How to Properly Store Food

By learning how to effectively store food you avoid having to throw leftovers and can prevent fruits and vegetables from ripening too fast. This will help you to minimize food waste and save some money. You can even meal prep lunches and properly store them to enjoy homemade healthy dishes and snacks every day of the week.

Get a Vacuum Sealer

Food vacuum sealers are incredibly useful at preserving food – they are a tool you’ll master in no time. You can vacuum all the food that you aren’t planning on eating right away and use it later. Vacuumed food has a longer life span, doesn’t lose its flavour over time and retains all the nutrients.

But how does the food vacuum sealer work? The vacuum sealer sucks the air out of a plastic bag or container. That way, the food inside is protected from oxygen and liquids. By removing the oxygen bacteria, mould and yeast are less likely to form and spoil the food. That means the food stays fresh, healthy and tasty for much longer.

It has been proven that a food vacuum sealer can prolong the shelf life of food from days to months. And you can keep the vacuumed bags both in a refrigerator and in the pantry. Vacuum sealing also protects the food from getting freezer burns. The vacuum sealer itself is quite small and won’t take up much counter space. You can vacuum seal everything from fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables to meat, fish, cheese, sauces – both dry foods and wet foods. Why throw out food when you can reuse it later?

What’s more, vacuum sealers can come in quite handy if you’re someone who likes to experiment in the kitchen and use rather unusual cooking methods. Sous vide is a cooking method that involves placing vacuumed food in a water bath with a consistent temperature. With this method, the food cooks evenly and the chances of it being over or undercooked are minimal. The most important thing is that the flavour is far more intense. That’s thanks to the ability of the vacuum bag to retain flavours.

Replace Your Plastic Containers with Ones Made of Glass

It might seem like a small detail, but the material from which food containers are made make quite the difference when it comes to food storage. Actually, plastic is the first choice of many mostly because it’s cheap, quite durable, easy to maintain, lightweight and you can replace it once you notice it’s damaged.

But the thing is, although convenient, plastic containers are not the smartest choice you can make. Some plastic containers may contain harmful chemicals that can contaminate the food that’s stored in them. In the long term that can be the cause for serious health issues. High temperatures aid the release of these chemicals so the least you can do is keep the containers cold at all times. Knowing this, you have quite a few benefits of ditching the plastic.

The safest option is containers made of glass. They contain zero chemicals, can be reused multiple times and you can reheat in them without concern. Glass containers are much easier to clean and maintain compared to plastic ones. Plastic containers get damaged easily and have cracks that fill with food and bacteria and that’s not the case with glass. Also, it’s not recommended to wash plastic containers in a washing machine because of the water temperature. Whether with glass you’re at liberty to use a washing machine as you please.

And as a material, glass is environmentally-friendly and 100% recyclable. The whole recycling process is a closed one meaning that there isn’t additional waste or a by-product from it. Imagine the difference you’ll make by choosing glass over plastic. And of course, glass looks better than plastic. You can both store and serve food in a glass container.

Proper Cooking and Freezing

Meal preps are popular among people that are busy. It’s the process of preparing whole meals and snacks ahead of time according to a given schedule. Meal preps help with portion control and having healthy eating habits. You can prepare meals for up to a week and enjoy a healthy, nutritious meal each day. When you plan your meals ahead of time you’re more likely to pick something good instead of take-out and microwave food.

When you think about it, meal prepping for a week sounds like an exhausting task that will take up a lot of your time. But that’s not true at all. Mostly because you can meal prep in more than one way. You can make meals in advance and then pack and store them in the refrigerator or the freezer. Refrigerated food can be consumed safely in the next four days while frozen one can last up to three months. You can prolong this period by using vacuum bags instead of regular containers.

Next, you can create large batches (large amounts) of some recipe and make multiple small portions that you can freeze and eat over the next few months after you’ve reheated them, naturally.

You can make small portioned salads and sandwiches, keep them in the fridge and grab one when you’re in a rush. It’s an easy and quick lunch for when you don’t have time to come up with a meal and prepare it.

And the last method includes preparing ingredients that you need for some meal. That helps in reducing the time you spend in the kitchen cooking. You can pick whatever method seems like the most convenient for you. Nevertheless, each of them is better than eating fast food and take-out on the regular.

You have plenty of healthy and tasty recipes to choose from like turkey avocado burritos, spicy chicken and potatoes, chicken salad with dressing, chicken quinoa bake, steak cob salad, vegan Mexican pasta, traditional Italian Bolognese, lettuce wraps and all sorts of sandwiches.