Pasta comes in many forms and can be made at home, purchased fresh, or purchased dried for long term use. You don’t have to look very far before you find hundreds of ways to prepare pasta, so the sky is the limit on this one. And for these reasons, we will address pasta several more times before this 52-week food storage program is over. If pasta is not your thing, find a substitute so you are storing something this week.

Storage:

It is best to store pasta in a dry, cool place. Pasta or boxed pasta mixes can be kept in their original packaging up to the expiration date (typically a year or two), but can go bad after that. If you plan on cycling through your pasta, then the original packaging will be just fine. Follow the FIFO (first-in, first-out) method. If you would like to store pasta long term, take the pasta out of the original packaging and put it in buckets, #10 cans, foil pouches or your own vacuum sealed bags. By doing this, it can literally last for decades.