7 Kitchen Hacks To Reduce Your Food Waste

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We’re all guilty of throwing out perfectly good food at one point or another. Maybe you’re someone who lives religiously by expiration dates or throws all the food scraps in the garbage without thinking twice. Sometimes we don’t have the patience to think consciously about how we can prevent food waste. You don’t have to go as far as composting to eliminate waste. These seven kitchen hacks will make the task of reducing food waste a little less daunting.

1. Hang On To Your Cheese

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Believe it or not, using plastic wrap is the worst way to store cheese. Wrap your cheese loosely with waxed paper, cheese bags or cheese paper so that it’s protected from air exposure, but not suffocated. This will help to keep the bacteria and prevent the cheese from tasting and smelling like plastic and ammonia.

2. Use Your Greens

Instead of throwing out the tops of beets, carrots, celery and broccoli, make the most of the whole vegetable. Make sure to wash them all thoroughly and then you can use them in salads, juices, pestos, pasta dishes or any veggie dish you want. You can also trim the ends of your asparagus or green onion stalks and place them in a jar of water (like a bouquet of flowers) to keep them fresher longer.

3. Keep Potatoes From Sprouting

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Store apples with potatoes to help keep the sprouts away. It’s even been proved by America’s Test Kitchen, where they stored potatoes with an apple and they stayed firm and sprout-free after eight weeks.

4. Prevent Your Milk From Spoiling

Buying milk is always a toss up. There’s a lot of pressure to use it all up before it spoils and you feel like the clock is working against you. Say you bought it for a recipe and have a good portion left that you don’t want to waste. Pour the remainder of the milk into ice cube trays and freeze it. It will last up to three weeks. Although the texture and color might look a little different when you thaw it out, the milk should still be good to use.

5. Organize Your Fridge Like A Grocery Store 

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It can be a force of habit to put new food right at the front of the fridge. The downside to that is we push the older foods in our fridge even further back and they disappear into a black hole until they start to smell. Instead, organize your fridge with the older foods towards the front so that you feel more obligated to use them. Work your way to the newer foods, they have a little more time to live.

6. Clean The Jar

If you have an empty jar of almond butter, raw honey or Nutella with some remnants left, don’t throw it away. Instead, put something like warm milk or oatmeal into the jar and mix it all up to scrape the jar clean. Nutella oatmeal sounds like the breakfast of champions if you ask us.

7. Make Vegetable Broth

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Collect scraps in a freezer bag when you have leftovers from a recipe. Once you end up with a few cups worth of veggie scraps, you can make a broth. Make sure everything is clean first, you don’t want any dirt in your broth, and avoid things like broccoli and cauliflower. The best scraps to use are onion and shallot skin, sage and mushrooms stems, carrot peel and green onion ends. This can be the base for any soup or stew you’re making.