14 Scrumptious Southern Dishes For Food Storage Meals and Beyond

Whenever I purchase food for my long-term storage pantry, I nearly always buy individual ingredients because I know that I can use them in family favorites as well as any other yummy looking recipe I encounter.

Again and again I’ve recommended storing ingredients over just-add-hot-water meals (although those can come in handy). As well, some processed foods may have long shelf-lives but many homes are turning away from those foods to a diet that is healthier.

Emergency Essentials, one of my sponsors, has many delicious articles on their website, but the 3 that really grabbed my attention all have a southern theme — peaches, barbecue, hushpuppies…mmmmmm! Take a look at how Emergency Essentials utilizes their freeze dried ingredients in everyday recipes that will have a fresh, scrumptious flavor in these Southern recipes for food storage.

Personal BBQ Brisket Pizzas

Ingredients

2 cups Emergency Essentials Honey White Bread and Roll Mix

1 cups Emergency Essentials Beef Brisket, reconstituted

1 1/3 cups Emergency Essentials BBQ Sauce, reconstituted

1 cups Emergency Essentials Mozzarella Cheese, reconstituted

2 cups cabbage coleslaw

1/3 cups white flour

Instructions

1. Make dough for one loaf of bread, according to the Honey White Bread and Roll Mix package directions. Refrigerate.
2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
3. Reconstitute the brisket, BBQ sauce, and mozzarella cheese according to package instructions.
4. Flour a surface and split your bread dough into four balls. Spray a cookie sheet with PAM or other oil and dust with flour or cornmeal so your pizza crust won’t stick.
5. Roll dough out flat on floured surface. If dough starts to stick, add more flour. Once you have an even layer of dough (roughly 1/4″ to ½” inch thick and about 6″ in diameter), move to cookie sheet.
6. Add the following onto each pizza crust, keeping it ¼” away from the edge of the crust:

• 1/3 cup BBQ Sauce
• 1/4 cup Beef Brisket
• 1/4 – 1/2 cup Cabbage Slaw
• Roughly 3 TBS Mozzarella Cheese

Bake at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes.

Chicken Hushpuppies with Blackberry Mustard

Hushpuppies

1 ½ cups Emergency Essentials Freeze Dried White Chicken with Smoke Flavor, reconstituted

3 ½ T. Emergency Essentials Chopped Onion, reconstituted

1 cup Emergency Essentials Buttermilk Powder, reconstituted

2 T. Emergency Essentials Whole Egg Powder, reconstituted to make one egg

1 ½ cups White Flour

½ cup Yellow Cornmeal

1 t. Baking Powder

1 ½ t. Iodized Salt

1 ½ t. White Sugar

2-4 T. Vegetable Oil

Instructions

1. Reconstitute first four ingredients; drain the chicken and onions.
2. Shred white chicken chunks. You can either do this before you reconstitute the chicken or afterwards.
3. Combine onion, flour, cornmeal, baking powder, salt, and sugar in a large mixing bowl; stir together.
4. In a separate bowl, mix together egg and buttermilk.
5. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients; stir until combined. Mix in chicken.
6. Cover bowl and refrigerate 30 minutes to an hour.
7. Heat large skillet over medium-high heat with 2-3 TBS of vegetable oil in it (Throughout cooking, add more oil as needed). Drop tablespoons of batter into the oil and flatten with spatula or spoon. Fry the batter and flip, flattening it again, until both sides are golden brown. Remove hushpuppies and place on a paper towel-lined plate to drain and cool.
8. Makes 15-20 hushpuppies

Blackberry Mustard

1 cup Emergency Essentials Freeze Dried Organic Blackberries, reconstituted

4 t. Honey

1 ½ T. Whole-Grain Mustard

Instructions

1. Reconstitute blackberries; drain, leaving 1-2 tablespoons of water with the berries.
2. Using a fork or potato masher, mash berries, mustard, and honey in a small bowl. It will resemble a chunky sauce.
3. Use this tangy sauce to dip your chicken hushpuppies into.

Peach “Shortcake” With Strawberry-Basil Sauce

Ingredients

1/2 batch Drop Biscuits made from Emergency Essentials Buttermilk Biscuit Mix

5 cups Emergency Essentials Freeze Dried Peach Slices, reconstituted

6 cups Emergency Essentials Freeze Dried Strawberry Slices

5 t. White Sugar

2 – 2 1/2 t. Dried Basil

Instructions

1. Bake drop biscuits according to package directions.
2. Reconstitute peach slices; drain. Meanwhile, crush freeze dried strawberries in a large Ziplock bag with a rolling pin until it reaches a fine powder.
3. Sautee peaches in a large skillet over medium heat for 4-5 minutes. Once peaches have brightened in color and firmed a bit, turn heat to low and add sugar, constantly stirring until it caramelizes (make sure you continually stir it to avoid burning!). When caramelized, remove from heat.
4. Pour strawberry powder into a medium-sized saucepan. Add 1 1/2 cups water; mix well over medium heat until its sauce-like. Add basil.
5. Top biscuits with peaches and then spoon strawberry basil sauce on top.

More Southern main dishes and sides

Pork Chops with Bourbon Peach Sauce — In this recipe, everything but the pork chops can be stored long-term. You can buy freeze-dried peach slices in lieu of the frozen slices called for in this recipe.

Texas Brisket — There’s no way to freeze-dry a brisket. (I wish!) But all the seasoning in this recipe can be stored long term and stocked up on in bulk.

Gumbo —  This recipe can be adapted for a food storage pantry by using freeze-dried chicken and freeze-dried ham. You’ll have to add fresh shrimp and Polish sausage, but other than that, this is a good recipe for food storage.

Baked Buttermilk Chicken – Instead of the canned Cream of Mushroom soup, make your own homemade version. Try using powdered buttermilk instead of fresh buttermilk.

Oven Fried Green Tomatoes – These look so yummy and the dipping sauce is divine! You’ll need fresh tomatoes, no way around that, but everything else can be stocked up ahead of time, including the Sriracha sauce.

Cornmeal Cush — This is something like a corn pudding topped with bacon. Buy bacon in bulk from Zaycon, freeze or can it, and everything else in this recipe is food storage friendly!

Southern desserts and drinks

Pecan-Peach Cobbler — Yumm! Buy those freeze-dried peach slices and get ready to make this recipe now or down the road. Be sure to store your pecans in a canning jar using my Food Saver method in order to vacuum out the oxygen.

Hummingbird Cake — This is a classic Southern recipe and an interesting challenge for food storage moms! The bananas and pineapple can both be purchased as freeze-dried, rehydrated, and then prepared for the recipe. Store the coconut and pecans in canning jars, using the method mentioned above, and use dehydrated eggs in place of fresh eggs.

Southern Skillet Fried Apples — You can make a version of these with either freeze-dried or dehydrated apple slices.

Classic Kentucky Mint Julep — This recipe calls for “simple syrup”, something you can quickly mix up with just sugar and water. In a pinch, you could use dried mint leaves but having some fresh mint growing in a big pot would be a much better choice. Bourbon has a  nice, long shelf life.

Easy Peach Tea — Store tea bags in a vacuum sealed canning jar to prolong its flavor and scent. In this particular recipe, you could use freeze-dried peach slice if you didn’t have fresh peaches available. Nothing says, The South, quite like a big glass of iced, sweet tea!

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