20 clever ways to keep your food fresh for longer

Thanks to our hard-working food chain providers, there’s plenty of fabulous fresh fruit and veg to be bought

In these times when we’re all trying to shop less often and more efficiently, and attempting to be even more waste-averse than we might have been before, these 20 clever, and sometimes surprising, tips and tricks will help you to keep your food fresh for longer.

Oh, and there’s a terrific food-fresh giveaway up for grabs at the end!

1 Ginger

There are actually two ways to keep ginger at its best. Either put it in the freezer, or, and this is my preferred method, immerse it in water in a tub or jar and keep it in the fridge.

2 Cheese

Smear the cut edge of a piece of cheese with butter and it will stop it drying out. Storing it wrapped in a beeswax sheet (these are invaluable in so many food storage ways. There are details about them at the end) will also help keep it fresh and flavourful.

3 Bananas

Wrapping the stalks of bananas (individually, not in a bunch) in tin foil reduces the escape of ethylene from the stems. This makes the bananas last longer and prevents the gas being absorbed by other fruits nearby. A double win!

4 Berries

To stop berries going mouldy or soft too quickly, rinse them in a mixture of one part vinegar to ten parts water before putting them in the fridge. I promise you won’t taste the vinegar and your strawberries will last almost two weeks longer, and raspberries a week, as a result.

5 Pineapple

To keep a pineapple fresh for longer, cut off the top and put it, cut top down, on a plate. The cut edge of the fruit must be fully in touch with the plate. Then keep it in the fridge.

6 Lemons

This is more about keeping lemons fresh when you only need a bit of the juice. Instead of cutting into the lemon, puncture a hole with a fork or a skewer and then just squeeze out as much juice as you require.

7 Sliced apples

These make a delicious and healthy snack, but of course, once they’re cut into, apples go brown quite quickly. Not if you soak the slices in a bowl of cold salt water, they don’t (though no more than ½ teaspoon of salt per quart of water, or you’ll taste it in the fruit). After five minutes, dry and store the slices in the fridge in an airtight plastic bag.

8 Celery

Wrapping celery in tin foil in the fridge keeps it crisp for much longer than leaving it in its plastic packaging.

9 Spring onions

Chop up or slice spring onions and put them in a jar or tub of water, with the lid on, in the fridge to keep them crunchy.

10 Lettuce

There are several ways to keep lettuce at its best, but they all revolve around keeping it dry. Break or cut it up, rinse and dry it thoroughly and then either store it in a jar, or in a bag with a sheet of paper towel to absorb any moisture (this will need to be changed every couple of days). You can also store the leaves in a bowl with a paper towel on top, then covered with a shower cap (instead of cling film, which I haven’t used for over a year now). Again replace the towel when it becomes damp. Or you can sprinkle the leaves with a dash of salt, which also helps draw out extra wetness.

11 Cucumber

Stangely, cucumber lasts better out of the fridge than in it. The same goes for tomatoes, which also taste much sweeter when they’re not cold. That’s true for berries too, so letting them come to room temperature before you eat them is always best.

12 Carrots

This also works brilliantly for carrots and radishes

13 Asparagus and broccoli

Trim the ends of asparagus stalks and stand them in the fridge in a jar with water in it to keep them at their best for longer. This works equally well for broccoli.

14 Onions

I can’t say I’ve tried this yet but apparently it really does work! Take an old pair of tights and wrap the onions in the legs tying a knot between each one then hanging them in a cool, dry place. You can either cut off, or undo each one as you need it.

15 Potatoes

Store your potatoes in a cool dark place…along with an apple. The apple releases a gas that prevents the potatoes from going bad, helping them to last for up to eight weeks longer!

16 Fresh herbs

Chop and freeze the herbs in ice cube trays along with some olive oil. When it's time to add them to your cooking, simply melt the cube.

17 Sour cream and cottage cheese

This is an unusual one - turning a tub of sour cream or cottage cheese upside down creates a vacuum inside the container which slows down the growth of the bacteria that causes these dairy foods to go mouldy.

18 Flour and rice

To help keep evil weevils from taking up residence in your flour, rice, or cornmeal , slip a bay leaf in the container.

19 Brown sugar

It’s so frustrating, isn’t it, when brown sugar goes hard. Try storing it it in an airtight container with a marshmallow in it, that shouldn’t happen. (If it does, put as much as you need in a bowl, cover it with a damp piece of kitchen towel and microwave it for a few moments. That will soften it up again)

20 Bread

To stop bread going dry and/or mouldy, put a stick of celery inside a bag with the bread. It will keep the bread going for at least a few days longer.

Food storage heroes

There are two things I find completely invaluable when it comes to food storage. If you’re a reader of the Heydays newsletter, you’ll not only know about these because the weekly email has lots of exclusive, eco-friendly tips in it, but you may have been one of the four lucky winners of an exclusive subscriber giveaway of the first.

If you’re not a subscriber, then now is the time to put that right, because are two sets of the second up for grabs in a giveaway which closes on June 5th (2020, if you’re reading this after that - sorry! But sign up for the newsletter anyway. It’s very fabulous).

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More than 1.2 billion metres of cling film is used in households across the UK each year. That’s enough to go around the world 30 times! That’s shocking enough in itself, but worse is that this sticky scourge takes hundreds of years to degrade, leaking damaging chemicals whilst it does.

Slinging the cling is easier than it sounds, particularly if you invest in a selection of beeswax wraps (which you can, by the way, also make yourself. This is just one of loads of easy to follow videos)

These planet and body-friendly way to keep food fresh can be used on pretty much any kind of food or container and reused multiple times by washing them with soap and cold water.

The organic beeswax wraps I’m using at the moment

These are the ones I’m currently using (they should last about a year). They’ll last about a year and I clean them with washing up liquid and cold water.

I bought these ones on Amazon but you can find beeswax wraps in almost all supermarkets now.

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Food huggers are clever, silicone discs with soft sides that form a seal around unused, cut food that keeps it fresh until you finish it up.

They come in sets with different sizes and can also be used to seal the tops of tins and jars.

Food huggers - such a clever way to keep unused food fresh

Did I mention there are two sets of these to be won by a couple of lucky newsletter subscribers? Just fill in your details in the subscriber box at the bottom of this post and you could be in with a chance of being one of them.

Do you have any food-fresh tips to add to this list? Please do add them in the comments!

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