Chef Tips: Helping Local Food Last Longer

We all experience great joy from opening up our Spade & Spoon box each week, unpacking all of the fresh beautiful food and thinking about the delicious meals we’ll enjoy in the coming days.

But unlike store bought food loaded with preservatives, our local food wont last for weeks and weeks. Food waste in our country is a big concern to us, so it’s important that we all know how to keep our local food at its peak freshness throughout the week. Here are a few tips and tricks, straight from our Chef, to successfully store your Spade & Spoon food and keep it fresh as long as possible.

All of our meats and seafood comes frozen, although some might have thawed a bit during transit. For best results, you should transfer it to your freezer when you unpack your box. The night before you plan on making a meal, move the meat or seafood to the fridge to thaw

These items should go right into your refrigerator. While most of the sauces, cheeses, and yogurts we offer should last in the fridge for a week or two, keep an eye on the fresh dairy like milk and cream. The dairies we work with vat pasteurize their milk, which preserves much more natural flavor. However, vat pasteurized milk does not have quite as long of a shelf life as some commercial dairy products.

Produce (fruits and vegetables):

One of the things we pride ourselves on at Spade & Spoon is our commitment to minimizing the single-use packaging that comes with your box. One of the main ways we accomplish this is not individually packaging our produce. We recommend keeping a re-usable supply of produce bags on hand in your kitchen. When you unpack your box, bag up tender vegetables like lettuce, greens, peppers, and cucumbers and place them in your refrigerator’s crisper. Hearty vegetables like potatoes, onions, garlic, and winter squash can be stored in a cool, dark cupboard.

You can treat most fresh herbs, like cilantro, parsley, and chives, like other produce – just bag them up and pop them in the crisper. Fresh basil, however, needs to be treated with a bit more care. For the best results, store the basil like cut flowers in a small jar of water, covering the leaves loosely with the bag the herbs came in. The basil will last several days this way. Never refrigerate basil!

The bread you receive in your box is baked fresh the same morning it’s delivered. The bakeries we work with pride themselves on the freshness and wholesomeness of their breads, using no preservatives or stabilizers, so these products won’t last out at room temperature as long as commercial breads. Unless you plan on consuming the breads within a couple days, we recommend either refrigerating the bread or wrapping it tightly in foil and freezing until ready to use. If frozen, just let the bread thaw out for a few hours on the counter, and you’re good to go!

Fresh pasta and tortillas will keep for about 5-6 days in the refrigerator, but can be frozen if you plan on keeping them for a bit longer. Frozen pasta can be cooked straight from the freezer, no thawing required. The pizza and pie doughs you receive should be stored in the freezer until ready to use. Thaw the pizza dough at room temperature for an hour or two, and thaw the pie dough in the fridge.

These items can go straight into the pantry until ready to use.

We are very proud to be partnering with so many local farmers, ranchers, makers, and bakers and giving you the highest quality food our region has to offer every week in our meal boxes. We hope these storage tips will ultimately lesson the amount of food waste and help you enjoy your local meals to the highest degree.

Thanks for supporting your local food community with us!

With Love,
Your Spade & Spoon Family