New York Times health blogger, Tara Parker-Pope, posted about a new two-year study to be undertaken at the University of North Carolina to determine the public health impact of consumers moving toward a diet composed of more locally grown and produced foods.

This study will be the first to look at the health implications of eating locally grown fruits and vegetables, and I look forward to the results, since I am pretty certain already that the locally grown food we eat at our house has made us all healthier. I do remember in my nutrition classes learning that after a fruit or vegetable is picked, pulled, cut or otherwise removed from the parent plant, it begins to lose vitamins and other phytochemicals which are necessary for proper health. And, unfortunately, the “fresh” vegetables and fruits you see in supermarkets, no matter how beautiful, are not particularly fresh. Many of them were picked two weeks or more ago.

Some vegetables, such as winter squash, potatoes, onions and apples can all be stored for a long period of time without a noticeable loss of nutrient value, but other vegetables like leafy greens, or broccoli, or sugar snap peas, all lose their nutrients pretty quickly. And vegetables like tomatoes, which are picked green and then are forced to ripen in transit by the application of ethylene gas, never even get the full compliment of nutrients they would have had if they had ripened on the vine. (Not to mention that they taste like water and plastic.)

Marion Nestle, author of the weighty but useful tome, What To Eat, discusses these issues in her book and on her blog; I trust her works because she writes not from the perspective of a hippy-dippy idealist, (not that there is nothing wrong with being a hippy-dippy idealist–I have been one myself, and still am some days) but from the scientific point of view of a distinguished and well-respected professor of nutrition. She backs up her statements with the latest scientific studies, so when she tells you that the “fresh” foods in the grocery store produce department are lacking in vitamins and minerals because they really aren’t that fresh, you can trust her words are based on fact, not belief.

When you eat locally, buying from a local farmer, most often the food you purchase was picked that very morning. The foods at farmer’s markets generally are so much more fresh–in the truest sense of the word–than what you can find in grocery stores, that it stands to reason that when you eat them, you are getting more vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals which can help fight cancer, than you would be getting otherwise. At a farmer’s market, the only time a tomato is picked green is so you can take it home and make fried green tomatoes or green tomato pickle from it. Vine-ripened tomatoes are not only superior to grocery store tomatoes in vitamin content, they are worlds beyond them in taste and texture, so much so that you cannot really compare the two.

Large amounts of vitamins and minerals help boost human immune systems, and I have to say this–Kat has only had one major illness, no recurrent colds, no ear infections or other maladies common among infants and toddlers. Morganna still has allergies, but she doesn’t get colds or the flu very often, and neither Zak nor I have been sick in quite some time–I had one sinus infection a couple of months ago, but that was the first one in FIVE YEARS. This is astounding, since I used to have one ever six months when I was younger.

There is also the issue that it seems that once people start shopping at farmer’s markets, they seem to start eating a diet with more varied fruits and vegetables than before, in large part because they are exposed to interesting, different varieties of these foods than they see in grocery stores. And, I have anecdotal evidence from watching the eating and shopping patterns of some friends of mine who have been influenced by the foods they eat at my house to change their shopping patterns, that once you get a taste of really fresh produce, you will want more, and will eat more of it. (This also goes for high quality dairy products, eggs and meat as well.) Nothing compares to the sweet fragrance of just picked ripe local strawberries, and once you taste that, the cottony giants at the supermarket will never satisfy you again.

Frankly, anything that gets people to eat more fruits and vegetables and a little less meat is fine by me.

There is also the issue of food safety.

When you have food being shipped across our country and into our country from across the world, there is a significant risk of food contamination. Why?

Because other countries do not have to abide by the same safety standards in agriculture that farmers in the US do. When I was in culinary school, there was a local outbreak of e coli that was traced to raw scallions from Mexico, where they were irrigated with raw sewage. The usual washing procedures are not sufficient to safely remove all traces of any bacteria present in a scallion, because of the way they grow–in layers and concentric rings which can trap soil and more disturbingly, bacteria.

And, of course, there is the current outbreak of a rare form of salmonella that has been traced back to tomatoes grown either in the US southwest or Mexico.

This outbreak has caused local Texas health officials to state that it is perfectly safe to eat raw home grown tomatoes of any kind, but that full-sized and Roma tomatoes bought from grocery stores should not be eaten raw.

