Making a difference, one meal at a time
Reducing Food Waste
With shopping trips now limited to essential trips only and the current Covid-19 crisis having significant impact on family finances, reducing food waste is now more important than ever.
Cooking Good have put together the following tips to ensure your food lasts that bit longer and every stalk, bone and leftover is accounted for!
Freezing
If you are fortunate to have a freezer make sure you clean it out and create a section for each category of food helping you keep track of what you have. Use a marker pen to write a label for each drawer or shelf for example, meat / fish, vegetables, bread, fruit etc.
Always freeze food straight away when it is fresh, don’t wait for its use by date.
Use zip bags, recycled take-away containers and even milk cartons to freeze liquids such a soups or smoothies. Never freeze food in glass as it can crack.
Freeze milk you do not need when it is fresh.
Bread freezes very well. Wrap any remaining in batches of slices.
Stock
Place vegetable peelings and left-overs in a plastic zip bag in fridge to use to make vegetable stock and bone broth. See the Cooking Good bone broth recipe further down.
Vegetables
Turn wilting vegetables into soup. Try Cooking Good's Sunshine soup recipe and the chunky Minestrone soup recipe.
Fruit
You can freeze ripe bananas in freezer bags to use in baking or smoothies. Orchard fruits can be frozen, try the Cooking Good Apple & Blackberry Crumble.
Cooking Good bone broth
Bone broth is rich in minerals and said to have immune boosting qualities. It makes a delicious base to soups, gravies and sauces and is a tasty way to use up left over chicken bones. For maximum flavour roast the chicken carcass first in the oven with a little oil for 30 mins. Transfer to a large saucepan and add a chopped onion and left over vegetable peelings and 1 litre of water and 1tbsp dried herbs. Simmer low and slow for 4/5 hours to enable the minerals to be released from the bone marrow.
Try batch cooking the following Cooking Good recipes:
Please note: remember frozen meat and fish cannot be defrosted and refrozen