It is frustrating when you end up having to throw soggy salad leaves or unused meat from your fridge or larder.

Here are some tips to help you store food better and hopefully save some money.

Freezer burn is when your meat gets encased in ice crystals and becomes inedible when defrosted. To avoid meat being ruined by freezer burn, create a DIY vacuum seal in your freezer bag using either the Water Trick or the Straw Trick.

You’ll need a sealable freezer bag and either a straw or a bowl of water.

The Water Trick

Submerge the bag with your ingredients in water. The pressure from the liquid will push the air out of the bag and make the plastic fit to the shape of the items inside. Just ensure no water gets into the bag while you are submerging it, and dry the bag off before you put it in the freezer.

The Straw Trick

Press as much air as possible out of the bag by hand, then put a straw into the corner of the bag, seal the bag around it, suck out the air from the straw until the bag collapses around the meat. Then pull out the straw and finish sealing the bag.

Berries are our breakfast fruit of choice in our house and we go through a few packs of blueberries, raspberries and strawberries when they are in season. But it’s frustrating when the berries start to go off.

Before you put them in the fridge, make a bowl up with a solution of water and apple cider vinegar, 1 part vinegar to 8 parts water. Put the berries in the bowl and then rinse in a colander or sieve.

Pat the berries dry before putting them back into the container they came from, the containers usually have holes which help keep air circulating around the berries in your fridge. Some people recommend putting paper towels into the berry container first.

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To stop bread going stale and mouldy by putting a stick of celery into the bread bag. The bread absorbs the moisture from the celery which stops it drying out and going mouldy faster.

If you do end up with stale bread (but before it goes mouldy!) then whizz the bread slices in your blender or Nutribullet to make breadcrumbs and freeze them. They are great for adding to burgers or coating home made fish fingers or goujons.

A tip for your celery: wrapping your celery in aluminum or tin foil keeps it crisp and fresh and helps stop it from going soggy and limp.

Third world problems, I know, and some people like them hard to dunk in their tea, but here’s how to keep cookies from going hard, just add a slice of bread to your cookie jar or container.

The cookies will absorb moisture from the bread, keeping them soft longer. White bread is best, as it won’t transfer any flavour to the cookies.

The trick here is to add salt to your milk to stop it going off. Just add a pinch of salt to your milk container, the salt preserves the milk and keeps it from spoiling as quickly.

It’s also a good idea not to store it in the fridge door as that’s further away from the cold element.

But if your milk does end up souring, then don’t throw it away, here’s an easy recipe for some homemade soda bread, perfect for an after-school snack warm from the oven!

Ingredients

• 450ml plain flour
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp bread soda
• 300-600 ml sour milk (or buttermilk)

Method

1. Sieve the dry ingredients into a bowl, make a well in the middle and add the sour milk, start with 300ml and keep adding more if required.
2. Use your hand like a claw and stir the mixture until it mixes together into a rough ball.
3. Turn it out onto a floured surface and pat it into a round shape. Cut a cross into the top of your loaf and put it onto a baking sheet.
4. Bake for 15 mins at 250C / 480C then for a further 20-30 minutes at 200C / 390F. Check your loaf is done by tapping the bottom and if it sounds hollow it’s ready.
5. Cool on a wire rack before serving. It’s best eaten that day but can be used next day.

Some people swear that putting bananas into the fridge keeps them from going brown. But this is a handy hack to stop bananas from going brown.

You wrap plastic e.g. the grocery bag the bananas came in around the stem of the bunch of bananas. The plastic prevents ethylene gas, which is naturally produced naturally in the ripening process, from reaching other parts of the bananas and ripening them.

You can also try wrapping each banana’s stem separately since bananas will ripen at different rates on the bunch. Just separate each banana and wrap plastic around its stem.

Of course, if you do end up with brown bananas, then try this recipe for Banana Cake to use them up.

Stop your sugar from drying out and clumping by adding a marshmallow to your sugar container. The moisture in the marshmallow will stop the sugar from drying out and going hard.

Store lemons in the fridge in a plastic bag. Refrigerating them in a zippered plastic bag makes them last up to 4 times longer than if they are just out on the kitchen counter.

If you end up with lemon halves then either freeze the halves and use them later to make homemade lemonade or slice them and freeze the slices to pop into drinks.

Prevent your potatoes from sprouting by adding an apple to the potato bag – apples produce ethylene gas, which keeps potatoes fresher and firmer, and less likely to sprout.

Also removing your potatoes from plastic and putting them into a brown paper bag or potato cloth sack and storing them in the dark will keep them from going off and from sprouting longer.