Kim Iversen We’ve just finished week 6 of the Pantry Challenge, and we’re still eating out of our food stores working to clean out as much as we can and make room for this year’s harvest. If you’re not sure what the Pantry Challenge is, check out our 2023 Pantry Challenge post to learn more about it. As this is our third post in the series, I’d also encourage you to check out our post on Reducing Food Costs where we discuss some ways you can stay ahead of the ongoing food inflation by reducing your food waste, using what you have on hand, and making smart purchasing decisions.
While our previous article went into a little bit about how you can reduce food waste, it mainly focused on using up what you have on hand, but didn’t really discuss what to do with the food once you have it in the house. That’s what we’ll talk about today – how to store your food to maximize shelf time – whether that’s in the pantry, or in the refrigerator.
Bringing in the Haul
So you’ve gone grocery shopping, and brought in that massive $200 haul of food. As you’re putting things away, you discover the shriveled apple in the bottom of the drawer, and that funky smell? Yeah…that’s the sliced deli ham from two weeks ago that’s festering in the refrigerator. Remember? You bought it for lunches, but ended up going out to lunch with the team, then the stomach flu hit, and by the time everyone in the house had recovered you had completely forgotten about the ham. Sound familiar? We’ve all been there.
So how do you keep the ham from going bad, and the apple from shriveling up? Or, said differently, how do you protect your food investment?
Know Your Food
When it comes to properly storing your food, no one rule fits all. Each type of food product has its preferred way of being stored, with some food being able to be stored in multiple ways. If you store it correctly, and handle it properly when using it, many food products can be safely stored for significant lengths of time.
Dairy
The dairy category is primarily made up of milk and milk alternatives, butter, cheese, and eggs. These items prefer to be stored in cool or cold environments. So what does this mean?
Eggs
Let’s start by talking about eggs. If you have access to farm fresh eggs that don’t get washed – this typically means you have your own hens – then you can safely store clean, unwashed eggs on your counter for up to three weeks. Yes, that is correct! This is possible because unwashed eggs still have the bloom on them. The bloom is a protective layer that prevents bacteria from entering the egg, and also prevents the liquid in the egg from evaporating.
Washed eggs, which includes any grocery store eggs, should be refrigerated to prevent bacterial growth. Eggs can be stored in the refrigerator for up to three months. Keep in mind that most of your store bought eggs are already two months old by the time they hit store shelves, so remember to factor that into your timeline. If you can find farm eggs, then you likely will have the full three months to consume them.
Why is this important? Because it means you can start buying farm fresh eggs locally, likely saving a few dollars here in the spring and summer months. By building up an inventory, you can carry these lower cost eggs well into the fall if you have the space in your refrigerator.
If you have your own fresh eggs, then you can store your excess in a lime bath, called waterglassing, and have fresh eggs throughout the winter months when your hens may not be laying. You can learn more about water glassing eggs on Farmhouse On Boone’s website.
Milk
Do you ever see a great sale on milk and wish you could take advantage of it? Did you know that milk freezes well? If you have the space, you can buy milk in gallon or half gallon containers and pop them into your freezer for up to six months. Just be sure to give it a good shake before opening it as sometimes the fat can separate out a bit during the freezing and thawing process.
Freezing milk works well too if you’re going camping and want to take milk with you, but only have a cooler to keep food cold. I would recommend pouring it over into several smaller containers, such as mason jars (make sure you use the wide mouth jars, and don’t fill them all the way. You want room for expansion.). Freeze the containers of milk, and place them into your cooler. They act as ice blocks, and will start to thaw over the coming days. Be sure to add one container that is not frozen so you have some for that first breakfast or cup of coffee.
By the way, this works well for coffee creamer too! My kids love creamer in their coffee, but my husband and I don’t. Anything that doesn’t get used is popped into the freezer until their next visit home.
Butter
Like with milk, butter freezes beautifully. According to US Dairy, unsalted butter can last up to 5 months in the freezer, while salted butter will last for 9 months. I stocked up on six pounds of butter from Azure Standard back in November, for all of our baking and daily use. We still have one pound in the freezer, and it’s as good today as when I bought it 3 months ago. That pound will last us well into March, depending on how much baking I do over the next couple of weeks. So go ahead and take advantage of those sales!
