We’ve been trained by supermarkets and cautious parents to only eat food that looks perfect, a habit which contributes to the 9.5 million tonnes of food the UK wastes, every year[1].
Once you change your way of thinking, you’ll be amazed at how much edible food you used to waste.
Make a plan and think ahead
Plan your meals in advance
Plan your meals for the week so you can:
- use up anything you’ve got left over
- plan something easy for busy days
- batch cook on days when you’ve got more time
- defrost tomorrow’s food overnight (chilled food cooks quicker, so it uses less energy than cooking from frozen)
Shop with a list
Shopping with a list helps you stick to a budget, avoid impulse buys that go to waste, and avoid buying accidental duplicates of things you already have.
Freeze food in portion sizes
Cut your garlic bread or pizza into portion sizes before you freeze it, then only defrost what you need (useful for everyone, but particularly if you’re cooking for one, or if you have small children who eat earlier than you do).
Use jam jars to freeze batch-cooked food
Each jar is the right size for one person, so you only defrost the quantity you need. This is particularly useful for families that have a mixture of meat-eaters and vegetarians/vegans.
Learn how to freeze food in jam jars.
Using up food that’s about to go bad
Learn the difference between use-by dates and best-before dates
Find out the difference between a best-before date and a use-by date – misunderstanding could be causing you to throw away perfectly good food.
Leftovers
Use your leftovers to make a quirky lunch tomorrow (e.g. fish fingers in a wrap with lettuce and mayo; chilli in a bap; roasted vegetables with pasta).
Bread
Freeze sliced bread before it goes stale. When you freeze it, put a piece of kitchen roll or a piece of teatowel in the bread bag – this will absorb any excess moisture so the bread doesn’t go soggy when you defrost it later. You can toast bread straight from frozen, or defrost as many slices as you need, overnight, in a reusable bag.
If your bread has already gone stale, or no one ever eats the crusts, grate them or whizz them up in a food processor. Use the breadcrumbs as a crunchy topping for a pasta bake, or breading for nuggets.
Fruit
You can freeze fruit that’s gone a bit past its best (but not mouldy). The fruit will be squishy when defrosted, so use them in a recipe where you don’t expect them to be firm, like a smoothie, porridge, overnight oats, a crumble or any baked fruit recipe. Bananas can be frozen and used as a base for a smoothie, non-dairy ice cream, or banana bread.
Vegetables
Freeze vegetables that are past their best (but not mouldy) and roast them later. Tomatoes, peppers and other vegetables work really well, as you expect roasted vegetables to be squashy anyway.
Save veg peelings/tops to bring extra flavour to soups or stock.
Save your potato peelings and make homemade “crisps” in the oven.
Broccoli stems are nice when sliced thinly, brushed with oil, seasoned and lightly pan-fried.
The leaves of many root vegetables can be sauteed like chard, or used to make a variation on pesto.
Salad
Put a piece of kitchen roll, or a piece of a tea towel, in your bag of salad leaves or spinach. The leaves will last much longer before they start to go slimy.
Use excess salad leaves or spinach to make pesto – a super-easy mid-week meal.
Eggs
Eggs last a long time past their best-before date, but if you have some that you are sure you won’t use in time, you can freeze them. Crack the egg as normal, then freeze the white and yolk either together or separately in small containers.
Milk
Milk can be frozen, but be careful because liquid expands when it freezes. Follow these steps to avoid splitting the container:
- Loosen the lid
- Very gently, push in the side of the bottle (not so much that the milk comes out of the bottle!)
- With the side still pushed in, tighten the lid
- Now freeze it
- When the milk expands, it will just push the side of the container back out, and the bottle shouldn’t split
Cheese
Grate bits of hardened cheese and freeze them, then use them later for cheesy toppings.
Random leftovers
Use odd leftovers in quiches, mixed through rice, on pasta, roasted and served on a slice of puff pastry, or in omelettes.
Why not have a “whatever” night every week, when you finish up whatever’s left over in the fridge? This should save money as well as introduce some variety – you may find a new favourite meal.
[1] Food surplus and waste in the UK – key facts. October 2021. rep. Available at: https://wrap.org.uk/sites/default/files/2021-10/food-%20surplus-and-%20waste-in-the-%20uk-key-facts-oct-21.pdf (Accessed: January 2, 2023).
Photo credit: Victoria Shes on Unsplash