The Thrifty Cookbook: 476 Ways to Eat Well With Leftovers (8 page)

These are meant to indicate when food should absolutely not be eaten beyond a certain period. Government advice on this is unequivocal.

But you can still use your common sense if the use-by date was yesterday. Food approaching its use-by date can be frozen to extend its viable life. Once defrosted, it should be eaten immediately.

These are instructions for shop staff, not cooks, designed simply to help with stock control.

It’s obvious that the better food is wrapped and stored, the longer it will last: think of the difference between a piece of well-wrapped, juicy Cheddar and the bit that dried out when it fell out of its packet. So any kitchen needs a few plastic boxes in different sizes for the fridge and freezer. Special bags are also handy, but you can equally use old takeaway containers, empty ice-cream or yogurt pots, or even empty plastic bottles for soups, sauces and stocks. Keep even the really tiny pots that used to hold something delicious and unnecessary and use them to store an unused handful of grated cheese or an egg yolk. It’s finicky, but the truth is that they hold
just enough
to use in something like lunchtime soup, and once you get into the habit of not chucking food, it’s hard to go back. If you’ve had one too many mornings tearing your hair out as you try to find the right box and lid for a packed lunch, stack the boxes by size and store the lids in an empty, square ice-cream tub – the smallest lids will still try to hide, but they have less space in which to be imaginative.

You’ll also need cling film to cover bowls in the fridge and foil for wrapping leftover joints of meat.

If you are anything like me, you sort through the cupboard from time to time and find cans, spice jars and half-used packets well past their best-before date. Some end up in the bin; the rest go back to fight another day.

No one is so perfectly controlled that they are going to get it right all the time, and spices can be particularly difficult. All I can suggest is that you buy the small packets, that you don’t have too many and that you keep them in some sort of order. It’s better, anyway, to buy small amounts of whole spices than ready-ground ones: they keep longer, and grinding them just before you use them means that the taste stays fresh.

In some respects, the less storage space you have, the easier your life will be. I have one store cupboard, just big enough to hold packet or canned basics, plus a minute cupboard under the stairs for storing reserves. When the spaghetti in the store cupboard runs out, I hope there will be a backup under the stairs. Then back to the shopping list on the fridge to make a note to replace it. Lack of space frees me from the tyranny of storing goods in date order: nice idea, if you have that kind of discipline.

Apart from the cupboard, I use an old metal bread bin for storing root vegetables. Once in the dark and cool, they last several weeks – always take off the plastic wrapping or they will start to sprout.

When you read about our ancestors’ struggles to keep food fresh, you have to be grateful to the inventor of the electric fridge. The downside is that we are now so used to bunging stuff into it that much comes back out again only to go straight into the bin. Some of that problem will simply disappear if you buy smaller amounts more often, though with the best will in the world there will always be a wilting courgette lurking somewhere that will need a quick fix.

The five basic rules for fridges are:

They should be set at 5°C – salmonella grows at 7°C.

Cooked food should be cool before you store it in the fridge.

Raw and cooked food should be kept on separate shelves.

If you over fill the fridge, it becomes inefficient – so buy less, more often.

All leftover food stored in the fridge should be well covered, wrapped in cling film or stored in an airtight box.