1-7 March is Food Waste Action Week, and we’re committed to not only reducing our food waste in the restaurant, but also to help you at home.
For our part, we’ll be signing up to WRAP’s Guardians of Grub programme. We’re super excited to become a Guardian of Grub champion – not only to reduce our waste but to help our planet too. We’ll be tracking every piece of food we throw away and this allows us to see where we are wasting the most food, and give us a lot more insight to our menu content and portion sizes.
If you want to take up the challenge of reducing your food waste at home, Executive Chef Stuart Thomson has given us some of his top tips (and a great way to use up leftovers below). Plus, you can share your own tips on social media and win some pretty great prizes – take up the Love Food Hate Waste challenge here.
Share your top tips to reduce food waste at home or your photos of our fried rice with us on Instagram and Facebook!
Always store fruit and vegetables separately, as fruit omits ethylene gas and this in turn spoils vegetables quicker. In addition to this, keep bananas away from other fruit as well – they emit a higher amount of the gas, which makes them the worst offenders!
Always keep store cupboard essentials like eggs, curry paste and stocks at home so that you can easily turn leftovers into another delicious meal like bubble and squeak, omelettes, fried rice or a curry.
I batch cook, so on the days that I know I’ll be busy I have something I can pull out of the freezer and just reheat it. I also means I can reduce food waste by buying less.
I always keep my tomato, cucumber and fruit trimmings from when I’m preparing salads and put them into my juicer. Any food pulp that’s leftover can go into your food recycling bin or composter.
Serves 2
Ingredients
200g leftover veg and/or meat, roughly chopped
1 garlic clove, crushed
5 spring onions, roughly chopped
1 red chilli, finely diced
150g long grain rice, cooked and drained well
1 ½ tsp soy sauce
Sesame oil
2 medium eggs, lightly whisked
Method
1. Put a wok or frying pan on a high heat the add sesame oil.
2. Reduce the heat to medium, then add the garlic, spring onions and chilli. 3. Fry for a minute or so, but without colouring.
4. Stir in the rice and cook for 2-3 minutes.
5. Add your leftovers and cook for 2 more minutes.
6. Once everything in the pan is hot all the way through, add in the egg mix, and continually stir until the egg is cooked.
7. Finish by seasoning the fried rice with soy sauce.