Best tinned food options for a seven-day emergency food hamper

[Linnende]

In light of the recent government guidelines in preparedness for any emergency. I am trying to put together a 7 day emergency food hamper. I do not normally eat tin food. What are your favourite tin food options? Is there really any difference between supermarket own brands. Have you started preparing, if so, what are you storing away?

We have camping stoves, spare gas and a lot of campfire cooking kit.

We also have a gas hob though, before we go all Ray Mears/ Bear Grylls.

Heinz chunky soup, stewed steak, tinned burgers/meatballs, ambient stored torteloni and passata, porridge sachets, dried milk powder or uht , hot chocolate, cereal, sausage and beans, bacon grill.

I think you make a fair point. I have a table top camping stove, so could heat up in an emergency. I guess if it came to it, and I did not have a way of heating food, I would need to eat it cold. Not great, but better than going hungry.

I can heat up food using a camping stove. Potatoes is an excellent idea. I'll look at the M&S tinned mince beef. Spam, reminds me of my school days and spam fritters 😆

👌 some great ideas, hot chocolate is now on my list. At this rate, I will have enough for 2 weeks 😆

Thanks to everyone who has taken the time and replied, I appreciate it. This has given me more focus. I intend to get only a few tins together ' just incase'. I am really hoping, that I won't find the need to use them though!

😆 🤣

Thank you 😊

This is a great list. I'll use some. But if power cut no microwave. Small camping stove and packet of stuff you can just add water too. Not criticising by the way. 😄

Microwave rice can be eaten cold when push comes to shove.

Tinned fruit and either tins or packets of custard to cheer things up a bit.
oat milk is nice on porridge or granola/cereal and is very long life.
Semolina and tapioca type puddings are good with oat milk.

Excellent ideas-thank you 👍

I use microwave rice all the time, and pan fry it. Does not taste too bad at all 😊

Heated up with hot water or on a camping stove as well.

I’ll be living off ambrosia rice pudding

You can just imagine Mumsnetters in a post apocalyptic world arguing over whether M&S tinned beans are better than Smart price tinned salmon.

These threads are hilarious.

Your tins will just be stolen by marauding gangs anyway.

I always forget things like peanut butter and Nutella as we don't eat those, but they are good too. Jam to flavour porridge and calories. Biscuits and treats for calories and morale.

For a week you would be aiming for calories, but also health. So proteins, fruit and veg, calcium carbs, fats.

Depends on which crisis you are prepping for.
Power cuts, snowmageddon, wind storms, terrorism (eg: getting evacuated at 6am like those in Gloucestershire)

Having lots of options, multiple redundancies.

I would be looking at your garden and thinking what you can grow to supplement your diet. Food prices are quite likely to go up. Growing in the ground is cheapest.
Making your own compost is easy. Get started now and you are likely to have some by spring depending on conditions. I might tend towards beans which improve your soul and are not too difficult or prone to pests.

😆 🤣 😂

Fantastic advice, thank you 😊

What would people do for heating these items if we lost power or gas? I’ve been thinking to make sure we had charcoal for the bbq but should we get in a camping stove and gas?

Those 200ml cans of the chicken wine are 4 for the price of 3 at Tesco. I’d think the red wine is best as it doesn’t need chilled but if it’s winter then the white & rosé could be kept outside. That’s the only tinned sustenance I’d need!

My prepper’s store is based on no heat nor water and no camping equipment.
Litres of water, long life milk and soups. Protein, tins of fish, sardines and meat, enough for once a day. Then, vegetables tomatoes, lentils, red beans, peas, carrots, chickpeas, potatoes etc. I have also desserts, tins of fruit and then dried non-cook, coucous, Quaker porridge and finally oil.
I buy using the app Yuka. I can’t store biscuits, sweets, jams etc as I eat them.
I ate well during Covid and lost weight.

I have an indoor suitable gas canister stove (was about £15 from Amz. and I bought a few canisters each month for a while to build up a stock) and I'm currently making an insulated cookbag from old cotton fabric and sheep's wool packaging, to reduce energy/gas use.

We live in a rural village which has power cuts several times a year, so we also have a woodburning stove. We heat water on top of that when it's on and could theoretically do basic cooking on it if needed.

You could get inspo from the famous 5.. their camping picnics always seemed to consist of tins of spam, tongue, peaches and lashings of ginger beer..

I've got lots of jars of beans. Tinned fish. Confit duck (for a special occasion!). Lentils. Fruit (various). Tomatoes. Sweetcorn. Powdered mash that you add milk to. Longlife milk.

I've got a bit of an aversion to tinned food, and I wouldn't need any for 7 days. I keep a loaf of sliced bread in the freezer anyway, taking a slice or 2 at a time for sandwiches and toast, that would last a few days, even if the power was off. Similarly with cheese for a few days, and jam, marmite etc. Dried pasta and jars of pasta sauc if we have gas, or eventually make a fire from our logs.
Store of biscuits that I will eat but not that keen on so I won't eat them in advance. Lots of large bottles of water, and a plastic container from the aquarium shop that holds 50l.
Many foods we eat, we now keep enough in stock, and eat the oldest first, so there would always be cereal bars, cereal, long life milk etc. And wine.
I'm assuming that after a week, people will break in and steal anything else we have.