One way to waste less is to make foods last longer. It can be incredibly infuriating and uneconomical when uneaten food goes stale before you’ve had a chance to eat it. While there are some foods with unexpectedly long shelf lives, other foods seem to spoil the moment when they become stubborn to maintain. There are some brilliant hacks to help prolong the life of fresh fruits, vegetables and food and make sure you get your money’s worth. Refrigeration basics to prevent bacteria. Firstly, it’s very important to ensure that your fridge and freezer are cold enough to keep foods chilled at the right temperature. Standard refrigeration guidelines recommend setting refrigerators at 40 degrees Fahrenheit or below, and freezers to 0 or lower to prevent bacteria growth. If your fridge doesn’t come with a thermometer, now is a good idea to invest in one if you can. Also important to note is cleaning the fridge regularly as it prevents the spread of bacteria, and to keep food safe as bacteria can survive in the fridge for some time. Keep dry goods in air-tight containers. Dry foods, including rice and pasta, should be stored in air-tight containers. Jars and plastic boxes are perfect as they keep tiny mites and insects out. Saving meat and vegetables. If your food is on “its way out” and you don’t want to waste it, cook it up into something that can then be stored for longer. For example, if your mince is about to go off, make it into spaghetti bolognese and it’ll keep in the fridge for another week since the mincemeat will be cooked. Similarly, vegetables on the way out will make for a great soup. Like avocados, keeping tomatoes in the fridge prevents them from ripening, meaning they can be a bit hard and watery straight from the cold. Keeping your tomatoes out of the fridge (but in a cool place) will allow them to ripen and for the flavours to develop, but if you don’t plan on eating them for a few days, it’s still worth popping them in the fridge to delay the ripening process till you’re ready. However, if they’re already bright red and looking ripe to eat, refrigerating them can slow the rotting process. If they’re still on the vine, it’s apparently best to keep them stem-down as it stops air from getting in and moisture from getting out. Treat herbs like flowers. Keeping herbs fresh for longer is a real tough one. Everyone has their own method of keeping herbs fresh – some wrap them up in newspaper before popping in the fridge, as this will keep them dry and also prevent them from getting too chilled. Another option is to treat them like a nice little bunch of flowers – pop them in a glass of water and place a plastic bag over the top. Adding an elastic band to hold the bag to the glass, will create a greenhouse environment for the herbs, which should keep them fresher for longer. Otherwise, you can also dry herbs out by tying them together at the stem and hanging near a window in a dry spot. Oily herbs like thyme and rosemary are best kept this way regardless, as they don’t cope so well in the fridge. Wrap celery and broccoli in a bowl. Tightly wrapping up your celery or broccoli in tin foil is the perfect way to keep it fresh and crisp, and in the fridge it can last this way up to four weeks. This is because tin foil will keep the veggies clean and fresh, but it’s porous enough to allow any ethylene, a ripening hormone, to escape. Sprinkle avocado with lemon. Avocados are one of those annoying fruits that are pretty near impossible to get at their perfect stage, they’re either hard as a rock, or have skipped to the squidgy brown stage. The trick with avocados is to let them ripen out of the fridge, and when it seems just ready for eating, you can pop it in the fridge to preserve at that stage until you’re ready to devour it. If you have half of it left over, keep the stone in and brush a bit of lemon or olive oil on the exposed flesh to stop it from going brown. Some fruits are better off kept separately. Bananas are the clingiest of fruits, separate a banana from its brothers and sisters and you’ll see it turn brown quicker than you expected. The key is to keep them as a bunch, and go one step further by wrapping up the conjoined stalks tightly in cling film. This should prevent the ethylene in the stalks from reaching the rest of the bananas, and can apparently help bananas last up to five days longer. Bananas and apples emit more ethylene than any other fruit, so it’s best to keep them separate from other fruits.
