Jason Weisberger is Boing Boing's publisher. He often does what he ought, instead of what he should. On instagram and twitter he is @jlw

  • Gilbert Wham

    Isn’t that kinda what jars are for?

    • http://boingboing.net/ Jason Weisberger

      I always put liquids in jars and hadn’t thought of flour. I also think the oxygen absorbers are a really neat idea too!

      • http://ok-cleek.com/blogs cleek

        there are certain herbal materials which find jars beneficial for their preservation.

        your oreganos and chilis, for example.

    • scatterfingers

      Storing things? I hope so :)

      All my flour goes straight into labeled jars. My wife is gluten-free, so we have a bunch of different flours around, each used for some esoteric gluten-free ritual.

      Homemade stock? Shoulderless mason jars in the freezer.

      Large pot of chili? Mason jars in the fridge.

      Taking soup to work? Mason jar in the lunch bag.

      Wonder things, mason jars.

      • Antinous / Moderator

        Large pot of chili? Mason jars in the fridge.

        Why not just put the pot in the fridge? I used to ladle soups and stews into jars for years and then realized that I could just leave them in the crock pot.

        • http://www.ikaink.net Itsumishi

          I would rarely have enough room in my fridge for a whole crock-pot and I want to be able to use it for other cooking.

          I tend to put everything into either old ice cream or yogurt tubs. That way freezing isn’t an issue either.

          • Antinous / Moderator

            I have a tiny kitchen. Not even one drawer and hardly any cupboard space. But the fridge niche is large, so I got one big enough to hold the things that won’t fit into the cupboards.

          • That_Anonymous_Coward

            Like these things?

          • http://www.ikaink.net Itsumishi

            Fair enough. I have the opposite problem. When we moved into the apartment I had to buy a new fridge in order to fit the fridge niche. Now I can’t even open the doors 180 degrees to slide out shelves, etc. It makes cleaning the fridge a much harder job, but for every day purposes it still works fine. 

            I also installed a lot of racks to add extra storage space. Magnettic racks for knives, cooking utensils, etc and simple sturdy shelves for saucepans, frying pans to sit on and hang from next to the stove. When i’m cooking I don’t like having to dig into a cupboard and rummage around finding stuff. Much better if I can just see them.

        • scatterfingers

          Upon further review I withdraw my remarks ;) Actually, now that I had a bit of a think about it, storing soups and chilis in mason jars isn’t a terribly great idea, as you can’t get the right mix of liquid and non-liquid bits.

          Sadly, though, I don’t have enough pots to chuck one in the fridge, so I use large-ish Pyrex resealables.

    • http://profile.yahoo.com/XZ52QVFPVTBWHIZSXKZLWCAB3I Ang

      Amen. I think that if you need a FIVE MINUTE video explaining how to put flour into jars that perhaps you shouldn’t be playing with the oven without supervision.

    • LaGrange

      Hey, this might be obvious to you and me, but for every obvious thing there’s probably around a billion people who never got the idea. If we stopped treating explaining useful but obvious things as silly, maybe a lot of people would learn some useful stuff.

      Amount of tiny silly things about cleaning up, for example, or using plastic boxes to control bathroom chaos, are stuff I learned from my girlfriend long time ago. Ridiculously shamefully obvious, in retrospect, yet I didn’t know about them.

  • Mr_Smooth

    I should post a video of the way I store my dishes in cabinets and my clothes in closets. It’s AMAZING!

    • Gilbert Wham

      I dunno, whilst I do have jars with flour, sugar, etc. in them, all my clothes live on the floor, and the dishes in the sink, as I’m kinda slovenly.

    • Antinous / Moderator

      Quite a few people store their clothes in the dryer and their dishes in the sink.

      • Mister44

         Where else would you put them?

        • IamInnocent

           Mason jars.

      • Gilbert Wham

         Oooo, get Mister Organised…

        • Antinous / Moderator

          Speaking of living the high life, I wonder how many people wear the same clothes every day until they exhibit a visual or olfactory need to be washed, and how many wear things once and then wash them.

          • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1515015318 Missy Pants

            Some of us do both those things. Depends on the article of clothing.

          • http://www.xradiograph.com/ OtherMichael

             If you turn a sweatshirt inside-out it’s like having TWO sweatshirts!