When you grow your own food, or when you buy it locally from a farmer you know and trust, you know exactly what went into growing it. When you grow it yourself, you know what was used to fertilize it, where the water came from that irrigated it, and who picked it. You know if it came into contact with possibly contaminated animal manures, you know how much or little it needs washed before eating and you know exactly how ripe or unripe it is.

I have been saying for a while now that for food security issues, that smaller, localized food production is safer. When you have huge farms growing one food and shipping it off to all corners of the country and globe, if there is ever anything wrong with that food, a hell of a lot more people are in danger of food-borne disease than would be otherwise. There is also the issue that tracing the source of illness is harder in a huge food system like this.

For these reasons and more, I am looking forward to the new study on the health impact of local food. While I believe that local food is healthier and I have a lot of circumstantial evidence to support my contention, there is a difference between believing something and knowing it for a fact.

Besides, there is nothing wrong with more knowledge in the world.

There are a lot of reasons behind the colossal waste of food that goes on in the restaurant industry, but I would say that one of the largest causes has to do
with corporate restaurant policy regarding the treatment of leftovers.

When I say leftovers, I am not talking about what comes back on diner’s plates at the end of the meal–that is a separate issue which I will discuss in a little bit. I am talking about corporate chain restaurant policy regarding the disposal of food that is left on the steam table, in the display rack or in
the warming oven at the end of the night shift. The food that can be reheated one more time without bacterial contamination risk or loss of food quality is always saved, cooled properly and refrigerated to be rewarmed the next day, but what about the rest of the food that is quite often still good to eat, but will suffer in looks or taste if it is warmed over the next day. (Most corporate restaurants lack the flexibility in menu that independent restaurants have, so it is not often that you will see a leftover from one day transformed into something else as a dinner special the next day. Consistency is one of the watchwords of the corporate food world, and in the name of the “C-word,” a lot of edible food is thrown away.)

You would think that restaurants would give this food to their employees, or better yet, donate it to a local food bank, food pantry or church soup kitchen to be served to the homeless and impoverished people for whom hunger is a daily reality.

But, alas, that is most often not the case.

Most corporate chain restaurants, coffee shops, bakeries and the like have a very strict policy of dumping this perfectly good food out into the dumpster, which is often locked and behind enclosures in order to keep enterprising individuals from “harvesting” or saving this food. (If these enclosed or locked bins tampered with, even by a hungry person, they can then be arrested and charged not with just vandalism for breaking the locks, but for breaking and entering and theft. Imagine being charged with stealing garbage–the whole point of garbage is that the former owner of it no longer wants it, so why is it illegal for someone else to take it before it is heaped into a landfill?) Employees who are caught taking food of this kind home or eating it, or donating it are treated as thieves and are often fired.

Why are such draconian and ridiculously wasteful policies the norm in the corporate food industry?

There are two reasons. One has to do with the fear of food loss through employee theft. Yes, that is right–corporations are so afraid of losing money through employee theft that they waste just as much, if not more, money throwing away imperfect, but still edible food. The reasoning behind this somewhat obtuse concept is that if you have day old muffins that must go out, and fresh muffins, and if you give the employees the day old–still palatable, but not quite the best–to employees to eat or take home, then you would have no way of knowing if they were taking the day old muffins which you were going to throw away or the fresh ones.

The reason why food is not donated to hunger relief organizations has to do with the fear of being legally liable if, due to improper storage or reheating after the food is released into the hands of whatever individuals or organizations to which it is donated, someone or a group of persons fall ill from food borne disease.

That sounds like a reasonable fear, unless one knows about the federal law which protects organizations, corporations and individuals who donate food in good faith to non-profit organizations for the relief of hunger, from legal liability in the unlikely case of illness related to the food donation.

This law, called The Federal Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act, came into effect in 1996, so there is really no excuse for corporate restaurant chains to -not- donate their food to the needy through non-profit organizations.

It is possible that many corporate policy makers do not know about the law, which is where employees and consumers can step up to the plate and attempt to make a change in the rules that allow so much edible food to be thrown away from corporate kitchens. Ask managers of individual restaurants what their policy is for donating leftovers, and if they cite liability, inform them of this law, and then call a corporate hotline, email the headquarters, or even better, write them a letter, telling them about the law and asking them to change their policies regarding food donation. Whichever course of action you take, get your friends on board, and if you work in a corporate chain restaurant, talk to your managers and see if you can get them to talk to their managers. Send letters to the board of directors or the president of the company. You may be surprised at how effective such communication can be–corporations will not change their policies if there is no complaints, but a volley of complaints, especially those in writing, tend to get the attention of those who are high enough in the hierarchy to do something about it.

