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Top tips

Try our top tips and ideas for making the most of the food we buy. Find out what types of food can be frozen and how to make your fridge a true food saving hero. Why not share your own tips to reduce food waste with fellow Love Food Hate Waste supporters.

Our tips for Carrots

  • Cheap and healthy batch cooking

    Submitted by Gemma Parnell, Bedfordshire

    Bulk up meals like pasta bakes, curry and chilli con carne with beans, pulses vegetables and potatoes. It's cheaper healthier and it means you can use up the rest of the vegetables in the fridge! I always make at least one extra portion to freeze when cooking, and I make food for my baby at the same time.

  • Great soup from fridge oddments

    Submitted by Merryl Cook, Heaton Moor, Stockport

    Gather up all the bits from your fridge - coarse outside lettuce leaves, that bendy carrot, bit of onion, green tops of leeks and spring onions, a few herbs, etc, etc. Put in a pan with water to cover and a stock cube or meat jelly or gravy if you have some leftover and boil until the veg are soft. Whizz in processor or liquidiser. The French call this 'Garbure' and it's almost always delicious and different each time. Can be thickened with leftover potato, or some small pasta shapes can be added, or a cooked chopped bacon rasher. Soy sauce and a slowly poured beaten egg will make it Chinese-ish. Curry paste,and garlic, or grated cheese, or mushroom ketchup ... almost any mixture you invent will taste better than a tin of soup, and it's practically cash- and additive-free!

  • Veg fridge tip

    When you’re cooking a big celebration meal and want to save yourself time on the day of the feast, prepare veg such as carrots, parnips and sprouts on the day before and store them in the fridge in a plastic bag - reusing a plastic bag from the bread or other food bag would be ideal.

  • Storing Carrots

    Submitted by Love Food Hate Waste,

    Carrots stored in the fridge retain freshness and quality for longer than those left out of the fridge. Carrots stay fresh and hard for even longer by chilling them and keeping in the packaging or loosely tied in the free vegetable bag they were brought home in.

  • Limp Carrots?

    Submitted by Love Food Hate Waste,

    Fed up with limp carrots? Carrots stay fresh and hard for even longer by chilling them and keeping in the packaging or loosely tied in the free vegetable bag they were brought home in.

  • Turn your leftover veg into a healthy soup

    Submitted by Anonymous,

    Use up left over veg to make a healthy & tasty soup - lovely weekend lunch with crusty bread. Any veg - the more the better, plus herbs, seasoning (tin of chopped tomatoes add colour & flavour). When cooked mash for chunky soup or liquidise for smooth. The options are endless - have never had a bad one & the kids love it!

  • Lots of carrots?

    Submitted by Sheila Wilmac, Porthcawl

    Scrape/peel, top and tail the carrots, but don't put them into water. Slice into rings, pop into a plastic bag and freeze. They can be cooked from frozen. When you take them out of the freezer, give them a little knock and they will loosen. Great!

  • Stay-fresh carrots

    Submitted by Marilyn Thorne, Llanelli, S. Wales

    When I buy carrots from my greengrocer I alway clean them immediately, wrap them and put them in the fridge. This is especially important in the summer months when fresh vegetables go off quickly if you store them in a cupboard or basket.

  • Salad storage

    Submitted by Cath Marsland, Stockport

    I threw away the drawers that came in the bottom of my fridge and replaced with long thin plastic sealable boxes now my salad ingredients stay fresher for days longer.

  • No more bendy carrots

    Submitted by Anna Griffiths, Leicestershire

    Top and tail unpeeled carrots as soon as you buy them and store them in an airtight container in the fridge. They last for weeks and weeks and weeks.

  • Carrots for a Caribbean Juice

    Submitted by Zena Leech-Calton - Resident Chef cookeryclub.co.uk, Norwich - Cookeryclub

    Juice your carrots with a touch of ginger and mix with ginger ale, lemonade, lime or coconut milk for an exotic, refreshing, zingy, nutritionally packed juice.

  • Mince savings

    Submitted by Claire Kenny-Platt, Wirral

    When making anything with mince I always add a grated carrot or two It bulks out the mince making it more cost effective and a really good way of sneaking in some extra veg ! If you add it as you add the mince you can't even taste it as it takes on the flavour of the meat.

  • Crisp Carrots

    Submitted by Pickapeppa, Dortmund

    Carrots go slimy in a plastic bag and shrivel and go limp if left uncovered in the fridge. I can keep them easily - including organic ones - for 2 weeks wrapped in kitchen paper inside a big lidded plastic box. Mine is from Lock an Lock, but I think any would do the job.

  • Quick Veg

    Submitted by Sheena Couper, North Ayrshire

    Peel and chop carrots, onions, etc., bag them and freeze. When needed, just take out as much as you need and reseal. No more soggy veg at the bottom of your veg box.

  • Lion pasta sauce or lion soup

    Submitted by Lell Picken, Consett co.Durham

    I make pasta sauces and soups from the vegatables that are "lion" about in the fridge! Peppers, celery, carrots, tomatoes that are too soft to go in a salad. It's never the same twice. I also do the same thing with fruit and make crumbles.

  • Making mince go further

    Submitted by Gina, Sydney, Australia

    When making bolognese sauce or Shepherd's pie, I usually add a finely grated carrot and a finely grated courgette to the mix at the same time as the mince - this bulks it out considerably and you can't taste it. It's also a pain-free method of increasing vegetable intake.

  • Limp carrots

    Submitted by Judi Haire, Malaga

    Use them to make carrot cake....or muffins

  • best before dates!!

    Submitted by amanda, ashford kent

    i often buy veggies that are at their prime and are marked down,i get home and decant into smaller bags,freeze them,and then when i cook my roast,chuck the veggies at the bottom. That way we get beautiful roasted veggies at a fraction of their price!!!

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