It took me a long time to figure out how to store brown sugar properly. It would always get hard after a week of storing it. But not anymore! I’ve done the trial-and-error part, so you don’t have to. You can skip right to the end where it stays fresh long-term. No more battling rock-solid brown sugar and no more wasting time trying to get it soft again so you can finish making your recipe.
How It all Started
When I was buying brown sugar, I would store it in one of those colorful Tupperware where your press down on the lid and it snapped on. I used to hate cooking a recipe with brown sugar because I knew I was going to have to re-moisten then brown sugar. Every time I went to go use it, it was always hard as a rock! I hated it but I didn’t know how to fix it.
After a while I learned how easy it was to make brown sugar at home. If you want the recipe, you can find that here —> Brown Sugar Recipe. I was super excited to be able to make it at home because I could make small batches of it so I could use it up before it got hard. In doing this, I did have less hard brown sugar but if I didn’t get it used up within a week, I still had rock solid brown sugar to deal with.
How I Figured Out the Issue
Then there was a day where I went to go get my mail and was talking to someone who had just started making her own brown sugar and she had an interesting question. She asked me, “How do you keep your brown sugar from getting hard? I had mine on the counter for an hour and was hard as a rock when I came back to it”.
I answered her question with “just make small batches and use it up before it gets hard” but her question kept rolling around in my head. Her brown sugar got hard within an hour being on the counter, mine gets hard after a week of being sealed up in a container. My conclusion was, the air is what is drying it out.
This was such an “AHA” moment for me! All I have to do it keep it aways from the air. I started playing around with different options. I kept asking myself, “how can I get more air out of this?”.
The Quest for a Solution
I tried putting bread in my container to help keep the moisture in there, but the brown sugar was just getting soggy. I then moved the brown sugar from one container to the next smaller size as I used it to always make sure then container was full. That became a lot of work! I wanted something simple. You know how I am, if it’s not simple, I’m probably not going to do it.
The Solution
That’s when it hit me! I vacuum seal Freeze Dried Foods to keep it fresh and keep it from going bad so why couldn’t I do the same thing with brown sugar?
Here is what I did. I took a mason jar, filled it to the top with brown sugar, added an oxygen absorber and Vacuum Sealed it shut. Then, I let that mason jar full of brown sugar sit in the pantry for weeks and then months. I am excited to say that it actually works!! A real solution that doesn’t take a lot of work but does the job I needed it to do.
The Vacuum Sealing Tool
This is the vacuum sealer I used –> Mason Jar Vacuum Sealer. This is a rechargeable, hand held sealer. All you have to do is make sure it is charged, pick the wide mouth and the regular mouth attachment, slide it over the mason jar without the metal ring on it, press the on button, wait 40 seconds or more, then take it off.
That’s it! Super simple and doesn’t take hardly any time at all.
Building Your Pantry
If you really want to build a self-sufficient, from scratch kitchen that actually feels easy, you have come to the right place. When I first got started, it was very overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. I have created a FREE ‘From Scratch’ Pantry Guide to help you get started without the overwhelm.
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