          • LaGrange

            The proper thing to do is to put everything in one bag, and do two random drawings a day: first, the things you’ll wear this day, second, the things you’ll wash this day. As a bonus you’ll get exciting surprise clothing combinations.

          • Ito Kagehisa

            Well, I actually wash my clothes before I ever wear them!

            And sometimes I wash them twice between wearings.  OK, granted, that’s because my house is so old I occasionally suffer vermin infestation in the closet, and have to wash everything again after I kill off the clothes moths.  So that probably doesn’t count.

            I think it’s interesting that there’s “work clothes”, meaning clothes you wear to your job that you keep clean and nice-smelling, but there’s also “work clothes”, meaning clothes that you wear when you know whatever you’re wearing is going to be destroyed, like for changing the oil in the tractor during a downpour or machining receiver slides by hand.  If you’re a farmer, the two categories are the same, but if you’re a clerk, they are opposites.

  • beemoh

    “Novelty” bread flours? Is one of them a bit sparkly, or something?

    • Ashley Yakeley

      Artisanal bread flours.

      • Marmo Squirrel

         Pretentious bread flours you mean….

        • http://whimsicalacious.tumblr.com/ Patrick McGorrill

           …made from snooty grains in hoighty-toighty mills.

          • Jake0748

             I’m not sure if you spelled hoity-toity correctly.

          • Antinous / Moderator

            I think that he spelled it in a more hoity toity way, which seems admirable. Spell check doesn’t acknowledge it either way.

          • acerplatanoides

            powered by hipsters on fixies turning the crushing irony mills.

    • Snig

      Enriched with flash powder.   First you make bread out of it.  Give it to your friend in a sandwich, then surreptitiously touch it with a lit cigarette and *FLASH*, he’s hold meat and fixings in his hand in a bedazzled stupour.  Baking with the flour can be a little problematic though.

  • http://twitter.com/mylesnyc Myles Gaythwaite

    Incredible! I’ve always screwed up my placement of the oxygen absorbers.  Thanks Technician775!

    • http://profiles.google.com/joshuabardwell Joshua Bardwell

      It is only after a third read that it has occurred to me that you may be being sarcastic.

      • Jake0748

         Oh come on.  Myles Gaythwaite? Sarcastic? Get outta town.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_OT3BT4G2LCAJUUINU5DDASERRQ Blake

    Is there some black and white footage from the infomercial-hellworld that should precede this?

    “There has to be a better way!” she cried, gazing at sacks of flour mysteriously emitting animated dollar signs that float up to a heaven she will never know.

  • kristen55

    Dude shows how to put flour in jars. I think the internet is officially done now.

    • endrest

      Keep watching, it will get more and more stupid.  But really, it’s like this guy doesn’t know how people in high-humidity environments live.  In Hawai’i, we had to put anything that is crunchy or powdery into an airtight container so it would stay that way.  My grandparents in Indiana would put grains of rice in the salt shakers.  There’s nothing new about ‘flour in mason jars’ –shit, I put ganja in my mason jars!  C’mon BB… let’s try to stay on target.

  • Jackie Dana

    Want to do a sequel? I keep my oatmeal, coconut flour and almond meal in mason jars too. 

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Ray-Perkins/1314630060 Ray Perkins

      The 30-minute video of how to do it is currently in post-production.

  • Marmo Squirrel

    If you go to Technician 775′s YouTube page, he also shows you how to store rice in used, cleaned plastic pop bottles!  Gracious me! Next, we’ll learn how to carefully store shoes in brand repurposed shoe-boxes.  Nike CAN go into an old Adidas box after all!

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_OT3BT4G2LCAJUUINU5DDASERRQ Blake

       WITCH

  • http://www.pseudographia.com/ James Craig

    I’m fairly certain that the main point of this post and video is not that you can store things in jars per se. How to create a good seal, how to ensure that the flour doesn’t oxidize, and that one Mason jar’s worth of flour is about the right amount for a loaf of bread all seem like useful pieces of information.

    I store lots of things in jars, and some still spoil after a while. Perhaps if I took the time to learn how to do prepare my jars properly, my food would stay better longer. I’ll tell you that watching videos on the internet that show proper techniques is a whole lot more useful than trial and error with little more than the knowledge that “jars store things—duh.”

