7 ways to be less wasteful in the kitchen

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Kitchen waste is defined as the leftover organic material from restaurants, hotels and our homes. In areas with a high population there is a generation of high waste daily. Due to their high moisture content, kitchen wastes that are disposed of through the municipal mixed garbage system are challenging to treat using conventional methods like burning.

These wastes are avoidable, hence, we look at ways we can be less wasteful in the kitchen.

1. Respect the Food

We easily forget the distribution passage through which food get to us that we now easily waste them. But, learning about the processes that go into making food can help us stay mindful of the way we eat and how we treat food.

When you’re getting a product, whether it’s an exotic fruit or a regular seasonal veggie, think about each step in the production and distribution chain it needs to take before it ends up on your plate. Think about the water and the soil allocated to it, the energy it takes to harvest it, whether by hand or by a machine, and the resources required for it to get transported to where it is now.

This way of thinking will make you understand your impact on the environment and will reduce your waste by making you more aware when you’re grocery shopping.

2. Create crumbs and croutons from leftover bread

Don’t throw out that old, dried out, crusty bread!

As long as you don’t see signs of mold or stale bread, they’re ideal for making croutons to top soups and salads. And you can process them into fine crumbs to use as a binding agent in meatballs and veggie burgers, as a crispy topping for mac and cheese, or as a coating for salmon burgers, crab cakes, and baked fish fillets. Don’t waste that bread. You can even turn it into a toast!

3. Cycle through your inventory

Do well to use the FIFO (First In, First Out) system to ensure food doesn’t get lost in the back of the fridge or your pantry, hidden behind more recent purchases or prepared foods.

What you do is to put any item that was bought or prepped first in front and put new ones at the back of the fridge or pantry. You can also put a date label on what you bought so you can differentiate the times you got them. This can also help you use up perishable goods even before they get spoilt.

4. Freeze extra liquids

Instead of draining your left over stock or wine, you can pour them into your ice cube tray and freeze them up for a long time. It can come in handy when you need to use the wine for a particular recipe or use the stocks for your soups. So, instead of opening new ones, all you have to do is just use these frozen liquids for whatever you want to use them for. Freezing is a great way to control what you consume and when. But avoid refreezing things more than once unless you cook the de-frozen food.

5. Go airtight

When certain packages like that of cereals and pasta are removed from their original packages, they tend to get stale more quickly. To avoid this, storing these types of foodstuffs in airtight bags will preserve them better than leaving them out to air.

The method of doing making the food airtight is by using a vacuum sealer or oxygen absorbers for long term storage.

6. Preserve fresh herbs

When you get fresh herbs and you don’t get to use them up at the moment, you can preserve them by also freezing them. You can cut them into shreds and place them into small containers, add some olive oil to it and then freeze it up. This prevents against them rotting and you having to waste them eventually.

Asides freezing, you can also try out other methods like drying or making flavor-infused oil.

7. Shop smart

Always go to the store with a list and ensure you stick to them.

Don’t get enticed by something you don’t want to get, only if it is important to buy and it probably skipped your mind when writing your list. Impulse buying can make you buy what you already have at home. To help with this, you can design a meal plan for some weks and create a list based on just that.

8. Understand ethylene gas

Some fresh fruits and vegetables emit ethylene gas, a hormone which enhances ripening.

Among many others, common produce items that release ethylene are apples, avocados, potatoes, bananas, and mangoes.When you store these fruits together, the ripening process is enhanced and can make them spoil within a short time. Be careful of how you store your fruits and vegetables in the refrigerator – utilize the high-humidity, vent less bin for produce with a high water content and the low-humidity, vented bin for produce that emits ethylene gas.

And always store cold-sensitive vegetables such as potatoes, garlic, onions, and winter squash in a cool, dry cupboard – not the fridge. You can skip the cold storage altogether for certain fruits like firm or unripe apples, bananas, avocados, stone fruits, and tomatoes.

Bananas are particularly suited for freezing once they start getting overripe, and they are very useful when making banana bread, cookies, and many other recipes beyond the typical baked loaf.

In conclusion, sometimes, all you need to use up food items that are soon to expire is a little bit of creativity. Don’t be skeptical or afraid to draft out new recipes that you can use and get from leftovers. Some of the foods you can make to prevent wastage are; French toast from leftover bread, Curry chicken from leftover chicken, Mac and cheese from various scraps of cheese, Sprout pesto from leftover leafy greens

This will not only help you reduce waste in the kitchen, but it can also make you enjoy yourself more while cooking.