8 Steps To Minimize Food Waste At Home
According to Feeding America, an estimated 40% of food grown, processed and transported in the U.S. will never be consumed. Field to landfill? It is a horrifying thought. Even more horrifying is the thought that we all contribute to that every time we leave food unfinished on our plate or let it go to waste in our fridge; every time we toss food in the bin. Here are eight steps we can take to minimize food waste in our home kitchens.
1 KEEP A CLEAN FRIDGE
In an overstocked fridge, it is impossible to see what you have. Scooping left overs into sealed containers is great, but it’s easy to forget about them if they’re hidden behind jars of this and cartons of that. Finish fresh ingredients before stocking the fridge with new ones. A little organizing goes a long way.
2 PLAN PORTIONS
My mother always warned: “Don’t let your eyes be bigger than your stomach.” If I put it on my plate, I had to finish it. This extends to all aspects of food consumption, from buying food to scooping it on your plate. Left overs can make for a great meal later, but not all half-eaten food makes for reusable left overs.
3 CAN AND PRESERVE
Yes, back to the good old techniques of preserving food. Making pickles, sauces or jams is an excellent way to use produce that you get in bulk when it’s in season or on sale. Canning chutney and salsa is perfect for kitchen scraps. Smoke large cuts of meat, like brisket, and vacuum seal in smaller portions to keep them longer; or get a dehydrator to dry fruits and herbs.
4 USE YOUR KITCHEN SCRAPS
Kitchen scraps are not what you scrape off your plate when you’re full. Kitchen scraps come from prepping ingredients: cabbage cores, vegetable stalks, tougher outer leaves. So much of that is habitually tossed in the bin, yet they make for excellent aromatic garnish for stock. Diced small and sautéed, they can make a nutritious filling in chili, tomato sauce or risotto.
5 THE WHOLE ANIMAL APPROACH
If you eat meat, go beyond the prime cuts and try the edible organs, head, tail and trotters as well. Build a relationship with a local meat farmer for all different cuts, or buy a meat box, a selection of different cuts that guarantees a better use of the whole butchered animal. And be creative using the same amount of meat to make more meals. A whole chicken, for instance, can stretch over several meals, using the meat and carcass to make different dishes. There’s more variety and taste, too.
6 WING IT!
When you cook from a recipe, you buy what the recipe states, not what you already have in the fridge or pantry. You can end up wasting what you have, buying new ingredients instead. Winging it with a bunch of ingredients helps you develop a less wasteful way of cooking. Obviously, a recipe can be of tremendous help as a guideline, but don’t let it limit you.
7 COMPOST
Composting is not a substitute for better food waste reduction, but it is a solid way to transform food waste into a nutritious component for healthy soil. If you don’t garden, find a neighbor gardener or nearby farmer who may be happy to receive your bucket of collected kitchen scraps and coffee grounds.
8 HELP RAISE AWARENESS
Landfills are not the only way to dispose of household garbage and food waste. Better solutions have been developed in countries like Sweden where waste management through power plants has led them to actually import incinerable waste. As consumers, we can reduce the amount of garbage we send to landfills. But we can do more. We can start asking to eliminate landfills and implement alternative solutions.
