Freeze sliced bread and fry banana skins: Max La Manna’s quick guide to reducing food waste

Step away from that bin and consider new ways of using up old bread, leafy greens, fruit and milk

What would you do with an extra £730? That’s the amount the average UK household wastes each year, by throwing away untouched or unopened food, according to the waste and sustainability charity Wrap. That’s a staggering 2m tonnes and the equivalent of roughly one in every three bags of groceries we bring into our homes. Food waste is not only bad for our pockets, it’s bad for the environment, too: 36m tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions could be saved if we stopped throwing it into landfill. Storing ingredients properly to keep them fresher for longer, planning mealtimes and getting creative with leftovers are three simple ways with which we can reduce our food-waste footprint. Let’s start with the UK’s five most-wasted ingredients.

Bread We chuck out about 20m slices of bread every day. I always store half my fresh loaves in the freezer, sliced and wrapped tightly. Revive a stale loaf by sprinkling with a little water, placing on a lined baking sheet and into a low oven for a few minutes (or in the microwave in 30-second blasts). Alternatively, turn it into breadcrumbs (or do like the Italians and make pangrattato), use to thicken soups, such as pappa al pomodoro (Tuscan bread and tomato soup), ribollita and gazpacho, or use instead of pine nuts in a pesto; they’re the secret to thicker sauces, too.

You Can Cook This!: Simple, Satisfying, Sustainable Veg Recipes, by Max La Manna, is published by Ebury Press at £22. To order a copy for £19.36, go to guardianbookshop.com

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