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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 Onions

  • 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!

  • Keep Your Onions In The Dark

    Submitted by Love Food Hate Waste,

    Like potatoes, onions like to be kept cool and in a dark dry place.

  • Frozen onion

    Submitted by Irene Dean, Isle of Man

    I always keep frozen onion in the freezer, it is just as easy to chop up 3 as 1 and freeze. When I am in a hurry putting a meal in the slow cooker it is a blessing and no smelly hands or chopping board to wash.

  • No more wrinkly peppers, sprouting onions or mouldy mushrooms!

    Submitted by Lindsey Glennon, West Midlands

    Buy a bag or a good selection of different coloured peppers and when you get home chop them up and freeze them in a container. They last for months and are great just to throw straight into a recipe! If they all stick together give the container a bash and they'll loosen up. The same goes for onions and mushrooms too!

  • What did I do with that bit of onion? (and similar questions)

    Submitted by Judith KIein-Dial, New Hampshire, USA

    One of the best things I ever did to cut down our food waste was to put a plastic shoe bin in my fridge. I put in it the 2 pieces of cooked asparagus, the 4 slices of cooked roast, the odd bits and pieces, and yes, the chunk of unchopped onion, or the extra bits of chopped onion too, all in small containers. When I'm cooking, it takes just a second to look in the box for the odd bits that were left over to see what I can use in whatever I'm cooking now. It took a little while to get used to looking in the box at first, but it has cut down our food waste a good deal.

  • Reduce waste before your holidays

    Submitted by Heather, Harlow Mill

    A couple of days before your holidays, stop buying groceries, so as to I try and empty out the fridge. Vegetables (tomatos, mushrooms, onions, peppers) that could otherwise go to waste can be chopped and cooked, then frozen ready for use in a pasta sauce on your return. Making some extra servings of whatever you are having for dinner and then freezing them, makes cooking easier the first couple of days your back -- just defrost! Leftover slices of bread can also be frozen, ready for making toast on your return.

  • Onion smell

    Submitted by Nikki , Swanscombe

    Chopping lots of onions?.. Use a teaspoon under running water to clean your hands of the smell. It does work and is a lot cheaper than buying so called specialist products.

  • Small Onions

    Submitted by Claire Kenny-Platt, Wirral

    You can almost always get cheep bags of onions in the supermarkets and I find that there the perfect size and very rarely need to use more or less than one which means I don't have bits of onions lying round stinking the place out and going to waste.

  • 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.

  • Frozen chopped onions

    Submitted by Claire Dixon, Co, Durham

    I buy bags of frozen chopped onion from a well known frozen food shop. It saves time, sore eyes and money. I only use what I need so have no waste or rotting onions to get rid of.

  • Leftover roast

    Submitted by Elizabeth Pratt, Romsey, Hampshire

    If you haven't got time to make a shepherd's pie from your leftover roast, whiz the meat with an onion in the food processor and pour into a freezer bag for later. It is then quick and easy to cook the prepared meat mixture from frozen to make a shepherd's pie or rissoles.

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