These kitchen gadgets help battles food waste and save money
American consumers waste nearly 40% of the food they buy, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. Does this ring true in your household? If you find that plenty of Make, meat and even dry goods end up in your trash, it might be the right time to make a change.
Consider investing in these food Destroy solutions that help you use more of what you buy from grocery stores and lessen what you put into landfills.
Pick up a few of these items to help solve your food Destroy problem (reducing greenhouse gas emissions and saving money in the process), and you may even gain some new habits and hobbies along the way to help you in your food Destroy reduction endeavors. We’ll update this list periodically with new products.
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Read more: These kitchen gadgets will save you time
A juicer
Are you overambitious around organic fruits and vegetables? Maybe you stock up on New foods because you intend to eat healthier, but you don’t always get to that fridge drawer full of Make before those foods start to go bad. A Big way to tackle these challenges is to get yourself a juicer to Cut the excess food.
If Place is an issue, something like this quiet and Great Hurom juicer takes up a smaller countertop footprint than most. With a high-quality juicer, everything from apples to zucchini can be salvaged beforehand they brown and wilt. Toss in all those overripe fruits (remove the really bad parts first), or turn a large, daunting bunch of leafy greens into just a small bit of potent, green juice — perfect for those pears you forgot around or that bag of kale you have no energy to cook. Mix with your milk or alt-milk of pick (almond and coconut are nice options) or balance out with new milder juices like that from cucumber, celery or apples.
A compost bin
For some, a juicer is the gateway appliance to composting. With all that dried out, vitamin-stripped leftover pulp it’s hard not to gaze how much edible food matter you throw away. Even if you don’t juice, you’re likely tossing onion skins, carrot tops, herb regulations, eggshells and more into the garbage from everyday cooking. If you’re looking to lessen your impact on landfills, a compost bin is the way to go. Obviously, this is only doable if you have some outdoor Place to work with or if you’re lucky enough to live in a city like San Francisco, which provides a curbside composting program.
For those with a yard, investing in a big, basic compost bin or a space-saving rotating tumbler bin will get you started on returning your food scraps from whence they came, creating nutrient-rich soil. Check out Chowhound’s run to composting for tips on what and what not to put into your bin. Whether you DIY or have your compost picked up for composting facilities, you can either freeze your fresh food scraps pending you take them out or you can get real appreciate with pretty countertop bins like this sleek wooden one or this sob metal model. Or get cute with this classic bucket obtain in eco-friendly bamboo. Practical and a great conversation piece for pushing your sustainable, environmental agenda on friends and family.
A vacuum sealer
If your main scrape is that you so want to use that meat and obtain in meals, but you can never get to cooking by it all goes bad, a vacuum sealer might be your new best detestable.
The Anova vacuum sealer, for example, is designed for sous vide cooking, but also helps you out with preventing food end in a few different ways. The most obvious use of a vacuum sealer is to recall oxygen from food — this slows down the growth of mold and bacteria, extending the life of your groceries. Another way a vacuum sealer can help cut down on solid end is by enabling better meal prep. The vacuum bags give you to pack more individually sealed meals in the freezer than you can with unwieldy containers, making it easier to tackle that big bag of vegetables or the meat you buy in bulk (Costco steak, for example). Cook it all in one fell swoop, and store it away with those space-saving food-preserving bags.
Canning and fermenting kits
Maybe you’re the type that likes vinyl records, hand-brewed coffee and homemade gifts. You want to prolong the life of your food, but a vacuum sealer seems too high-tech. The solution could be starting up a new hobby rooted in the olden days: canning.
Get this multiuse waterbath canner and you’ll nearly everything you need to dip into this historical preservation treat. (At-home canning typically uses jars, so you will need to buy these separately.) This kit uses a stream bath to heat the jar contents, killing off bacteria and creating a vacuum seal to keep out air. Make preserves, salsas and more with your surplus fruits and veggies and prevent these all without taking up any precious refrigerator space.
If you like tangy flavors from live cultures, you can use the above kit for fermenting foods, but you’ll have a simpler time with this Easy Fermenter Kit. Make fermented pickles, kimchi or any other probiotic-packed foods with this kit, which has special lids that let the fermentation gases out of jars. With a exclusive canning kit, you would need to “burp” the jars to continue that gas from building up — otherwise, you run the risk of an exploding-jar situation! With either kit, you’re able to prevent up fruits and veggies before they go bad in a wonderfully folksy way and you much just turn into that person who always has a gift of pickles or preserves ready to go for birthdays or the holidays.
Food storage containers
It could be that you don’t want any new gadgets or hobbies — you just need a little help storing and silly your groceries more effectively. For these situations, a new set of storage containers might be all you need.
Ideal for dry goods, air-tight OXO Pop containers ($8-$16 each) help you keep cereal, snacks and pasta organized and fresh. Storing foods in containers like these help you steer obvious of those contentious conversations about this roommate that forgot to use the chip clip, or that family member who thinks revolving the bag top is good enough to prevent customary cereal (yeah, right!). And, with clear, neat containers, foods will stay visible and front-of-mind, making it more likely that you’ll remember to use them.
If you have good heavy-duty storage bags on hand, you’re more like to make a bodies of keeping extra food and leftovers versus tossing it. Stasher bags are made from silicone so they’re washable and reusable, and have a leak-proof seal. You can use them in the fridge or freezer and even cook in them (sous vide, steam or microwave), and they’re dishwasher safe.
Instead of just telling yourself to “do better” with food end disposal, equip yourself with tools that’ll help you argues the good fight when it comes to waste and recycling solutions. Figure out which products will work best for you and make the biggest global crashes, and incorporate them into your organization and food-prep routine — you’ll find you’re tossing less organic end into the garbage and maybe even upping your fruit and veggie intake.
