Tips for Storing Leftovers

During my Peace Corps service, I lived with a family of eight people. Eight! I had never known fear in the kitchen until I worried about whether I had cooked enough food for everyone, especially since dinner was usually the only hot meal of the day. Leftovers were a foreign concept during those two years.

Gathering around the table for meals made the fear of cooking for eight worth it.

Now that I’m back in the US, I’m living on my own and leftovers have become the bane of my existence. Lasagna is great on Sunday, arguably even better on Monday, but come Tuesday night I never want to eat lasagna again.

It has taken me a long time to figure out all of the nuances of what foods can be frozen, how to store them, and how to defrost that pound of turkey chili. Somewhere between eating lasagna for seven meals in a row, throwing away containers of freezer burned mysteries and scouring the Internet, I’ve put together some suggestions for preparing leftovers.

Label, label, label

You’ve found a mysterious container of unidentifiable soup at the back of your freezer. You have no idea what’s inside or how long it’s been there. Sound familiar? Make a practice of labeling your leftovers with the ingredients and date. It will save you a lot of serious questions about your eating habits in the future.

Use Ziploc bags rather than Tupperware

Unless you plan to reheat the entire dish at once, it’s best to break up your leftovers into one or two person servings. This will allow you to defrost the amount of food you need without worrying about contamination. Storing serving sizes in Ziploc bags opens up room in your freezer for more food, makes labeling easier, and makes removing the food from the container simpler, as you can turn the bags inside out. Soups and stews can be tricky in a Ziploc, luckily this post at Southern Living offers tips for how to flat package soups.

I find this freezer featured on The Kitchn both comforting and terrifying. Flat packing of your leftovers will open up more room in your freezer.

Know how long the food can be kept

Even frozen, all foods have an expiration date. It blew my mind to learn raw chicken last nine months in the freezer. Raw foods have more longevity but make sure to check Foodsafety.gov when storing your food. Cooked food becomes a trickier subject, while the food may last for 3 to 4 months; your taste buds aren’t going to jump for joy at the 4-month point. The quality of taste degrades over time, so try to rotate your leftovers every 1 to 2 months.

Ice trays are your friends

I have a terrible habit of buying broths and stocks, using half the container, and letting the rest rot blissfully away in my refrigerator. It’s a vicious circle. The best advice I’ve received in to store leftover broth and stock in ice cube trays. It’s brilliant. Now, whenever I need chicken stock, I pop out a few cubes and throw them in the pot. Each well holds one ounce of liquid, which is equal to two tablespoons. Remember that one cup equals eight ounces and be on your merry, broth saving, way.

-The Garlic Graduate