You can also work with America’s Second Harvest on these issues, and try and get your local restaurants, both independent and corporate chains, to try and cut down rampant food waste by donating unused food to food pantries, soup kitchens and homeless shelters.

In contrast, most independent restaurants do not have such unreasonable policies regarding the disposal of unused, unsellable, but still edible food. Every independent restaurant where I have worked has either given such food to employees, or sold it to them at a very low cost, in the interest of both feeding their employees and not wasting food. Many of the independents where I have worked also donated food to homeless shelters and food banks quite generously, even before the Good Samaritan law was in effect. Many other independent restaurants will donate food to various groups for free–for example, at Salaam, we donated lots of uneaten dinner and lunch specials which were still great that day, but wouldn’t be good the next day to the Obama campaign workers who had come to town during the Ohio primary. These folks appreciated the hot food and salads, and we appreciated being able to offer support that wasn’t monetary, but was still necessary and meaningful.

One other reason there is so much food waste in American restaurants, especially in chain restaurants, is the gargantuan portion sizes that have become the norm. Some chain restaurants, like The Cheesecake Factory, have portion sizes so ridiculously large, they don’t serve their entrees on plates, they serve them on oval platters, or as Zak quipped the one time we ate there as his dinner was set before him, “Here comes the trough!” Apparently, frequent diners at such restaurants take their uneaten food home, but when we were there, our table only sent back what we couldn’t eat on our dirty plates, and we saw many diners do the same. Some tables sent away so much food that another three or four people could have been fed on what was wasted. (This is one of the reasons I try to give only sensible portions at Salaam–I hate to see unusable food returned to the kitchen–although in small, independent restaurants, you will often see workers setting aside unusable food as compost or in rural areas as animal fodder. To my mind, that certainly beats sending it to the landfill.)

Of course, when you have restaurants sending food home with individuals who may or may not follow safe storage and reheating procedures, it begs the question as to why they will not donate edible but unsellable food because of liability issues.

I think that in the coming months and years as food prices rise precipitously due to the sharp rise in oil prices, we may see this wasteful attitude toward food in corporate restaurants start to change. We may see a more frugal philosophy of food once more arise in the restaurant industry.

Let us just hope that it is also a more ethical and compassionate philosophy as well. The amount of food that is wasted in American restaurants could easily go towards relieving a significant portion of the hunger problem in our country, and I would like to see more restaurants get behind efforts to feed the needy by participating in programs such as America’s Second Harvest and Share Our Strength. Ask the servers and managers at your favorite restaurants if they participate in food reclamation projects, and see what you can do to foster such efforts in your neighborhood. Everyone who joins in the effort to end food waste and hunger in America and does their own small share is building the momentum of a movement that is not only ecologically sound, but compassionate as well.

Author’s Note: I would like to thank Jonathan Bloom, author of the blog, Wasted Food, for putting the idea for this series of posts in my head.

Cross-utilization means using an ingredient, sauce, or condiment that is usually used for one or two specific dishes for another dish or two where, perhaps, they are not expected, or are not usually used. The way my grandmothers, both of whom lived through the Great Depression, referred to it was “making do.”

“Making do,” basically means using what you have on hand, rather than running out and buying something new. Whether this refers to what is in your closet, or what is in your pantry, it is the frugal person’s way of creatively making something new out of something old. And, as I have mentioned before, chefs, as a group, are nothing if not frugal.

For a chef, cross-utilization generally refers to using basic pantry items to make up new menu items or daily specials, which not only avoids having to buy new and different ingredients and uses up what is in the pantry, but it also stimulates creativity. Being limited by a set number of materials and ingredients forces anyone, but certainly a chef, to think outside the box, to work around a problem, to, essentially, turn a limitation into a positive attribute.

I don’t know how many times I have come up with appetizer and dinner specials that use only pantry items, and pretty much every time I have done so, the response from diners has been overwhelmingly positive. It is really cool to be able to make something that blows people away, seemingly out of nothing, and it makes For more on the philosophy of cross-utilization, see my recent post all about it here.

Cross-utilization, or making do is something that every home cook probably has done in the past, especially in times of financial stress, but it is good to try and do it as often as possible anyway. It is a good habit to get into. Not only does it cut food loss and waste, it helps keep a cook creative when it comes to thinking of ways to cook different ingredients and differing presentations of everyday dishes.

