If you want to stop wasting your grocery ingredient, make sure to read the tips below recommended by the food expert of mine on how to keep food fresh longer.
Back to the old days when I committed to cook for the whole weeks and bought all my grocery stuff ready. Turn out I was too busy and ended up eating and buying food outside because I was just too tired to cook after a long tiring day. All my grocery stuff started to rot one by one. I ended up threw almost the whole grocery and wasted it! At first, I literally have no idea on how to keep food fresh longer.
Until one of my friends who expert in food science taught me these incredible kitchen hacks that change my life. These kitchen hacks actually help me in keeping the food fresh longer and some tricks on how to check if they’re gone bad.
Here are the best and clever food storing method to keep your fresh last longer.
1. Raw Meat
Salt Cure Method
To keep the meat longer inside the freezer, but here’s the tricks that most of the people miss out: Before put the meat into your freezer, put some salt on your meat. Make sure it’s distributed well to the whole area. The salt is used to cure the meat and make it last much longer. This is actually the trick that restaurant use to preserve their meat stocks.
Cover It Properly
After put the salt on your meat, get any container such as Tupperware, any food container box, or vacuum sealer bag to cover the meat properly. Make sure to classify the meat type it accordingly (Don’t combine different type of meat in the same container).
Cut into smaller piece
This one is optional and up to your personal preference. If you want to cook a steak, then you leave the whole meat uncut. However, if you decide to cook a normal dishes, you can cut it into a smaller cube or slices before put into freezer.
Afterwards, put it into freezer. Now your meat should last much longer than normal!
2. Green Veggie
When goes to leafy greens such as vegetables, here is the steps that you need to follow:
After get back home, wash your veggies and dry the leaves thoroughly. Dry it afterwards. Once dry, get it wrap with a paper towel or tin foil completely and tie it with rubber band. Store them into your fridge afterwards.
3. Eggs
People tend to throw away the egg carton once they get home and store them inside a container or egg holder inside their fridge. But they all get it in the wrong way all the time!
A study by food expert says that keeping the egg in the fridge door is a bad options. While the eggs needed to be kept at consistent and correct temperature (20 degrees), the fridge door is the warmest spot compare to all place in the fridge. The fridge door also has inconsistent temperature as when every time you opened the fridge, the temperature will drop.
The best way to preserve egg is to use the egg carton that come along when you originally bought these eggs. The original carton is meant to protect the eggs and prevent them from absorbing flavors and strong odors of the other food from the fridge.
It highly recommended by food expert that to keep your eggs inside the original egg carton and store them inside the fridge (not the fridge door).
4. Mushroom
Don’t wash mushroom
Don’t wrap mushroom inside paper bag as it will turn the fungi wrinkly and spongy.
Don’t cover mushroom with towel
Here is what you should do:
Put mushroom in a partially open zip log bag which will give the air circulation without drying it. Put it to your refrigerator afterwards.
5. Fruits
Strawberries and other berries
To get these berries last longer, you can try this trick! Get half cup of white vinegar and two cups of water into a bowl. Soak your berries for a few minutes afterwards. Then take your berries and wipe it with dry towel paper.
Bananas
To keep banana last longer, wrap the stem with plastic. Re-cover back the stem every time you take one. Put the banana in dry place.
Apples
When storing apple, keep it separately from other fruits and vegetables! Keep the apple in cold place inside your refrigerator to keep them fresh longer.
Grapes
When you just bought grapes, don’t wash it until you’re ready to eat them all! Store them unwashed and put them inside plastic bag. The washed grapes will create an excess moisture on grape which will makes the grape spoil faster.
Watermelon
Wrap the watermelon inside plastic and put it inside the fridge.
6. Milk
Keep the milk stored in refrigerator at the 37°F temperature. The easier is, just put milk in the coldest area of your fridge which is at the back shelf and lower part of your fridge (Not the freezer area). Remember to put back the milk to your fridge as soon as you finished drink it.
7. Bread
If you were thinking that refrigerator can makes bread last longer, you get it all wrong! Bread will get stale faster if you put them inside the fridge. The best way to store bread is to keep it inside the plastic bag and with the stable temperature (not too cold and not too hot). Just put them outside the fridge but avoid hot temperature place such as near the window.
8. Rice Seed/Grains
You might be wondering, how long does uncooked rice can last? Normally, when you keep the grains sealed in the dry place, it can last for 6 months. However, by putting them inside the container in the fridge, it will double up to 1 year!
Insect Problem
Although the nature of grains can last long, the most common problem here is: if you don’t store them the correct way, you will find your grains filled by bugs after few months! Even though those bugs you found on rice is not harmful, but still you don’t want to see bunch of them inside your rice grains right?
Prevent Bugs
The moment you just bought the rice grains from grocery, you should do a short checking to eliminate if there is any existing bug. Then, put the grains inside your freezer for one week to kill any eggs.
After a week, you can move them out from fridge to dry and clean shelf. You need to make sure that you seal the rice grain container tightly and always keep your shelf hygiene and clean.
By doing this trick, you won’t find any bugs in your rice container. But make sure to do the shelf cleaning regularly to prevent any bugs coming.
Bottom Line
By keeping the food fresh longer, it will help you save money and time to buy additional unnecessary grocery. It will also help you to significantly reduce wastage of unused grocery food.
