10x tips on how to keep your food fresh for longer

When you get home with your groceries, you immediately find yourself in a dilemma: you may/want to avoid going to the supermarket too often, so you’ve stocked up on a week’s worth of supplies, but how on earth are you going to keep it all fresh? These tips will get you a long way.

We previously wrote that the freezer is your best friend at times like these, as well as what chefs like to keep in there. And those chefs have even more handy tips for keeping all kinds of things fresh for as long as possible. Make the most of them!

• Pickling or preserving as jam has of course long been the way to process vegetables and fruit that otherwise wouldn’t last. Here you can read how to make delicious pickles yourself. Have you seen the beautiful jars by our Steffi yet?!
• Coffee beans, of which you may have just ordered a nice large batch from a specialty coffee company, can be stored in small portions in an airtight container in the freezer. Storing them for longer than a month is not recommended.
• Bread, homemade or otherwise, that you have in the house unsliced and won’t finish within two days should first be cut into slices and then frozen. That way you can make good avocado toast every day, or top it with old-school delicious beef sausage and those pickles you just made yourself.
• Grapes, just like pieces of peeled banana, can be frozen as an ice-cold sweet snack. Wash and dry them first, freeze them on a tray, and then you can put them together in a container in the freezer. (That way they don’t all stick together).
• Mushrooms aren’t fond of the plastic packaging they’re usually sold in. It’s better to keep them in a paper bag, or, if you don’t have one, rolled in kitchen paper inside an open plastic bag.
• It’s better to store milk on the bottom shelf of the fridge than in the door. The temperature there (in the door) fluctuates the most.
• Spring onions whose green tops you’ve used: put the root-end stems in a glass of water, and new greens will soon grow!
• It’s best to wash bunches of herbs immediately, dry them thoroughly, then roll them up in a damp tea towel or sturdy kitchen paper and store them at the bottom of the fridge. You can also keep them upright in a glass of water. And otherwise, pesto is of course the solution! You can make it with all kinds of herbs.
• Bananas that have become wonderfully overripe are of course fantastic for banana bread or waffles, but if you want to keep them yellow a little longer, you can wrap the section of stem where they’re attached to one another in a piece of plastic wrap. (This is also how they’re sometimes sold).
• You can keep cucumbers fresh for the longest by placing them (washed) in kitchen paper inside a plastic bag in the fridge. Another handy option: purée them in the blender and freeze them in an ice cube tray. Delicious in summery drinks or a robust Bloody Mary.

Also read:

• Guide: get the most out of your freezer
• What (star) chefs always have at home
• These are the very best cooking tips from (star) chefs