    I mean, why take driver’s ed classes—cars get you places, right?

    • http://boingboing.net/ Jason Weisberger

      Thank you.

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_OT3BT4G2LCAJUUINU5DDASERRQ Blake

      I’d prefer people master jars before getting behind the wheel of a car, maybe you’re right. Mandatroy jar maintenance for all!

      • Jake0748

         You’re all a bunch of poofters.  Geez!

        • Antinous / Moderator

          Do you know what a poofter is?

          • Stefán Sigurjónsson

            Since we are in car analogies here, it is a back seat driver… 

          • orangedesperado

            I think he meant sifter.

          • Ito Kagehisa

            Well, in the lyrics of Bend over Greek Sailor there’s a line that goes because I’m a poofter and proud of it too… so I suppose I can probably guess?

            Hmm, that line’s preceded by and rhymed with I don’t like girls without further ado so I’m thinking yes I can guess what it means.

  • BDiamond

    Geez, are these not made anymore? Airtight, even. http://www.bluecarrotshop.com/?p=3295

  • http://profiles.google.com/joshuabardwell Joshua Bardwell

    The idea that you can put anything in a mason jar is hardly new to people who can. The real value of this video, to me, was the concept that the oxygen absorber would cause a vacuum that would seal the jar without having to water-bath process it.

    • http://daruiburns.tumblr.com/ Dlo Burns

      Yeah when I first started watching the video I was going to make a joke about a can lid leaking during the water bath and making dough.

  • Schizno

    THIS IS FABULOUS! SHOUT IT FROM THE ROOFTOPS!

  • Snig

    “No really officer, all of these labelled jar are just special flour, I worry about oxidation…”

  • Snig

    I use coffee cans for small amounts of flour/meal/seeds/beans.  Shatterproof and lightproof, and relatively airtight.  Also easier to ground, so you don’t have to worry about static.  I find that if I eat breads with too high a static charge, I don’t get good cell phone reception for a couple days. 

    • http://daruiburns.tumblr.com/ Dlo Burns

      I miss coffee cans, we always get the pre-bagged or fresh ground bagged grounds.

      • Antinous / Moderator

        I miss coffee cans

        There’s no place to put your bacon/hamburger/etc. grease anymore.  You can’t pour it down the sink, and a plastic water bottle isn’t a very good receptacle for hot grease.

        • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1515015318 Missy Pants

          Good lord man, why are you throwing away good bacon grease? Keep it! Cook your other foods in it! Delicious stuff!

          And this is real, I’m not making it up, I honestly do have a mason jar full of bacon fat in my fridge right now. True story.

          • Snig

            Disposing of animal fats is a conscious decision on my part, yes yummier, but not healthy.  Smoked paprika and liquid smoke satisfy my hankerings from smoke. 

  • bcsizemo

    As someone who lives in the Southern part of the US where canning is practically a right of passage…a Mason jar doesn’t have a set size.

    Are we talking pint?  quart?  1.5 pint?  I’d think wide mouth would make it easier.
    (OH wait there it was at 4:45 – quart jars.)

    The thing I am most curious about is if the lids are reusable.  Since he is not actually “canning” the wax ring might still be intact enough to be reused.  That and if the lids aren’t reusable why not go with that food saver vacuum packer he’s got sitting there?  He could even pre mix his bread dough and just bag it per loaf.

    (and for someone who has a screen name of “technician” I find the lack of stereo sound disappointing.)

    • http://boingboing.net/ Jason Weisberger

      In the video he explains the fine powder of flour kills the foodsaver and he is fond of his.

      I would like to know the size. Typical large loaf of bread in my machine is around 4C flour? XL is maybe 5?

      • invictus

        Machine? Artisanal bread flour? Something about this combination just ain’t right.

  • purple-stater

     Not meaning to sound snarky or anything, but has anybody used actual wax rings in the last 50 years?  I thought everyone had switched to reusable rubber rings?

    All of those quart jars seems to be a serious waste of space to me though.  What’s wrong with a couple of 2-gallon zip lock bags to hold that entire bag of flour?  Easy enough to squeeze out the excess air after each use, and you can still throw in the oxygen absorbers for good measure.