Cheese
Cheese is one thing that I don’t feel freezes very well. Not that it can’t be done. In fact, America’s Test Kitchen says you can freeze cheese for up to six weeks if it’s well wrapped. I’ve done this, and find that the texture changes when I’ve done this.
So instead of freezing my blocks of cheese, I keep them in the refrigerator in reusable vacuum seal bags. These bags resemble ziploc bags and come with a hand pump to remove the excess air. When it comes to storing cheese air, and your hands, are you enemies. Your hands contain bacteria and mold spores. When you touch the cheese with your fingers you transfer these to the surface of the cheese, and they start to grow in the presence of air.
So what do you do? Use the cheese wrapper, or a piece of plastic wrap that you wrap around the cheese to hold it while you slice a chunk off, or grate part of it. Once you have what you need, place the remainder of the block of cheese in a vacuum seal bag and seal it up until you need it next.
Between July and August last year I bought two 6 pound blocks of mozzarella (we make pizza every week). We’re now in mid February, and finally finished all 12 pounds. We finished it…nothing got thrown out. Nothing got moldy. How did we do it? When I brought the cheese home, I sliced each brick into smaller 1 pound chunks, slicing right through the plastic wrapper. Then picking each chunk up by the wrapper I placed a couple chunks into each vacuum seal bag and sealed them up, and popped them into the fridge. When we needed mozzarella, we’d open a bag, take out the chunk (using the wrapper), grate what we needed, and place it back into the bag. The bag would get resealed, and placed back in the fridge. Working our way through one bag at a time, we had perfectly good mozzarella that lasted 7 months!
Meat
What about meats? If you don’t get around to eating that ground beef, or T-bone steak, how do you keep it from getting the dreaded freezer burn? As with cheese, air is your enemy. If you’re going to freeze your meat, it can pay off to repackage it in a way that will eliminate most, if not all, of the air around the meat.
There are several methods you can use. The Cadillac version is to use a vacuum sealer that removes all the air from the bag, and then seals the bag shut. I love my FoodSaver! I’ve had it for several years, but only truly started using it about two years ago. I honestly don’t know why it took me so long. Once I noticed how much better the meats stayed when stored in vacuum sealed bags, I was hooked.
If a FoodSaver is not in your future, there are several other options you can use. The resealable vacuum bags mentioned before are a great alternative. So is wrapping the meat in plastic wrap or in butcher paper, which has a plastic coating. Both of these methods will get the wrapping material in close contact with the meat, excluding the air, and help protect against ice buildup and freezer burn.
Unless the meat I buy is already in tight packaging, I repackage it when I get home. I also package up leftover cooked meat in my vacuum sealer before popping it into the freezer. This allows me to keep leftovers nice for a longer time.
Fresh Herbs
Herbs are tough to keep fresh for much more than a week. If you have fresh herbs, whether from the garden, farmer’s market, or from the clamshell container at the grocery store, you’ll want to put them in water and store them in your fridge.
If your herbs are starting to look a little sad, and you’re not going to be able to finish them before they give up the ghost, then go ahead and freeze them. I’ve frozen entire bundles of parley with reasonable luck by stuffing them into a ziploc freezer bag (even better would be a vacuum sealable one), and squished all the air out. When I needed parsley, I’d open the bag, cut off a chunk and place the rest back in the freezer. I wouldn’t use this in place of fresh parsley, but it was great in soups and stews where it would be cooked down anyway.
Another technique is to chop up the herbs, and mix them with a little bit of water, then freeze the mixture in ice cube trays. Then a cube can be added to whatever is cooking on the stove, and flavor your dish. This technique can be used with pretty much any herb.
Fruits and Vegetables
What do you do when you suddenly have a windfall of fresh fruit or vegetables? This is where things get a bit more interesting.
Apples and Pears
We had a bumper crop of both apples and pears this year, and canned more than I care to think about. After spending days canning pears and apples in all sorts of recipes, we were still left with the pile you see below. Needless to say I was a bit overwhelmed…while also being very grateful for our abundance. But what to do?