For example, a while back, my parents planned to come visit us for the day, which would be their first big driving expedition after Dad’s surgery. Morganna and I wanted to make Indian food, so when we went shopping, we kept that in mind. We ended up picking out some purple cauliflower which we intended to make into aloo gobi–curried potatoes and cauliflower. However, my Mom caught a nasty cold which turned into bronchitis, so we never got around to that planned feast.

Instead, a week later, when I came home from work late Saturday night, and found extra folks around at dinner time (I forgot that it was Torchwood and Dr. Who night–silly me!), even though I was planning to have keema mattar, which is minced lamb with peas, I saw the cauliflower and decided it would work perfectly well in the dish in addition to the canonical ingredients. And it did. It worked so well, in fact, and looked so pretty (I love how fresh green and purple look together!) and tasted so nice that it was remarked upon by everyone who ate it, and so I will be making my keema mattar gobi again. And the truth is, I would never have thought of it in the first place if I had not had cauliflower sitting around needing to be used and a mind open to culinary possibilities.

Repurposing food is a similar process to cross-utilization, but instead of pertaining to using ingredients in more ways than you had originally intended, it has to do with creative use already cooked food. You know–leftovers.

Yes, leftovers. Even restaurants have them and, if they want to keep their food cost down, chefs have to figure out how to use them.

Sometimes, leftovers are made on purpose in restaurants. If one is going to make a stew or soup that will freeze well, and you have space for it in your freezer, why not make twice as much (which takes not much more time than a single batch) and cool some down and freeze it, properly dated and marked, for a later date? Every chef needs a quick lunch or dinner special now and then; sometimes, in the middle of a shift, a soup runs out and you need another one very quickly. It is nice to be able to heat up something which you know is good, in a matter of minutes, when unforeseen circumstances strike–the special runs out, the cook who was supposed to make the soup is deathly ill with pneumonia and had to be sent home, or the gas line is leaking and you can’t use your stove, but you still have people to feed.

But even if you didn’t mean to have leftovers, sometimes they can be frozen and used later. There are a few guidelines about doing this–the leftover food should only have been cooled and reheated once, and it should be cooled to below forty degrees F. before being put into the freezer. This is for food safety concerns–the more times food is cooled and reheated, the more chances there are for harmful bacteria to proliferate. In addition, food that has been cooled and reheated more than once or twice suffers greatly in quality–food textures go awry, the colors can fade or oxidize and turn brown and the flavor balance can be upset beyond repair.

In some cases, you can make one dish, and turn it into something completely different. A classic example is where cooks diners and similar restaurants will save leftover baked potatoes and make baked potato soup the next day. Leftover keema sookh–a dry curry made from minced lamb, beef or chicken, can be mixed with rice, vegetables and spices and then be used to stuff roasted vegetables the next day. Taco meat can become chili, leftover rice can become rice stuffing or fried rice and leftover bechamel sauce can be turned into mornay sauce with the addition of grated cheese, which can then be used in any number of other dishes. Leftover vegetables can be saved and made into soups, either as mixed vegetable soups, or as pureed cream soups. Leftover bread can be fried into croûtons which can then garnish salads and soups, or it can be made into one of my favorite desserts of all time–bread pudding. Leftover tortillas can become the garnish for sopa de lima–a tangy chicken and lime soup with a garnish of fried tortilla strips–and leftover roast meat can become the basis of a soup, a salad, a casserole, or a sandwich or dumpling filling.

For an example of how I took an unpopular dinner special made one night and turned it into a completely new dish that sold out the next night, read this post which also is a rumination upon the art of cooking and even more importantly, naming and marketing dinner specials.

There are so many ways to use leftovers in both a restaurant and home kitchen that there isn’t really a great excuse for a lot of the food waste that goes on in the United States. But even though there are ways to re-use or repurpose food, you have to follow strict sanitation procedures and food safety guidelines in order to ensure that the leftovers are handled properly so that no diners get sick. Only foods which have been handled properly should be repurposed, which means that if a food has stayed between the temperatures of 40 and 140 degrees F. for more than four hours, they should not be used. (That range of temperatures, known in restaurants as “the temperature danger zone” or “TDZ” for short, is the perfect temperatures at which most harmful bacteria thrive and grow.) When in doubt about the safety or the quality of a food, it is best, if regrettable, to throw it out. (Another industry catchphrase–”When in doubt, throw it out!” is a good principle for home cooks to live by as well.)

