- Have you got any tips or tricks for keeping your food fresh for longer? Or are you looking for some advice on how to do it? Join Sue Quinn in the comments section of this article at 4pm (BST) today for some top tips and advice. You can either leave your comment ahead of time and come back at 4pm or join live.
When fresh produce is harder to come by thanks to the COVID-19 crisis, and the need to stretch ingredients further becomes more pressing, it's handy to know that tweaking how you store fruit and vegetables can make a huge difference to their shelf life. Food-waste figures in general, even before the lockdown was enforced, are hard to swallow: every year, we throw out 15 million tonnes of food in the UK – and half of it comes from our homes.
One major reason for this is that we allow food to spoil sooner than it should. So to avoid binning so much, at a time when nutritious food matters most, try these ingenious food storage tips to keep it fresh for longer.
Onions
Store onions in an old pair of clean tights – this allows the air to circulate – and tie a knot between each one so they don’t touch each other. Hang the onions somewhere cool and dark, and they will stay fresh for up to eight months. Don’t store onions with potatoes as the gases each vegetable produces make the other spoil more quickly.
Berries
Give berries a water and vinegar bath – one part vinegar to three parts water – to prevent them developing mould and going soft. Rinse the berries well in clean water and dry them, ideally in a kitchen towel-lined salad spinner. Store in the fridge in a sealable container lined with kitchen towel.
Avocados
Leave the stone in an uneaten avocado half, coat the cut side with lemon juice and wrap in cling film, ensuring it presses against the exposed surface. Alternatively, place a handful of onion chunks in a plastic container, add the avocado half cut-side up and cover. The theory is that gases from the onion prevent the avocado from spoiling.
Browse our favourite avocado recipes here.
Apples
The saying about one rotten apple spoiling the barrel is true. Lots of ethylene gas released by rotten apples speeds up the ripening and subsequent spoiling of neighbouring fruit. Remove any damaged or over-ripened apples, salvage what you can of the fruit (stew it, for example) and throw the rotten bits away.
Browse our favourite apple recipes here.
Bananas
This one’s slightly contentious but advocates swear it works. To keep bananas fresh for longer, break up the bunch and wrap the stems in cling film. The theory is that a lot of the ethylene gas that hastens the ripening process is released from the stem.
Browse our favourite banana recipes here.
Cheese
Don’t wrap cheese tightly in clingfilm: it encourages bacteria, prevents the cheese from breathing and allows it to absorb flavours and chemicals from the plastic. Ideally, wrap in several layers of wax paper, seal with tape and store in the fridge. Hard and semi-hard cheese freezes well – cut into blocks 250g-300g, wrap in cling film and store in a freezer container. Frozen cheese can be crumbly and a little dry when thawed, but the flavour is just as good as fresh.
Browse our favourite cheese recipes here.
Other dairy
High-quality quality butter, milk, yoghurt and cream can also be stored in the freezer. Cut blocks of butter into smaller portions, wrap individually in foil or cling film, and store in freezer containers. Pasteurized and homogenized milk and double cream (40 per cent fat or more) freeze well: transfer to freezer containers and leave a 3cm space at the top to allow for expansion. Yoghurt can be frozen but tends to be grainy, so best used in cooking. Thaw all frozen dairy in the fridge.
Eggs
Eggs can’t be frozen in their shells but whites, yolks and whole broken eggs can. Gently stir the whites, yolks or whole eggs with a pinch of salt or sugar – don’t beat – then strain through a sieve and pour into an ice cube tray. Freeze, then remove the cubes and store in freezer. Frozen this way, eggs can last a year.
Browse our favourite recipes using eggs here.
Herbs
Chop fresh herbs, combine with olive oil, then pour into ice cube trays and freeze. Remove the cubes and store in freezer. Bunches of fresh soft herbs (anything except basil) and indeed watercress can be stored like a bouquet of flowers in a jar of water in the fridge, covered with a plastic bag. Basil is best kept out of the fridge.
Fruit and vegetables
If you have a glut of fruit and veg you know you won’t have time to eat fresh before it spoils, freeze it all. Chop the vegetables, blanch in boiling water, then store in freezer bags.
Asparagus and spring onions
Keep asparagus and spring onions fresh by storing them like flower bouquets in the fridge. Trim the ends of asparagus, place in a jar of water cut-side down, and refrigerate. Do the same with spring onions, but place the white, hairy end in the water.
Browse our favourite asparagus recipes here.
Celery
Wrap tightly in foil and store in the fridge to keep crisp.
