There’s nothing more frustrating that preparing your salad only to realize that your four-day-old lettuce is already wilting. Expired produce is one of the major sources of food waste, not to mention a serious waste of your hard-earned money as well. Yet, there’s no need to resign yourself to a dry-food-only diet for we listed down some food storage hacks that’ll help keep your produce fresh up to their best-by date.
1. Store Your Veggies on a Vegetable Sack
There’s no need to store all your vegetables in the refrigerator just to keep them fresh. Veggies like garlic, onions, potatoes and shallots shouldn’t be kept in the fridge as it’ll only make them spoil faster. Most root vegetables tend to last longer if you store them in a dry place. Most households in Singapore don’t have root cellars for storing food, so the best alternative to this is using vegetable sacks for storage. It’ll help keep them from cold and light, and there’ll also be no sprouting.
2. Use Air-Tight Containers
As much as possible, avoid leaving half-empty cereal boxes and other dry foods out in the open. Doing so could make them stale and tasteless. To keep that from happening, ensure that you place them in air-tight containers after opening their original packaging. If you want, you can also reuse pasta sauce bottles as a container for storing dry foods.
3. Keep Your Cheese in a Cheese Keeper
Keeping any type of cheese fresh isn’t easy. If it develops moulds, it could become mushy, unappetizing and unhealthy. One way of keeping a cheese fresh is by storing in a cheese keeper. It’ll help in regulating the levels of humidity surrounding the cheese, keeping the cheese from drying out and preventing the moulds from forming.
4. Invest in a Vacuum Sealer
Vacuum sealers are an incredibly useful tool for maintaining the freshness of any food. By simply touching a single button, the machine will instantly seal the food in an air-tight vacuum bag. It can be used to store leftovers and sauces, and keep them fresh for several weeks or a month.
5. Make Use of Produce Savers
Some fruits and vegetables produce ethylene gas as they become ripe, causing them to spoil faster. To ensure that your fresh produce lasts longer, simply use the food savers. This tool absorbs the extra ethylene gas and humidity found in any fresh produce, resulting to an increase shelf life of the foods.
Practising proper food storage is one way of prolonging the shelf life of your produce and avoiding food and most wastage. So be sure to put these storage tips to work to keep your food fresh up to their expiration date.