As the cost-of-living continues to bite, Brits are looking for creative and budget-friendly at-home solutions.
However, recent research reveals the nation is still guilty of throwing away perfectly edible food – which includes 18 million meat and dairy items, 22 million bread and pasta items, and 30.9 million fruit and vegetables – that could have been re-purposed into sustainable alternatives.
With this in mind, Too Good To Go advises the nation on how to be more savvy with food waste – including recipes for Zero-Waste cocktails and how to store food at home!
The Art of Fermentation
Fermentation is a great way to create a sustainable cocktail, as it uses parts of a fruit that would otherwise have gone to waste. Tepache is a fermented beverage made from the peels and rinds of pineapples. Originally from Mexico, tepache is re-created worldwide and is the perfect flavour to add to homemade cocktails/mocktails.
- Use the leftover pineapple scraps and add them to a larger glass jar.
- Follow with brown sugar, and aromatics like cinnamon, and leftover pineapple, then cover with three litres of water (or more, if necessary).
- Cover the top of the glass jar with a cloth held on with a rubber band to airlock it.
- Leave for fermentation for three to five days at room temperature.
- If any white mould occurs, remove it with a clean spoon.
- Strain the mixture when ready.
- You can blend, chill and serve on ice with your favourite rum/soda mix!
Reusing the peels from Citrus
A great step in making a zero-waste cocktail/mocktail is to reuse all parts of the produce. Citrus fruits are some of main culprits when it comes to food waste as many people fail to realise how versatile they can be! From utilising them as garnishes to making oleo saccharum – also known as oil-sugar – citrus can be a fantastic way to use up the peels, otherwise discarded, to make delicious cocktails/mocktails.
- Select a few citrus fruits before juicing (blood oranges, grapefruit and lemons work well).
- Peel the outside of the selected fruits.
- Add a few ounces of granulated sugar on top.
- After a couple of hours, the sugar will have done its job of extracting the oils from the peels, leaving you with a delicious syrup to be used as a sweetener in cocktails/mocktails.
- You may also combine additional lemon or lime juice to create a sour mix for a punchier taste.
Let’s not forget banana peels
According to previous research, bananas create nearly 50 million tonnes of food waste and are thrown away due to their appearance. Similarly, like with the process of oleo saccharum, we can use leftover banana peel syrup to use it as a cocktail/mocktail ingredient, even though they don’t have citrus oils!
- Get a leftover banana peel and dice them into smaller pieces.
- Mix equal weights of diced banana peels to sugar e.g., 100g banana peels to 100g sugar.
- Place in an airtight glass/plastic container and leave for a minimum of 4-5 hours at room temperature.
- Once a syrup is formed and there and there are no more sugar crystals, you can blend the mixture to create a banana peel syrup.
- For cocktails, you can use this syrup in a Whisky Sour to add extra flavour. For mocktails, try the syrup with non-alcoholic ginger beer and lime juice
Dehydrate and Garnish
A great way to finish off a drink is with a garnish and dehydrated garnishes are the perfect way to decorate and add to zero-waste cocktails/mocktails. The technique of dehydration requires the process of drying and removing water from a substance and not only is it a great way to preserve it for much longer, but it can also help intensify the cocktails/mocktails once added.
- Thinly slice the chosen fruits crosswise into thin wheels.
- Place these pieces in a single layer on the wire rack.
- Bake these pieces until dry to touch for 9 hours on a low heat setting. cool, then store in an airtight container at room temperature.
