Food waste tips for your kitchen

Forks at the ready! Eliminating food waste is the number one thing we can do to fight the climate crisis. As well as following our tips below, also have a think about how you can save energy in the kitchen. Choose recipes that are low cook or no cook or choose one pot or one tin recipes. Saves on the washing up too, result!

We love reducing food waste when it tastes delicious, and, spoiler alert - anything tastes nice if it's fried and salted:

• Crispy carrot tops.

• Broad bean pod fritters.

• Veg peeling crisps (if you get one of our loofah scrubs and buy organic veg, the peelings are scrumdiddlyumptious and perfectly good to eat). 

• Save all vegetable scraps (pop them in a container in the freezer) and use them to make stock when you have enough. Also save any vegetable cooking water to add to the stock pot.

• Make pesto with any left over greens, including beetroot leaves and carrot tops.

• Use yogurt to make soda bread, it's SO easy and so rewarding.

• Sad looking fruit is great in all sorts of puddings, sauces and sweet stuff. Try an old apple or two in this apple bread recipe.

Use your freezer 

• Freeze anything that is about to go out if you can't use it. Or, make something with it then freeze it. For example, milk becomes rice pudding.

• Save bread heels and crusts - dry them out in a low oven and turn them into breadcrumbs, then freeze.

• Got half an onion lingering in the fridge? Chop it and freeze it. You can do this with any veg. Just put it in an airtight container.

• Got an inch or two in a bottle of wine that you won’t get round to drinking? Pour it into an ice cube tray and use as and when necessary in sauces and stews.

• Turn juice dregs into ice lollies, either with the help of ice lolly moulds, or some empty (and cleaned) small yogurt pots and lolly sticks. 

Use your phone

Join OLIO and Too Good to Go - waste apps that offer solutions to home food waste and restaurant food waste. You could go one step further and give surplus food to your local street homeless.

And then...

• Be a renegade and remove yourself from the chain of waste. Buy less, buy better and stop buying stuff that you know you’ll end up throwing away.

• Take the time to think about what you really love and choose things you know you’ll savour and enjoy.

• Grow cut and come again lettuce leaves or buy whole head lettuce. 

• Remove yourself from the chain of waste. Buy less, buy better.

• Avoid supermarkets and shop with independents who offer more sustainable alternatives.

• Ask your local retailers, cafes, restaurants - what are they doing to reduce or eradicate their food waste? They can join KARMA or other charity collection schemes. They could even start growing their own herbs if they have outside space.