Our fridge essentials guide will help keep your kitchen and belly full of the good stuff, plus some extra tips on food keeping.
Keep in mind you will need to base what you buy on the foods you like and the meals you plan to eat during the week ahead. Your fridge ingredients will change slightly week to week, but the below gives you a guideline of what you might like to include in your fridge.
Fruit All fruits are good for you and there’s none that you need to avoid, as long as you aren’t over eating on fruit (e.g. having 5 bananas a day), which is when your daily sugar intake would become to high. I recommend having 2 -3 different types of fruit a day to gain the micro-nutrients and health benefits that fruit can give you. You don’t need to only eat it by itself either, dress up your fruit in different recipes to make healthy eating more fun. Keep a variety of at least 3 or more fruits in your kitchen and try to change it up each week because each fruit can give you different health benefits.
Vegetables No vegetables are off limits. Try to stock your fridge with at least 7 different types and include all colours of the rainbow for a variation of nutrients, prioritizing green veg.
Meat You may like to keep 1-2 meats in your fridge at a time depending on what meals you plan on cooking over the upcoming days. Keep the rest of your meat in the freezer so it stays as fresh as possible, that way you can get it out the freezer and into the fridge the day before you need it.
Dairy – Eggs – Some sort of plant based milk e.g. almond milk, coconut milk. If you enjoy cow’s milk or need it for a specific recipe buy a small carton and try to use sparingly. If I want to give something a creamier taste from the cow’s milk, I sometimes go half/ half with a plant-based milk and cow’s milk, or even mix with water. – Cheese – its fine to have a bit of cheese in your diet, but use sparingly. Mozzarella is great for melting in recipes, mild cheddar will give more of a cheesy taste, and a bit of feta goes great on salads.
Freezer Essentials – Frozen berries – buy in a bag from grocery shop – Frozen bananas – you can freeze these yourself and use in smoothies or desserts. Simply peel your ripe bananas, lay on a tray individually to freeze, once frozen store them together in a bag in the freezer. – Frozen meals – the more frozen container meals you can have ready, the better! – Frozen bread – good to have in an emergency, simply pop a slice in the toaster. – Frozen veg – if you haven’t yet done your weekly shop and you’re low on veg in the fridge, its good to have back up veg in freezer to chuck in a stir fry or even just microwave in a container for a few minutes with a bit of water at the bottom to keep them from drying out.