelf life. By saving money, you can store more food while maintaining flexibility in meal planning.
If you have a garden, preserving your harvest by canning or drying fruits and vegetables adds another layer of self-reliance and cost-saving. And even if you don’t have one yet, you can learn here how to easily set up a self-sustaining garden that will keep your family well-fed year-round, even in a crisis. You won’t need to become a full-time farmer or have a lot of space to get started.
Learn How to Do It Yourself
Preparedness is more than just stockpiling food—it’s about having the skills to make the most of what you have.
When starting to build my own Great Depression pantry, I realized I needed new skills. Baking bread, gardening, and canning my own food was just the beginning.
I also found growing and preparing food is rewarding. Along the way to building my pantry, I learned that this egg preservation method makes eggs last for over a decade, so I plan on going adding more for my stockpile.
Plan Your Pantry Thoughtfully
A well-planned pantry requires knowing exactly what ingredients to store and why. Here’s a breakdown of essential food categories and what you should include.
Grains
Grains are essential to store in a Great Depression pantry. Wheat bought and stored in large plastic bins lasts for over thirty years! To use it, you’ll need a wheat grinder to turn your wheat into flour. You can also cook roughly ground wheat like oatmeal for cereal – it has a wonderful flavor and can be sweetened with sugar or honey.
Flour also thickens soup or sauces and can be used to make tortillas, bread, and biscuits. You can even make pasta!
But there are more grains to store than wheat. By keeping a variety, I can make more meals. Rice, quinoa, and millet are basic side dishes but can also be used in soups and other meals. Oats, rye, buckwheat, and flax can be added to bread or cereal. Ground corn can also make tortillas or cornbread. Grains are called the staple of life for a reason!
Grains that are great for storage: wheat, rice, oats, corn, quinoa, buckwheat , millet, flax.
Protein
Other than eggs and meat, dried beans and lentils provide an affordable and long-lasting protein source. Even though beans taste best if used in a couple of years, they last for a long time and can still be used when stored in an airtight container.
Related: How to Dry Can Beans and Rice for 20+ Years Shelf Life
The trick to using dried beans is to soak them in salted water for 4-12 hours. But longer is usually better. Beans are great in soups, stews, salads, or as a side dish.
I’ve even pressed them together with a little oil and spices to make patties that I cooked on the grill like a hamburger.
Beans and lentils to add to the pantry: pinto beans, chickpeas, lentils, black-eyed peas, navy beans, kidney beans.
Vegetables and Fruits
Vegetables and fruits are essential for good nutrition. In my garden, I grow green beans, peas, cucumbers, beets, carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, radishes, eggplant, onions, and zucchini.
For fruits, I have strawberries, an apple tree, a peach tree, and a pear tree. Those are the basics that I bottle to keep in my pantry. But if you don’t have a large garden, there are more options. You can build a hidden food growing fence like this one, which require almost any extra space at all.
Using your oven as a food drier is another option. All you need to do is set the oven to the lowest temperature, slice your fruit and veggies to about ¼ inch (or about ½ a cm), and bake for about 6-8 hours or until the moisture is gone.
A cellar is another way to store food like potatoes or other root vegetables and apples to eat through the winter. It must be dry and cool for this to work.
Other Essential Pantry Items
In addition to all these basics, I keep other miscellaneous supplies in my Great Depression pantry. These items include leavening agents, spices, and sweeteners. Most of the herbs I grow myself.
Sugar and honey last indefinitely when stored properly but are more expensive than the most basic items.
Because of their shelf life, I felt like it was worth saving to include them.
Additions: baking soda, baking powder, salt, pepper, dried basil, dried oregano, dried cilantro, dried parsley, dried rosemary, dried sage, sugar, honey.
But to survive a disaster, having a well-stocked Great Depression pantry is just one part of the equation. There are other steps you need to take to truly be prepared.
That’s why I rely on this guide, which is not just about food storage—it’s about protecting your home and your stockpile, keeping your family safe, and staying resilient no matter what.
This guide will walk you through everything from securing your space to gathering essential supplies, giving you the practical know-how to weather any crisis with confidence.
This article first appeared here.
You may also like:
Places to Avoid After an EMP Strike
How to Turn Your Car Into the Ultimate Bug Out Vehicle
The Best Places for Scavenging After SHTF
Our country is under attack, armed Cuban,Venezuelan, Russian and Chines gangs are here, because of open borders are attacking our oil fields and refiners.
Is the grid next?
Harris-Walz are the saviors of the left, an prepping for American citizen slavery actions.
Who do you think is funding these freeloaders, American taxpayers.
Harris is never commenting on what she is doing under the radar from the campaign to be the first open communist president to be elected.
Are your preps in danger, as we advertise on these websites where to hide our stuff?
It is your America for a short time, what will we do?
Lets not forget Islam.
is this a reply or comments about the posting?????
All these prepping, depression stories are based on past political motives and greed that caused the depression era we are reminded of on prepper sites.
Prepping is just a safety measure an insurance policy.
Are aliens demonic, are these bureaucrats on our side, who is running this country?
Harris-Walz will chock this economy, rent control, US steel industry is going down, you lefties are still voting party line?
As mentioned on other prepper sites, what will we do when all our preps are totally gone?
