10x longer-lasting fresh groceries: this is how you do it

Doing your grocery shopping in record time, wearing a face mask, and then filling an entire cart so you’re all set for the rest of the week: that’s the shopping regime during the coronavirus measures. But how do you prevent having to throw away half your groceries because they’ve gone moldy, dried out or wilted?

Spring onions keep growing

Have you cut spring onions and are you left with only the stumps with some roots attached? Put them in a shallow layer of water and see what happens: new green spring onions will simply grow out of them. Handy, because that supply will hardly ever run out!

Herbs in the freezer

Fresh herbs are delicious, but they wilt quickly. If you have a sad-looking bunch in the vegetable drawer or on the windowsill, chop the herbs finely and turn them into ice cubes. Want to use some fresh herbs in your food? Just pop one of the cubes out of the tray. You can also make these cubes with olive oil; that works just as well.

Put onions in your tights

Onions that are stored together in one of those plastic nets in the cupboard can start to go moldy or rot. Tie them into a pair of tights and hang them from the ceiling, and they’ll stay good for months. Whether you actually like the idea of onion-filled tights as kitchen decor is another question.

Yogurt upside down

Have you opened containers of yogurt, crème fraîche or quark? Put them upside down on their lids when you return them to the fridge; they’ll spoil less quickly.

Scrub the fridge

If something gets moldy, wilts or leaks in your fridge, clean it thoroughly. Moldy vegetables leave behind a large family of mold and nastiness in your fridge, even if you can’t see it. Scrub the fridge with a little baking soda, and everything will be fresh and clean again.

Don’t put the milk in the door

The door of your fridge has one of those cozy racks where the wine bottles clink against each other (or is that just at my house?). People often put the milk there too, but that’s not a good idea. That spot in the fridge is less cold than the rest, so the milk will spoil faster there. Of course, the same goes for a bottle of orange juice…

Ginger in the freezer

From now on, store your ginger in the freezer. If you need some, frozen ginger is easy to grate, and this also prevents it from becoming old, dried out and stringy.

Take mushrooms out of the plastic

Store mushrooms in a paper bag, not a plastic one. Those blue plastic trays you normally buy mushrooms in aren’t very useful either. Moisture will condense in the plastic, and before you know it, you’ll have moldy mushrooms.

Sugared honey? Warm it up

That delicious jar of flower honey has changed from liquid gold into old frying fat – at least, that’s what it looks like. The honey has crystallized. You can easily reverse this by putting the honey on the radiator or briefly warming the jar in a saucepan of hot water. Once you see the color changing, give your honey a stir and the sugar crystals will dissolve. Honey can’t spoil, so throwing it away would be a real waste.

Bread in the fridge? Nooo!

Do you store your bread in the fridge? It won’t stay fresh longer there; instead, it will dry out and go stale faster. Keep it at room temperature on the counter or – even better – in a bread bin. The freezer works well too: take out a slice, let it thaw on the counter for a moment and voilà, fresh bread.

Also read:

• 10 tips for keeping your food fresh longer
• The truth about honey: this is how it really is
• This is the best way to store apples