How to maintain your stores

Creating the right environment

A large proportion of food waste happens because food has not been stored properly. Managing your stores is crucial to ensuring good quality meals as well as ensuring the natural deterioration of your ingredients is slowed , allowing you more time to consume them. Making sure your stores are in the right condition is very important, as is ensuring your food is stored how it should be.. 

Good Practice

Good housekeeping.Make sure your stores are clean, tidy and fee of food debris and or spillages. Ingredients rotated on a first in forest out basis F. I. F. 0 and cleaning chemicals and equipment stored separately from food items. 

 

Dry and Ambient storage

  • Dry or ambient storage is generally in the range between 15 -25 degrees ,
  • located out of direct sunlight
  • well ventilated and humidity levels relatively low.
  • Any opened food -  kept in an airtight container and labelled with the date the product was opened and the best before date included.
  • Any ambient vegetables removed from plastic bags and packaging

Fridges and Freezers

  • Fridges should be operating at a temperature range of 0-5 degrees Celsius
  • freezers should be operating at lower than -18 degrees Celsius 
  • All food should be covered  with the exception of whole fruits and vegetables - these tend to sweat when stored in plastic bags
  • Observe good practice when freezing different foods. 

Maintaining your stores 

Keep all the booklets that come with your fridge or freezer and file them away. If you don't have these locate the model, make and serial number and Google it. I've been surprised to find user manuals. When considering any repairs, ask first, can you fix it yourself? is it practical? is it a cost effective repair?  I always recommend using an accredited engineer in such instances, though changing a broken seal or replacing broken fridge shelves can be done easily at home.

Badly maintained dry stores and pantries are more prone to pests and natural deterioration of the fabric especially in older buildings. Look out for signs of any infestations such as rodent droppings or pick mocks in wood for example. 

Knowing whats in your stores

In the kitchen we perform many unofficial stock checks as we go and usually one detailed one - usually on a monthly basis.. On a smaller scale try this in the kitchen at home. 

At home Id recommend checking the stores once per week, or before purchasing any more food. But in general a small stock take once a month would help you see the value and condition of any un used food in your store cupboards, as well as keeping an eye on your perishable food as you go about feeding yourself. Knowing what you have in your stores is a must before buying anymore. sometimes valuable money is sat doing nothing in your pantry when you over purchase on ingredients.

Taking a regular stock paints a picture too. if its still in your stores more than a month , it means you've either bought too much or don't use it often, Or its something that you or your household simply doesn't have a preference for. There are lots of benefits to be had from checking your stores on a regular basis