Sure prepper survival skills might get us through a winter season, but then what?
How many backup clothing can we store before we are in total homeless rags?
The elites have the money to prepare, right now people are barley living paycheck to paycheck as we pay open border freeloaders to stay in America.
Many of us, yes many unwisely are supporting through our good nature support of the Downtrodden who are the open border rejects flooding us with crime.
No matter how many preps we store, it will never be enough, especially if we bug out. Will you believe in the scorched earth policy?
Humans have learned how to tan hides, women used to gather animal hair and turn it into garments. Native peoples beat meat, fat & berries into “shelf stable” foods. Various groups have made cheeses out of different animals milk.
I could go on but won’t.
If you can imagine what you’ll need you can find instructions on the internet. Print them out!
Learn something new every week…every day is better. No time? Put down the phone, turn off the tv, leave the wine/beer/ alcohol/ weed in the bottle or bag.
Food supplies are gone unless you give up your freedoms, will you?
Why do we have an FBI that spies on us anymore. Data personal stuff is on the internet, many idiots did it to them selves by social media.
Do strangers know about your preps from past postings, even if you erased the post. Do you know all that stuff is still saved on a government server farm computer?
Many people will eventually end up in Fema camps as our preps dry up.
Check out the movie “Soylent Green is a 1973 dystopian thriller film,” the stuff you will be eating as the cattle meat is reserved for the elite. Why do you think American farmland is being bought up by the Chinese, guys like Microsoft Bill Gates, Soros and others?
We still have Jan 6th political prisoners as a reminder.
The Great Depression ain’t nothing to what is coming after November 5th.
And Trump is all that’s standing between that and us. This is vital! Yet so many morons will vote for the communist party because they are tired of so-called rich people. Somehow they have the misconception that the Democrats are poor too. It is incredibly important that Harris is soundly defeated in November!
how much salt do you add to the water for soaking the dried beans? We had really old ones that just never seem to get soft.
Vickie, you don’t need to put salt in the water for soaking. Let the beans soak over night. Make sure to soak them in a big bowl or pot with plenty of water. The next day you drain and rinse the beans. Put the beans in a large pot with enough water to cover the beans and add some salt and/or other seasonings and cook them in a pot for about one hour. If they are not done after an hour, cook them a little longer. I always put bacon or salt pork in the pot while I cook them. They won’t need salt in that case. I hope that helps.
I thought this post was about a depression area pantry. I didn’t realize it was going to be a right-wing diatribe regarding subjects of which the authors seem remarkably ignorant. Borders are not our problem. Red China and Russia are a problem.
People like you are the problem, left-wing diatribe posting of ignorant bliss.
The Obama-Biden-Harris-Walz open border is the real time problem, not riots in Walz’s Minnesota neighborhoods of 2020.
…none of us dismiss “Red China” or Russia – our “leaders” HERE are the immediate threat – that if we don’t truly defeat THEM, we will have little more to fear from outside threats…
I’m afraid you, my friend, are the ignorant one if you believe that you will be saved by a depression-era pantry.
You do realize where you are, right? If you don’t buy into the need, why are you even here? I am not a fan of Russia or China but they are not the threat that our open borders and our own government officials are. But you keep burying your head in the sand. Someday, if you ever pull it out of the sand or your own ass, you may find we may not have a country left due to open borders.
And to think that all those veggies and meat were not pressure canned, just water bathed and they survived!
Like the rest of the world still does.
Go ahead and take that chance with your family’s safety. I choose not to. Just because you don’t know how to can doesn’t mean that everyone else should not.
Lindsey, interesting article, thank you. Your Point-of-View is informative and insightful. If anyone else is interested. . . Check out the ‘Lost’ series of books, written by Claude Davis, Nicole Apelian and others. They are loaded with information, and the articles published on this and other sites add to them; as well as some of the comments.
To Claude your site is great, BUT you should add a Forum section. (Or point them in the direction, of one). This might help all the complainers & winers from loading the comment section with everything else, not related to said article(s). Just saying.
To those with said opinions: If all you can do is wine and complain, then you are also the problem, Help or shut-up. If you’re not ready to get together and act, Then please keep your opinion to yourselves.
Frankly speaking if you have not guessed by now, prepping is based on the political climate and current events, mixed with the religious wars around the world.
You may think prepping and survival is made up in a vacuum not tied into politics. Check out history, the pioneers, the great depression, the 1970 survivalist movement to the current prepper movement. Yes religion and politics move many to prep for the worst in hopes for the best outcome in life.
Yes November 5th will decide if you are right or wrong in your opinion here.
Who appointed you judge and jury of the court of public comments?
You can worship at the altar of survival books all you want, but have you applied the knowledge from those books into usefulness?
Yes, I have.
For really old ones, sometimes soaking with a tablespoon of baking soda added to the water helps.
I had some I made baked beans with. Soaked them about 18 hours, cooked them for five hours, and they were still a little hard in the middle. Tasty, though. I decided to freeze them in smaller portions. After a month or so, I grabbed a portion and heated them up. They were perfect. I think the long cooking then freezing was able to break down the cell wall that just long cooking couldn’t.
Since then, I haven’t let any other beans get as old as those. If I did, I think I’d try pressure cooking them to see if that would soften them.