Preserving Food

Food waste is something I try very hard to avoid. My thought is that I paid money for these things, so I shouldn’t just throw it away. There are many different approaches I take, and I’ll go into each one in more detail in future posts, but here is my overall strategy.

Food Storage

The first step in preventing food waste is to store your food properly. Some things do well in the fridge, others should avoid the fridge. Some need a little prep to last a long time. Knowing how best to keep your produce fresh is a huge step in buying yourself time to use the ingredients while they are still good.

Freezing

If I bought something that I wasn’t sure what to do with and it’s about to go bad, often the first step is to figure out how to freeze it. Plenty of ingredients can be frozen and restored for cooking later. Some items can be done whole and most can be done with minimal processing. We use both our regular freezer and a small chest freezer, which I highly recommend. A small 5 cubic foot size is great for 2 people and isn’t crazy expensive.

Veggie Stock Scraps

Related to freezing, we also save specific veggie scraps to make homemade veggie stock. I go into much more detail in this post.

Pickling

I loooove me some pickling. You can pickle pretty much anything and the flavor combos are endless. There are some pickles I try to keep on hand at all times, but I also use pickling as a way to preserve things that I think would taste better/different when pickled and/or are about to go bad and I haven’t come up with a better use for them. Pickled ingredients can last for weeks or months in the fridge and will maintain their freshness and flavor.

Fermenting

I don’t go as crazy as Brad Leone from It’s Alive, but I’ve done some fermenting as part of my food preservation. Kimchi is a great place to start, as you can use a lot of other greens and vegetables other than just cabbage. You will need gochugaru and fish sauce (they do make a vegan fish sauce version!), but those are easy investments to make for your well-stocked pantry. You can also ferment a bunch of other things like ginger/garlic paste, miso (i.e. soybeans), eggs, hot sauce, etc. Things like sourdough and yogurt also fall into this category.

Compost

If all other preservation methods are unavailable, there is always the compost. We have only recently gotten into composting, so I don’t have a ton of tips, but it’s a great way to convert otherwise unusable food and plant bits into a healthy addition to your garden.