Need to know hacks to keep your food from spoiling
One of the hardest parts about trying to eat healthy, to me, is trying to eat all the healthy food before it starts spoiling. Instead of making my own salads at home, I tend to get prepackaged ones at grocery stores. There's just no way I can finish a whole bag of lettuce or rocket all by myself before it gets all soggy and sad. Not even if I ate a salad every day, which would be pretty depressing anyway..So, if you're like me, then you're in dire need of some hacks to keep your food from spoiling. Because no one deserves to throw out spoiled bananas and veggies that you spent your money on.
Keep your veggies from spoiling
- Leafy greens: these are the bases of your salads, or ingredients for your wraps and sandwiches. Overall, they're pretty important. Instead of letting your lettuce, spinach or kale go bad before you can eat them, use a paper towel! Moisture in the fridge is actually the biggest culprit when it comes to making your greens lose their crisp texture. All you have to do is place the washed greens in a zip bag along with a couple of clean and dry paper towels. The paper towels will absorb the excess moisture which will keep them fresher for a longer period of time.
- Mushrooms: these are notorious for spoiling quickly, which makes me wonder very hard before I buy them. Can I eat all these mushrooms in the next 4 days before they start drying up, going bad or getting that weird slimy texture? Thankfully, the hack is pretty simple to do, so I don't need to keep asking myself this. You want to keep excess moisture out of the mushrooms, while retaining the moisture it already has. So place your mushrooms in a brown paper bag and store them in the fridge. Another trick is placing them in paper towel and then into a perforated plastic bag (just poke some holes into it).
- Celery: to keep your celery nice and crunchy, separate them into individual stalks. Next, wash them and dry them before you wrap each individual piece tightly in aluminum foil. Place them in the fridge. This will slow down the ripening process because it will keep the celery unexposed to air, but also keep the moisture in.
Keep that dairy fresh
- Milk: to prolong the freshness of milk, you can add a pinch of table salt to the carton and shake it well. It will not affect the taste, but will do it's job to stop it from spoiling so quickly!
- Cheese: have you ever gone for some cheese, only to find that it's a hard un-eatable block? There's a hack for that. To keep the cheese on the side from drying out and hardening, add on a little butter to that edge. This will prevent it from happening. :)
Help your fruits last longer
- Bananas: this fruit produces ethylene gas naturally, which allows them to continue ripening after they've been picked. This gas is released mostly around the stem, so one way to keep bananas from spoiling too quickly is to separate them and wrap the stems of the bananas tightly in plastic wrap/cling film. If your bananas are too ripe, peel them and freeze them individually wrapped in plastic. They are still usable for ice cream or banana bread!
- Apples: like bananas, these also produce ethylene gas. The same principle applies. If one apple is rotten, it will actually spoil the bunch, so set it apart from the rest, to not expose them too much from the gas. If one apple is spoiled, the surrounding fruit will start producing more ethylene as well.
Above all, make sure that you clean out your fridge regularly. If food spoils in your fridge, it can leave behind mold. This mold can get to your other food and cause them to spoil, so hygiene is key! Keep a clean fridge, and ensure all your food stays fresher longer. Do you have any tips you'd like to share? Comment below.