The answer was much easier than I expected. We donated a fair amount to friends and colleagues, and simply refrigerated the rest. Apples and pears like to be kept in a cold somewhat humid environment, so I packaged them in some clear plastic bags I bought for the purpose, closed them with a twist tie.
We’ve had to compost a few apples and pears since this photo was taken at the end of September, but we’re still eating our own apples. The last of the apples now fit into the drawer in the fridge (they pretty much filled the entire fridge when we started), and will likely last until mid-March when I expect we will have eaten the last one. This simple trick has been a huge savings for us as my husband eats an apple every day, and has for years.
Berries
If you have fresh berries, they are best eaten right away. Anything you can’t eat should be frozen for use in desserts or smoothies. Or you can turn them into delicious jams…yum!
Root Vegetables (potatoes, carrots, rutabaga, celeriac, leeks)
Root vegetables have a lot of similar storage requirements. They like to be kept cold, and slightly moist. Here in Northeast Wisconsin, we make use of our basement stairwell, and a few rubbermaid containers to store our root crops throughout the winter. We simply layer the vegetables into the containers with some wood shavings in between, and they stay nice well into the spring. In fact we’re still eating our own carrots, potatoes, leeks, rutabagas, and celeriac.
Don’t have a basement? You can do the same thing in a refrigerator. Place the produce in plastic bags, possibly with a washcloth tucked inside to absorb and release moisture as needed, and place the bags in the refrigerator. Unless you have a garden, I’ll bet you’ll eat your excess veggies well before they go bad if you follow this method.
Winter Squash
Winter squash is another one that we had an abundance of this year. We grew over 30 squash! Fortunately, storage of these couldn’t be easier. You can simply keep them in a cool area in your house. I’ve met people who store them in bins under the bed in their guest room. Personally, mine are stored in the foyer by the front door, and provide both food and decoration. We’ve closed the vent so they don’t get overheated and start to rot. Here you can see what we have left as of the time of writing this article…still quite a bit to eat!
2023 Pantry Challenge Update
We are making progress! I am starting to see bare spots appearing in our food stores, for which I’m grateful. Our refrigerator has gone from this:
To this over the past six weeks.
I no longer have to worry about food jumping out at me when I open the doors! We’ve also made headway in the freezer. Though after today’s freezer inventory project, I’m seriously considering continuing the challenge into March with a few modifications. We’d like to start bringing in some fresh fruit once our apples are gone, as well as a bit more variety among the vegetables. I’ve started some lettuce seeds, so hopefully we’ll have some fresh lettuce to start eating in the next few weeks too.
This Week’s Grocery Haul
One of the rules to the Three Rivers Pantry Challenge is that there are no rules, other than those you make for yourself. Since we don’t have cows or hens (we live in the suburbs), we have to buy those. We also find life, and each other, much more enjoyable after a cup of coffee in the morning so these items are on our “allowed” list.
In addition to clearing out our pantry, we view the challenge as a way to save some grocery money. With this in mind we limit ourselves to a $50 grocery budget every two weeks, for a total grocery spend of $100 per month.
I ended up overspending a bit this past week – all the cheese added up.
- Coffee
- Vitamins
- Whole milk for our yogurt
- Oatmilk for cooking and cereal
- Eggs
- Butter (I didn’t know I had butter in the freezer!)
- Sour cream
- Cheddar cheese
- Mozzarella
- Aged brick cheese
- Mayonnaise (I had a coupon for a free jar, and we were nearly out)
All total I spent $65.17. The mozzarella will last us for about a month’s worth of pizzas, and the cheddar will go on at least three Mexican inspired meals we’ll be having this week and next thanks to all the tortillas I discovered we had!
Grocery savings to date for 2023: $646.32. Not too bad…
As I’m shopping I’m seeing that certain staple items like our milk and eggs are cheaper at our local Food Coop than they are at my grocery store for the same brand. I’ll definitely be hitting up the coop for more of our staples!
Signing Off
Hopefully this gave you some ideas on how to store your food to maximize its shelf life.
If you have questions about how to store a specific food, leave us a message and we’ll happily share some techniques with you!
