10 ways our Which? family is making food go further

We asked visitors to our Which? members club Facebook group and our Which? Facebook page what steps they had been taking to make their food go further. Here are their tips:

1) Start a stock pot

All the discarded bits from vegetables (scrubbed well first) goes into a stock pot. This includes peelings of carrots and potatoes, the stalks of vegetables, celery leaves, the hard core of a cabbage or cauliflower and the outer leaves. Keep adding and simmering. When needed drain and use the stock for a soup base. Another visitor suggested leftover poppadoms crushed as a replacement for croutons.

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2) Keep on top of your fridge contents

Make sure you check the fridge daily to ensure that you use up anything and everything before it goes off and can't be used.

Shefalee Loth, Which? food expert, says: 'Make sure you use food with earlier use-by dates first or freeze them.

'Remember, it's unsafe to eat foods past their use-by date, but fine to eat them after a best-before date.'

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3) Don't waste stale bread

Turn stale bread into bread pudding. Or make breadcrumbs out of loaf ends and freeze to use as sweet or savoury toppings with the addition of herbs, spices or cheese.

You can also use them to coat fish and chicken.

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4) Bulk out muesli

Add porridge oats to shop-bought muesli to make it last longer.

5) Make mince go further

Adding porridge oats to mince works well - just not too many.

Other people have told us that they're bulking out their mince with macaroni (if they've managed to get their hands on any).

Another visitor told us she bulks out her mince by peeling a courgette and grating it into the mince (that way kids can't see it, either, so they won't know that they don't like it).

You can also used grated or finely chopped carrot in the same way. 

Lentils are another popular mince bulk-out ingredient. One visitor told us she managed to turn 500g of mince into a Bolognese sauce, chilli con carne and a sauce to add to a risotto, all thanks to added lentils.

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6) Use a teapot

Use a teapot not one bag each mug to make tea bags go further. If you're still using bags in a mug, many of our visitors have been using the bags twice.

7) Scone dumplings

Slightly stale cheese scones can double as dumplings in a casserole.

8) Strip your chicken like a pro

There is a lot more meat on a chicken than you might think.

After carving and before it gets cold, use your hands (put food-safe gloves on) and strip the carcass down.

Lots of meat in the 'nooks and crannies'. Then you can still boil the bones for a stock or soup.

9) Freeze near-date milk

If you have milk left and its use-by date is today, either store in a bottle or pour into an ice cube tray and freeze. Pop a frozen milk cube in your cuppa instead of fresh milk (but make sure you drink it quickly or it will soon go cold).

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10) Freeze chunks of leftover veg

You can use it to make bubble and squeak, or add to Indian or Thai curries.