Food Waste (and how to reduce it)
There's a series in the Feast supplement of the Guardian which is dedicated to reducing food waste. In it, Tom Hunt makes suggestions as to how to use up less desirable food in the kitchen. Obviously, this is brilliant and I'm so pleased that food waste is being brought up and dealt with in the media but Tom's suggestions are for things that generally speaking, I don't tend to waste. For example, the article linked above is a recipe for a gin cooler that uses up the middle bits of cucumbers... However, I do make an effort to combat food waste in the kitchen. This is partially down to the environment and partially down to frugality. It's also due to the fact that there are thousands of people in the UK who can barely afford to eat at all; morally I can't allow food to go to waste*. So, here are my top tips for reducing food waste in your home:
1) Keep your bread crusts in the freezer to make breadcrumbs for topping pasta, coating chicken or fish, mixing into stuffing... Lots of recipes call for white bread or no crusts or fresh or stale or etc etc. The truth is that the heel of any old loaf will whizz up into perfect breadcrumbs even from frozen.
2) Save your carrot peelings, onion off-cuts, ends of celery and so on in a bag in the freezer then when you have enough, boil the odds and ends along with some seasoning and a bay leaf or two to make a stock. Then use this for a soup or a risotto or ramen or to cook couscous.
3) Keep hens. Okay so I realise this isn't necessarily achievable for lots of people but if you have space, you should honestly consider it. Hens are funny and they produce eggs and they eat pretty much anything so all your left overs that didn't make it into your lunch box and have sat in the fridge for a few days can go to the hens.
4) If you are making a recipe that calls for one or the other part of an egg then keep the whites to make meringues, royal icing or a glaze. Keep the yolks to make mayonnaise, custard or carbonara. Either part of the egg can be used as a binding agent when making burgers, stuffing or meatballs.
5) Think a bit more about what you already have in your home and use that to cook. Instead of stopping at the shops every night after work, dedicate 15 minutes to thinking about what you could eat all week and how each meal feeds into the next: leftover mashed potatoes can become potato farls, leftover veggies can be made into a soup, leftover rice can be fried with an egg and topped with spring onions for egg fried rice.
I hope you've found this useful, please tell me what you do to reduce food waste in your home, I'm always looking for tips!
*(You can donate to food banks in the UK here. In my experience, most big supermarkets have food bank collections after the checkout- just add a couple of bits to your shopping to donate. Sometimes they have lists of things they especially need but if not, I usually try to think about what is expensive to buy if you are seriously limited: cooking oil, cereal, UHT milk, shampoo and conditioner... my theory is that if you can afford to buy that magazine or that take away coffee, then you can afford to donate something to help those less fortunate. We live in one of the richest countries in the world and the wealth disparity between the most affluent and the poorest citizens is breath taking- we should be ashamed of ourselves)
1) Keep your bread crusts in the freezer to make breadcrumbs for topping pasta, coating chicken or fish, mixing into stuffing... Lots of recipes call for white bread or no crusts or fresh or stale or etc etc. The truth is that the heel of any old loaf will whizz up into perfect breadcrumbs even from frozen.
2) Save your carrot peelings, onion off-cuts, ends of celery and so on in a bag in the freezer then when you have enough, boil the odds and ends along with some seasoning and a bay leaf or two to make a stock. Then use this for a soup or a risotto or ramen or to cook couscous.
3) Keep hens. Okay so I realise this isn't necessarily achievable for lots of people but if you have space, you should honestly consider it. Hens are funny and they produce eggs and they eat pretty much anything so all your left overs that didn't make it into your lunch box and have sat in the fridge for a few days can go to the hens.
4) If you are making a recipe that calls for one or the other part of an egg then keep the whites to make meringues, royal icing or a glaze. Keep the yolks to make mayonnaise, custard or carbonara. Either part of the egg can be used as a binding agent when making burgers, stuffing or meatballs.
5) Think a bit more about what you already have in your home and use that to cook. Instead of stopping at the shops every night after work, dedicate 15 minutes to thinking about what you could eat all week and how each meal feeds into the next: leftover mashed potatoes can become potato farls, leftover veggies can be made into a soup, leftover rice can be fried with an egg and topped with spring onions for egg fried rice.
I hope you've found this useful, please tell me what you do to reduce food waste in your home, I'm always looking for tips!
*(You can donate to food banks in the UK here. In my experience, most big supermarkets have food bank collections after the checkout- just add a couple of bits to your shopping to donate. Sometimes they have lists of things they especially need but if not, I usually try to think about what is expensive to buy if you are seriously limited: cooking oil, cereal, UHT milk, shampoo and conditioner... my theory is that if you can afford to buy that magazine or that take away coffee, then you can afford to donate something to help those less fortunate. We live in one of the richest countries in the world and the wealth disparity between the most affluent and the poorest citizens is breath taking- we should be ashamed of ourselves)
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