New build pantry

[tim_n]

I'm a big fan of dried meats, sausages, cheese etc and have started down the road of making them myself. But the kitchen is mostly a moist location with wildly varying temperatures and lots of light.

I'd like a pantry cupboard to store things that don't need refrigeration but do benefit from open air without sacrificing the warmth inherent in a house.

Next year I'll be building an extension utilising the badly used space in the house to make it much more useable, including a much bigger & brighter kitchen.

I'm thinking of ordering a large cupboard suitable for an inbuilt fridge, insulating the sides and hanging a large old inbuilt fridge door inside, marble shelves and a couple of airbricks (or a pipe from under the house in and one at roof level out) to make a more traditional but insulated "outdoor" pantry. Obviously put some robust wire at both ends to stop nesting mice/insects from entry.

The kitchen is north facing and the pantry will likely be alongside the garage.

It is all a bit of a faff and have been wondering if there's an easier commercial built in unit sort of thing that'd work as well. Any ideas or does mine sound the easiest and best? I've been drooling over spiral cellars, but £26k is substantially out of budget for a wine & cheese rack...!

[Green Aura]

You can buy commercial cold rooms - used by butchers, so that sounds the sort of thing you might be wanting. You might have to build your extension round it though - I think they're quite big.

A more reasonable alternative might be a re-purposed deep freeze. I've seen articles where the thing that controls the temperature range is changed to make it into a fridge. Or just disable it if refrigeration isn't required.

The main problem I found with trying to store homemade cheeses, charcuterie etc is they all have different "ideal" temperatures.

[tim_n]

Sadly neither option gives you fresh air! Not worried too much about temperature control just variation. I've got two fermentation fridges that can keep the temperature at 0.1'c, it's air recirculation that's the PITA.

[tim_n]

Ha, set me thinking. Doesn't necessarily need to be fresh air apparently...

http://benstarr.com/blog/how-to-convert ... ng-cheese/

Looks easy enough though I need the UK versions. Just need to add a humidifier to one of my fermentation fridges that already is wired with an STC-1000

[RenewableCandy]

My grandparents had an actual pantry.

It faced north, had grille for a window, thick walls separating it from the rest of the house, and thick stone shelves. There was absolutely no device in it for controlling temperature or air-flow: Mother Nature did all that.

She kept milk, cooked meat, veggies, custard... etc in it. We visited (It's a long way from Yorkshire to Devon, doubly so back in the day when 1/2 the road network was yet to be built!) twice a year or so. I ate food. It never made me ill.

She was the 1st to tell me you should never pick up a dead bird: said they carried lethal illnesses (it might have been she who explained to me why: a bird runs hotter than 98 degF, so running a fever wouldn't get rid of any infection it gave you). Lo and behold they now think 'twas birds that carried the Spanish Flu of 1918. She'd have been in her teens. The reason for this little divertissement is to illustrate that she knew about bacteria, illnesses and biosafety... and we could never persuade her to buy a fridge!

She lived in that house for 21 years. A 20-a-day lass from the age of 14, she died at 90.

[Green Aura]

Yes, we had one. The onlything you haven’t mentioned is the meat safe. That was a cupboard with mesh walls and door which kept the insects off meats and cheese etc.

I’m not sure which direction it faced but had a steeply sloped roof with only a tiny window so was fairly dark and noticeably cooler even though directly off the kitchen.

I’d love one!

[Odsox]

We've got one, only ours is called a larder.
When we moved in there was a windowless fuel store just off the kitchen. I kitted it out with shelves and knocked a ventilator through to the outside, which is east facing rather than north. A couple of years ago I decided to refurbish it as it had become so useful, which included tiling most of the walls and adjusting the shelves to a more useful spacing.
The main back shelf has a marble slab on it which was from an old washstand that I bought probably 50 years ago when washstands were worthless, they are probably worth a small fortune today.
The temperature is always about 10 degrees below ambient in there.

When I was a kid we had a meat safe, it was out in a shed and had perforated zinc sheet sides and door.
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larder.jpg (114.21 KiB) Viewed 16394 times

[RenewableCandy]

Oooh I do like the look of that!

Pedantic aside: apparently originally a pantry was for keeping bread, and a larder for keeping fatty food.

[MKG]

... and a buttery was for storing BEER!!!!!!!!

...as in butts as opposed to butter.