Now that I have discussed the biggest techniques that help restaurant cooks and chefs decrease food waste and thus keep food costs low, all of which can be modified for home use, my next post will be about -why- there is so much food waste in American restaurants, and what can be done about it.

Some fresh foods can simply be converted to frozen foods without much work or trouble, and then, can be used from the freezer over the course of months, instead of days. Sweet and hot peppers can both be simply chopped or sliced, packed in plastic bags and frozen. The same can be done with onions and garlic. Spinach can also be frozen with minimal processing–if the leaves are mature, remove the thick veins and stems and either leave the leaves whole or tear into smaller pieces and then pack into bags and freeze. If you have baby spinach, you just pack the whole leaves into bags and freeze them. Frozen spinach leaves can then be added directly to simmering soups, stews or sauces without pre-cooking.

Fresh herbs can also be frozen with minimal preparation. Most of them can just be chopped finely and frozen in bags, although some people put tablespoon amounts into individual compartments in an ice cube tray, and add a little bit of water to hold them together, then freeze the cubes. After they are frozen, the cubes can be packed in plastic bags and stored for future use. Some herbs, like cilantro and basil, can be pureed and then frozen in ice cube trays without the addition of water, and can be used like the chopped frozen herb cubes.

Alternately, batches of green cilantro chutney or pesto can be made and frozen, either in small bags or containers, or in cubes, to be thawed and used later or to be added to curries, soups and sauces as they cook.

Fresh fruits such as strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries and mangoes can all be frozen simply as well: for the berries, you just wash and dry them, then layer them onto sheet pans, put them in the fridge until they are frozen, then pack them into bags, label and date them and store them in freezer. Strawberries can either be frozen whole or sliced. All of these fruits can be used to make pies, dessert sauces, ice creams, sorbets and smoothies in the future.

For mangoes, simply peel and pit them, and cut into slices. Treat with a bit of lemon juice to prevent discoloration, and freeze on sheet pans and then pack into bags. I like to use frozen mango to make lassi, chutneys, salsas and to add to curries.

Tomatoes can be frozen whole, but they are better, and they take up less space, if you make them into a nice marinara sauce or plain tomato sauce, pack these sauces into quart bags and freeze them flat, so they stack easily in the freezer for storage. (Speaking of tomatoes, you can also use the freezer to store excess tomato paste. Restaurant pack tomato paste is often sold in huge units of several quarts or pounds. If you don’t need that much in whatever recipe you are using, the rest can be stored in smaller portions from a cup to a tablespoon in freezer bags. For the smaller amounts, you can squeeze the paste into ice cube trays or freeze tablespoon-sized plops on a sheet pan lined with waxed paper. Once they are frozen, the cubes can be popped into a bag, or the plops can be peeled up and popped into a bag which then lives happily in the freezer until it is needed. You don’t even have to thaw the paste before using it, although I always do.)

Speaking of sauces, we come to the issue of stocks, soups, sauces and stews.

These types of recipes are the secret weapon of cooks and chefs when it comes to using up excess ingredients.

If you have some potatoes on hand that have gone a bit soft, or some carrots that are a little rubbery, or some celery that is no longer crisp, then don’t throw them out–use them in a soup or stew or a sauce. Daily soup or dinner specials are not just a way to vary a menu, they also help a chef or cook deal with surplus perishable ingredients in a delicious and constructive fashion.

I don’t feel in the least bit bad about using slighly older produce in soups or stews, because it isn’t like I am using rotted food. Far from it–slightly older vegetables which would be nasty in a stir fry or salad are perfectly fine to be boiled in a soup or stew where the liquid is meant to be eaten along with the vegetables. With vegetables that are a bit too old, often the only characteristic that suffers is texture, and with a soup , stew or sauce, that doesn’t matter. The boiling water extracts all of the water soluble vitamins left in the vegetable, and then they are eaten in the broth, along with the solids. The flavors are all extracted and present in the finished dish, and frankly, there is nothing more homey and comforting than a stew or soup.

Stocks are a special case. Stocks are made, in large part, from parts of animals and plants which are frankly, otherwise inedible to people. Bones are not a big part of the human diet when they are whole, but when they have had all of their goodness extracted by a long simmer in a stockpot, they create the basis for every great soup, sauce and stew–stock.