    • Gilbert Wham

       Nonononono, you have to take flour out of bags, you see…

    • CLamb

       Vermin, such as mice and rats, can chew through a plastic bag.

  • tsa

    This is why I never watch videos in which people show how to do simple things. Reading: “Put the flour in jars. Use oxygen absorbers to keep the flour fresh” takes me maybe 2 seconds. Why should I spend 150 times as much  time to see the thing done?

    • http://daruiburns.tumblr.com/ Dlo Burns

      You watch it for a charming accent. 

  • chgoliz

    The way he handles the flour makes it absolutely not measured correctly for use.  He can say it’s “4 cups” per Mason jar all he wants, but you’d have to weigh the flour in each jar before using it.

    • invictus

      If you’re baking a cake, sure. My copy of “Beard on Bread” has “add flour until dough is of the right consistency” in most recipes. A very scientific unit of measure, that.

      • chgoliz

        Funny…..I just had to do that yesterday when making bread.  Later in the day, while making something else, I realized that the reason my usual bread recipe wasn’t the right consistency (unexpected…we don’t have atmospheric reasons to adjust recipes in Chicago) was because I’d used the wrong flour.  Duh.

        I’m not impressed when a professional cookbook gives me some wishy-washy instruction like that.  Give the actual measurement, then explain why it might need to be tweaked.  Otherwise, I might as well use one of my grandpa’s recipes….which I pull out because I love to feel close to him while I make his recipes, but I NEVER use his measurements because they seem designed to ensure you will never make the dish as well as he did.

  • bobcorrigan

    Pshaw, everyone *knows* you store excess flour in tiny little bags, or dry latex condoms, or balloons, after dividing up the portions with a razor blade and a large mirror and weighing them on a scale.  Silly Internets!

  • John Smith

    Anal retentive gourmet

  • IamInnocent

    This guy should take as good a care of his lithium than he does his flour.

  • TheOven

    What was wrong with the bag itself?

    • http://daruiburns.tumblr.com/ Dlo Burns

      My family transfers the flour from the bag because mice just tear into it. Also it’s not airtight.

  • mylesnyc

    It puts the flour in the basket.

  • http://profiles.google.com/jpersonna John Personna

    I just use the freezer and freezer bags.  I detect no loss of quality, though I do have to let them come up to temp before use.

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/UNDDXRCUYV35BQZXGF2GOUX5CM Chris

    Did the internet really need a 5 minute video for this? He could have just written on a sign in front of the camera: “Do what you already do with extra flour. Add an oxygen capture pack to the jar.”

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1566210660 Bryce Caron

    I am saddened that people need a video to figure out how to store dry goods. Furthermore, delis (1/2 pt, pt, and qt plastic containers with universal lids) are far superior to Mason Jars.

  • http://www.bytehead.org/blog/ Bryan “bytehead” Price

    If you’re using a bread machine, and you have a consistent recipe for your bread, why not just put the measured amount of flour, sugar, salt, milk powder, and any other dried ingredients (Not the yeast!), and put that all in one jar?  Then, all you have to do is dump the contents of the jar, your wet ingredients (oil, butter, water, milk, cheese) and your yeast, and you’re done.

    But yeah, I think this video is pretty superfluous.

    • http://daruiburns.tumblr.com/ Dlo Burns

      I think the milk powder might react with other things.

  • Guest

    You watch it for a charming accent. 

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Jonathan-Vanasco/728395557 Jonathan Vanasco

    You can also do this with recycling – just clean out various glass jars from the supermarket as you use them. 

  • Marya

    Well, that’s all well and good.
    But what are those oxygen absorbing thingies he stuck in there?

  • Ito Kagehisa

     I thought all these comments were superfluous, so I commented here to say that.

  • http://www.facebook.com/nibuca Monica Kroger

    Beware of storing whole wheat flour this way.  Wheat flour contains the wheat germ and has a high amount of oil in it.  The oil can turn rancid and ruin the flour.  I normally store wheat flour in the freezer.

    For white flour (and pretty much every other dry good like pasta and rice) I started storing them in mason jars because it keeps pests out (india moths and mice primarily).