Kitchen Reference

Bananas are the fruit I most reliably fail to eat in time. A bunch that looked perfect on Monday is speckled brown by Thursday and heading for the compost by the weekend, always faster than a busy week allows. For years I treated that as waste, until I worked out that the freezer turns those sad, over-ripe bananas into one of the most useful things in the house. So yes, you can absolutely freeze bananas, and you should. Here is how to do it properly, how long they last, and how to use them without ending up with a bag of brown mush you never touch. ...

There is almost always cheese in my fridge, and it lives in that vague limbo where nobody can quite remember when it was opened. A wedge of cheddar hides at the back for a fortnight and comes out perfectly fine; a tub of cream cheese sits an extra week and turns into something I would not risk on toast. The confusing part is that “cheese” covers everything from a rock-hard lump of parmesan to a wobbly ball of mozzarella, and those two do not keep for anything like the same length of time. Here is how long each kind actually lasts in the fridge, what to do when you spot a patch of mould, and how to store it so you get to the end of the block. ...

Bacon lives a strange double life in my fridge. Sometimes a pack gets torn open on a Saturday and is gone by Sunday, and sometimes half a pack sits shoved to the back until I find it on a Wednesday and stand there wondering whether it is still a breakfast or a bin job. Because it is cured, bacon lasts noticeably longer than a plain bit of pork, which lulls people into thinking it lasts forever. It does not. Here is how long raw and cooked bacon actually keep, opened and unopened, fridge and freezer, and how to tell when a pack has finally turned. ...

Two little dates on a packet, and almost everyone I know treats them as the same thing. They are not, and the gap between them is where the two big kitchen mistakes live: throwing out a perfectly good tin because the best-before has slipped, or eating a chicken that looked fine two days past its use-by and spending the night regretting it. One date is a suggestion about quality. The other is a hard line about safety. Once you know which is which, you waste less food and you take fewer risks, and the whole thing stops being a guessing game. ...

Butter is one of the calmer things in my fridge. It does not spoil the way milk does, it does not sulk if you forget about it for a fortnight, and a block of it will happily outlast almost everything else on the shelf. But it is not immortal, and the question people really want answered is a slightly different one: can you leave it out on the counter so it is actually spreadable, and if so, for how long. Here are the honest numbers for the fridge, the counter and the freezer, plus why salted and unsalted butter behave so differently. ...

Yes, you can freeze cooked rice, and in my kitchen it has become the sensible way to deal with the fact that rice is almost impossible to cook in small amounts. The trick is not the freezing itself, which is easy. It is the hour before the rice goes in. Get that hour right and frozen rice is one of the most useful things in the freezer, a hot side dish in three minutes flat. Get it wrong and freezing will not save you, because the thing that makes leftover rice risky is not fixed by the cold. ...

Cooked fish keeps in the fridge for 3 to 4 days, provided it was cooled quickly and stored in a sealed container. Cooked shellfish is a little shorter-lived and is best eaten within 2 to 3 days. In both cases the countdown starts when the fish was cooked, so chill leftovers promptly rather than leaving the plate on the side. The working numbers Cooked white fish and oily fish: 3 to 4 days. Cod, haddock, salmon, mackerel and the rest follow the ordinary cooked-leftovers window once they are chilled. Cooked shellfish: 2 to 3 days. Prawns, mussels, crab and squid are more perishable, so lean towards the shorter end. Reheating: once, until piping hot. Take out the portion you want and heat that through fully, rather than warming the whole lot more than once. Get cooked fish into the fridge within a couple of hours of cooking. Spreading it into a shallow, covered container helps it cool faster and keeps the smell contained, which your fridge will thank you for. ...

Cooked eggs keep in the fridge for up to about a week, whether they are hard-boiled, scrambled or in an omelette, as long as they were chilled promptly after cooking. Hard-boiled eggs last longest, and they keep best left in their shells until you want them, because the shell protects them from drying out and picking up fridge smells. The working numbers Hard-boiled eggs in their shells: up to a week. Cool them, refrigerate them, and leave the shell on until you eat them. That is the tidiest way to store them. Peeled hard-boiled eggs: 2 to 3 days. Once the shell is off, the egg dries and takes on flavours faster. Keep peeled eggs in a covered container, ideally under a splash of water or a damp piece of kitchen paper, and eat them sooner. Scrambled eggs, omelettes and cooked egg dishes: 3 to 4 days. These follow the ordinary cooked-leftovers rule. Chill them within a couple of hours and reheat once, until piping hot. The clock starts when the eggs are cooked, not when you finally get round to labelling the tub. Get cooked eggs into the fridge promptly rather than leaving them on the side to cool for hours. ...

Yes, you can refreeze cooked chicken, provided it was thawed in the fridge rather than on the counter, and provided it has not been sitting out at room temperature. Chicken cooked from fresh and then frozen can be safely refrozen once after thawing in the fridge. The catch is that every trip through the freezer costs you a little texture, so refrozen cooked chicken is best kept for dishes where that hardly shows. ...

Potatoes are the thing I always cook too many of. A bag looks like a week’s worth, then a Sunday roast swallows half of it, and there is nearly always a bowl of boiled or roasted potatoes heading for the fridge. The good news is that cooked potatoes store and reheat well, and cold leftover potatoes make some of the best quick meals going. The catch is that potatoes are a starchy food, and starchy foods play by a slightly stricter set of rules than most people realise. There is also one specific risk with foil-wrapped baked potatoes that is worth knowing and easy to sidestep. ...