Every chef I have ever known has extolled the virtues of the stockpot, not only for creating kitchen gold, but also because it fits perfectly with their frugal natures. Bones cannot be eaten by people, but there is no need to throw them away without first extracting every ounce of goodness from them. Carrot ends, celery leaves and ends, leek tops and onion skins also are not palatable to humans, but they add flavor, fragrance and color to stock. (Onion skins give a golden color to chicken stock which makes it more appealing to the eyes.) Bones from every animal, along with fish heads and tails, shrimp, crab and lobster shells, and crustacean heads, are all saved by chefs and used to make stocks which results in every scrap of food being used to make a food product that only enhances every other dish to which it is added. Stocks can be frozen, too, in whatever increments one likes, so they can have a very long shelf life, although in larger restaurants, a stockpot or two are always going on a back burner of the stove and what it makes is used up as it is made.

Stocks are simple, and make goodness out of what many people would see as garbage, using bones, vegetable scraps, herbs (and yes, you can use some herbs that are not pretty enough to put on a plate as garnish, but are still good to cook with in a stock, and unlikely bits of carcass like chicken or pig’s feet. (For illustrated instructions on how to make chicken stock, click here. For Chinese style pork and chicken stock, click here.)

Running a restaurant does not have to be a wasteful enterprise. In fact, if the chef is clever, it can be the exact opposite–it can be a model of how best to use every scrap of edible foodstuff inherent to any given ingredient, but it does take a little extra work to avoid just throwing away raw materials.

The next post will talk about what happens to food that is already cooked in a restaurant, and how to avoid throwing it away.

What it means is that you use the older food before you use the new food–preferably, even before you have new food come in. You want to avoid as much overlap between new and old ingredients as possible, although, you -never- want to go with an empty cooler, freezer or pantry. At the same time, you don’t want to have stuff on your shelves that dates back to the Clinton administration, either.

How does this get done?

It requires work, but keeping inventory of what you have and making note of what you use over the period of a week or a fraction thereof (for fresh seafood, you don’t order enough for a week, necessarily, you order enough for a few days, and have several orders come in through the week). These records help the chef avoid over-ordering perishable foods such as meats, fruits, vegetables, fresh herbs, dairy and eggs, all of which are expensive, and can really drive food costs up if they end up in the trash bin.

Once inventory is done, preferably weekly, and orders are made, then orders must be received and put away properly in order to maintain the ideals of FIFO.

When a chef or cook takes an order or perishables in the back door of a restaurant, it behooves him or her to examine each item carefully to make certain that it is as it should be. Lettuce should be crisp, not wilted, eggs should be properly and carefully crated, clean and unbroken and crabs should be alive and wriggling, not dead and smelling of stagnant ocean. Most reputable purveyors will not send anything but the best to their clients, but everyone has a bad day and everyone makes mistakes. Examining the order in front of the delivery person is the way to ensure that if an item is not of the proper quality, the problem can be rectified immediately by alerting the delivery person and if necessary, the customer service department right away. Then, the offending item is loaded back on the truck and a credit is issued on the order. If you wait until the truck is off to another delivery to complain, it is much harder to get this level of service, and you may end up with food that is at the worst, unusable, and at best, questionable.

After the order is in the back door, then the more physical work of FIFO begins.

Instead of putting new stock willy-nilly onto the storeroom shelves, the proper procedure is to pull the older stock to the front of the shelves, and put the newer stock behind it. The same goes for refrigerated and frozen stock. When we are discussing walk-in refrigerators and freezers, that is a lot of cases of food to be moved, but it is necessary if we are to keep the food contained therein at its peak of freshness and flavor.

One thing I started to do with refrigerated and frozen stock when I was responsible for receiving and stock rotation in a chain restaurant years and years ago, was I would write the date an item came into the restaurant in a black permanent marker, and the expiration date in red. This way, I could keep track of shipments and easily make certain that older product was used before newer, thus reducing accidental food waste by 10 percent, which in turn, lowered food cost.

Proper management of refrigerators, whether they are walk-ins or reach-ins, also is crucial to controlling food loss; food safety also begins in a well-managed refrigeration unit.

Many foods have the potential to carry food-borne bacteria which can, if improperly handled, result in an outbreak of food-borne illness. In order to avoid these possibilities, it is imperative for chefs and cooks to carefully stock and clean the refrigerator.

