Food waste is an epidemic. How you can help solve the problem

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3 minutes reading

Matthew Kern
| Special to the USA TODAY Network

How to Organize Your Pantry and Store Food Properly

Reduce food waste by organizing your pantry.

Problem solved

It breaks my heart when I see food waste.

I get excited about building a dish around one central ingredient. If I’m going to make a carrot or blueberry dish, I’m going to go all in on that one ingredient, because when you use a lot of ingredients, you get a hodgepodge of things that you can’t always identify.

But it is much more than that.

Many chefs are trying to tap into deep-rooted ideas that our ancestors used, and bring old-fashioned cooking into a new light. If I have carrot peels and leftover bits, I can make a puree. I didn’t go to culinary school, but I learned 50 different ways to cook something. Looking at every ingredient with constant curiosity is probably the best way to create dishes and reduce food waste.

On June 12, the FDA, USDA, and EPA announced the “National Strategy for Reducing Food Loss and Waste and Recycling Organic Matter“as part of President Joe Biden’s approach to tackling climate change, feeding people, advancing environmental justice and promoting a circular economy.

The average American family of four spends $1,500 each year on food that ultimately goes uneaten. More than of the U.S. municipal waste stream is organic waste, including 66 million tons of food. Food is the most common material found in landfills, comprising 24 percent of municipal solid waste.

How can you prevent food waste?

You can support this initiative whether you are a restaurant chef or a home cook. Here is how:

• Reuse frequently discarded parts of vegetables, fruits or proteins. Vegetable peels can be fermented, used in a nukadoko bed for pickling, dried into powder or processed into a crispy garnish (by washing them in cold water and frying at 300 degrees).

• Use fish bones, chicken carcasses or meat scraps to make stock. Reduce and freeze concentrated stock in ice cube trays to add flavor to dishes. Or you can make concentrated vinegar. I make chicken fat vinegar by scraping the fat off the stock, reducing it, then adding vinegar, shallots, garlic, a little mustard, and returning the chicken fat to make a dressing from the leftover chicken scraps.

• Store or extend the shelf life of ingredients to prevent spoilage. Tackle fresh produce right away rather than waiting until later in the week or the weekend. Once an ingredient starts to spoil, it’s hard to make it usable again.

• Find a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program near you. It’s one of the best ways to support farms and get better ingredients than you’ll find in the store.

• Inspire others. Post photos showing how you use ingredients, where you get them, what’s in season, and tag farmers to show what’s possible. Social media as a tool can be quite powerful.

• Stick your toe in the water. When I pick crabs with my family, I ask for a bag for the shells so I can compost them or extract more flavor from them before they end up in the trash. Cook them in butter or extra virgin olive oil, deglaze with white wine and add water for a delicious broth. You can do the same with heavy cream, because fat equals flavor.

Find a good farmers market

My final piece of advice: visit a real farmers market on the weekend. Make friends, ask questions, and buy a little bit of everything. Farmers will give you root vegetables and cauliflower stalks, which are rarely seen in supermarkets, but are just as tasty and versatile. Look online or on YouTube to learn how to use unfamiliar ingredients.

I believe it adds intimacy when you tell people you are feeding them food that was grown in their backyard. I want to captivate people with stories like that. Local farmers work too hard, but half of their produce is thrown away in professional or home kitchens. Try one of these tips this week during the long holiday weekend and keep doing it all summer long.

Matthew Kern is the chef and co-owner of One coast in Fenwick Island, Delaware. He was the first Delaware chef in the 34-year history of the James Beard Awards to be named a finalist in a culinary category (Best Chef, Mid-Atlantic).