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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 Peppers

  • 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!

  • Keeping Peppers Fresh

    Submitted by Love Food Hate Waste,

    Store peppers in the fridge in a loosely tied plastic bag, for freshness and quality

  • Storing peppers

    Submitted by Love Food Hate Waste,

    Store peppers in the fridge in a loosely tied plastic bag or in pack it was bought in and your pepper will stay fresher for longer than those taken out of the bag.

  • 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!

  • 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!

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • jus' freeze 'm

    Submitted by Opal, Holland

    I always buy peppers when they're cheap...chop 'm up and freeze 'm as quick as possible...if supermarkets can do that...then why not we???

  • Pepper Storage

    Submitted by Connie, Happyville

    If you are only using part of a green or red pepper, leave the stem, seeds and membrane intact, the pepper will store much longer than when you remove them.

  • Freeze peppers

    Submitted by Claire,

    Buy own brand, cheap peppers and dice the tops and bottoms for use in spaghetti bolognaise for example. Slice or dice the remainder. I freeze them in one pepper portions which make it easier to follow recipes. So simple and cheap!

  • 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.

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