Cross-contamination occurs when one food comes into contact with another, and can lead to illness, even if the food are fresh and otherwise safe to consume. In order to avoid this there are established protocols determining where different types of food are placed in the refrigerator. Foods which have a high potential to carry harmful bacteria, and which can easily contaminate other foods by dripping on them or touching them, should be stored on the lowest shelves of the refrigerator, and should either be placed in fully enclosed containers or, should be placed on trays in order to hold any liquid which may escape. On the lowest shelf, the only thing the liquid could contaminate is the floor, but still–it is best to be avoided. It is easier to stop a leak in the first place than it is to clean it up afterwards.

Raw chicken, seafood or meats all should be stored on the lowest shelves of the refrigerator, placed with the oldest stock in the front, the newer stock behind, and they should all be labeled and dated. That way, if a prep cook or line cook needs to take stock out, they can easily reach in and grab the oldest ingredients and use them first, thereby reducing stock loss. In the fast paced world of a restaurant kitchen, you don’t want your cooks having to slow down and think about which container of chicken legs they want to use–they need to just reach in and grab the proper ones on the first try.

Raw eggs are also stored near the bottom of the refrigerator, because most commercial eggs in the US have the potential to be contaminated with salmonella, just like raw chicken. This avoids the possibility of an egg cracking and dripping on something like lettuce which is going to be used raw in a salad.

Fruits, vegetables and herbs that are going to be eaten raw should go on the top shelves, while already cooked (and fully contained and thoroughly covered) foods, dairy products, jarred condiments and vegetables and fruits which are going to be eaten cooked can all be kept in the middle shelves.

These sorts of strict protocols governing which shelves upon which we store foods in a refrigerator seem somewhat draconian and overly cautious, but the truth is, they reduce the chances of cross-contamination which not only reduces the incidence of food born illness, but also reduces the possibility of food waste, because if cross-contamination occurs, any contaminated foods must either be fully cooked before eating or thrown away.

Take for example, the possibility of raw chicken dripping onto an entire case of romaine lettuce which was meant to be eaten in a salad. Salmonella bacteria cannot be washed away with just water and mild detergent–bleach is necessary to fully disinfect anything touched by salmonella. Bleach, however, makes an awful salad dressing, so it is obvious that one cannot safely eat Caesar salad that has had raw chicken juices dripped on it. Lettuce -can- be cooked, but is it likely that anyone is going to want to eat an entire case of stir-fried or braised romaine lettuce as a dinner special? While some chefs might try such a tactic to save the lettuce, most would just throw it away, thus wasting an entire case of otherwise edible food.

It is best to simply avoid any such occurances by careful management of recourses and storage facilities.

How do restaurants keep fresh produce fresh?

Truly, it is most often done by using it as fast as possible, but there are also some tricks chefs and cooks use to keep some highly perishable foods fresh for the longest period of time possible.

Lettuces are washed as soon as they come into the back door, and are allowed to dry thoroughly before being put away in loosely wrapped plastic bags or loosely covered plastic boxes. Air-flow helps keep leafy greens leafy and crisp; dry lettuces keep fresh for a longer time than wet ones–degenerative bacteria need moisture in order to work. Keeping the lettuces, or any vegetable or fruit, for that matter, whole until soon before service also keeps them fresh for a longer period of time.

Fresh herbs, on the other hand, tend to like a bit of moisture in order to stay crisp and appealing. You can either dunk the cut stems, like a bouquet of flowers, into a container of water and loosely cover the tops with a plastic bag. This raises humidity slightly while still retaining air flow. Or, you can lightly dampen paper towels, and either loosely wrap them around the herbs and put the herbs in an open container or layer the herbs between the damp towels.

Fresh seafood should be kept in containers of ice to keep them very cold and fresh, and the ice should be changed as needed.

And of course, some fresh vegetables shouldn’t be kept in the refrigerator at all–potatoes, onions, garlic, shallots, and sweet potatoes should all be kept in bins in a dark, cool storeroom where humidity is low. Keeping them in a refrigerator lowers their quality significantly–potatoes will become mushy, and garlic and onions risk becoming moldy and sprouting under humid conditions.

That’s it for today–our next topic to cover is what to do when there is a surplus of raw ingredients which are on their way out to the trash bin. You know, vegetables and fruits which are not really fresh enough for their originally intended purpose, but which are not bad enough to discard.