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Whether you enjoy cooking at home or you are a professional chef who may know of more fun recipes, it’s important that you consider whether or not you are cooking sustainably. After all, most of us try to be sustainable in other areas of our lives, so why should cooking be any different? In fact, this is one area where it’s even more important to place an emphasis on sustainability. So, if you want to learn about a few things you should know about sustainable cooking, you’ve come to the right place.
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Use sustainable products
The first thing you need to understand about sustainability in general as well as in cooking is that you probably won’t always be sustainable – and that’s okay.
What matters most is that you try to be sustainable however and whenever you can. Often, the easiest way to ensure that you are cooking sustainably is by supporting sustainable companies when it comes to the products you use. For example, if you are using soybean oil, you should consider supporting sustainable companies that use conservation tillage farming. And if you work in a professional setting like a restaurant, try to use sustainable suppliers.
Grow your own vegetables
It’s fun, it saves you money, and it’s sustainable. . . what’s not to love about growing your own vegetables?
There are so many benefits to growing your vegetables, and the fact that it’s sustainable is only one. By growing your own vegetables, you can ensure that you know what pesticides and products are being placed on them, and you are also avoiding a lot of excess waste because vegetables in grocery stores are often covered in layers of plastic. You can even grow your vegetables indoors.
If you don’t have green fingers, start by growing just one type of vegetable, and as you gain more knowledge, you can start adding more vegetables to your collection.
Reduce your food waste
It’s horrifying to think how much food gets wasted, especially considering how many people are starving. The reality is that most of us waste food.
We leave it for too long, and it goes bad. Or we make too much food and we don’t want to keep the leftovers, so we throw it away. However, there are so many ways to reduce food waste, so try to implement a few of them. You might not always be successful, but if you’re trying, there’s already an improvement.
Make more plant-based meals
Plant-based products, which you can find at a natural food market, are often much more sustainable than animal-based ones, so by introducing more plant-based meals to your menu, you’re on the track toward sustainability. For example, I was recently privy to this salsa fundraising campaign and the salsa they offered was simply lovely. You can craft your own recipe with a bit of trial and error, and give your dishes their own identity and particular flavor. It goes great with so many things that you can’t go wrong, so you should be able to get nice use of it, and for cheap too.
Once again, this doesn’t have to be an extreme measure. You don’t need to go entirely plant-based unless you want to – just try to lessen your consumption of animal-based products a bit, and you’ll be making a difference. Remember that sustainability is more about effort and intention than perfection.
Start by trying one new vegetarian or vegan dish a week. If you need some inspiration, have a look at this lemon and garlic roasted cauliflower.
