5 hacks for plastic-free meals and a delicious BBQ recipe
Here are 5 simple steps for turning your kitchen totally plastic-free in under half an hour, all while cooking a five-course meal... Is not what you’ll be reading here.
We know going plastic-free cold turkey is nearly impossible (they’re always wrapped in plastic) so we don’t expect you to fix the plastic problem with a couple of homemade too-sweet-not-enough-sour stir-frys!
Now, there’s no ‘skip to recipe’, but I have some important things to tell you as we go, it won’t go on forever I promise, but yes my husband Chad, our 18 children and 4 Alsatians love this recipe every time I cook it at our holiday home in New Havenshire.
The problem is already bigger than us and our consumption of single-use plastic is steadily growing, especially after the Pandemic - and there’s something we can do! Plastic isn’t inherently bad but the way it’s consumed is. One thing that we can do is to vote with our buck and keep personal consumption to an all-time low.
We’re starting easy with a summer classic to get that summer feeling even without the weather.
It’s BBQ time baby!
Photo by Vincent Keiman on Unsplash
Hack 1: Buy Fresh
Where would we be without some nice buns? Get shopping at the bakery section, most supermarkets have now switched to paper carrier bags. If you don’t already have your signature East London tote you’ve tote-ally (I’m sorry, please forgive me) got to grab one from Turtle Bags.
Alternatively, get wonky bread delivered right to your door from Earth and Wheat! You never have to leave the house again now that you can get your carbs delivered… ah I feel the sweet, sweet lockdown weight coming back already!
Hack 2: Plan
When looking at going plastic-free everyone says how expensive it is, which it can be, unless you have “A Pla-”. You could actually end up saving. UK households binned £13.5 billion worth of edible food in 2015. That's an average of £540 per household in a year!
Friends by Warner Brothers
I mean, is food waste the third biggest contributor to Greenhouse emissions? Yes. We know that, but what keeps us up at night is the mouldy veg draw in the fridge... we’ve all been there no shame just never, never again! Check out our interview with Lagom Chief Founder, Martyn Odell, for an insight into how he tackles food waste.
Hack 3: Look for Locals
Shopping locally is the easiest way to go plastic-free! Even if you’re in the city, local grocers always have great fresh veg (as well as those Scrumpy Jack cans!) London Fields Express will always have my heart! Local grocers are (usually) closer than supermarkets, better quality and need the support more after the last year. So put your buck back into your community and reduce your single-use plastic waste at the same time. Damn, you’re gonna really earn this burger.
Refill centres are also getting more and more popular! We’ve now got so many on our website, seriously, you’ve got to check them out.
Hack 4: THIS is why mum’s go to Iceland
When all else fails or is just too damn hard for a Tuesday night, the frozen section is a great way to find protein foods like your meat, tofu and soy burgers which are all wrapped in cardboard on a budget!
Hack 5: Get Saucy
Making your own sauces seems like a lot, but really the only way to go plastic-free with this is to DIY. Kill two birds with one stone, homemade sauce is a great way to use up excess veg. We don’t condone killing birds at Goodfind by the way, we are cruelty-free.
Recipe: Easy As Plastic-Free Burger:
Nice Buns
Patty Meat (or not) of choice
All the veg - we went with sweet peppers, toms, spinach (Fresh spinach not in a packet will change your salad experience for life, we swear) gherkin, cucumber, portobello mushrooms, chilli
Homemade Spicy Ketchup – or a sauce from Rubies
Butter to taste – (Naturli does a vegan wrapped plastic-free butter for all you dairy-free people, we found it at Sainsbury’s)
Photo by Like Meat on Unsplash
Make your own chilli oil - Easy As:
Oil – 1/2 cup at least, of canola oil (or any neutral oil, you can use Olive)
Fresh Chilli
Chilli Flakes – 3 tbsp can make your own as well (ours came from a pub that sell their flakes in jars)
Dash of Salt – to taste
Add chilli flakes to a pan of olive oil on medium stirring, allow to heat but not smoke for 5 mins (or more to get more flavour) then pour into a jar with the fresh cut chillies and set aside for coating the salad later.
Head out to the BBQ and get that sucker heating up while you prep the veg and have the ‘meat’ defrosting (you will need to defrost your meat in advance).
Wash all the veg. Plastic-free veg means double wash, especially in Covid times! It takes a while but it’s nice as you can take time to think about how damaged the oceans are by plastic and how humans end up eating over 40 lbs of plastic in their life so really what’s the worst an unwashed pepper can d- and done!
Chop that sh*t up! Cut some of the peppers bigger, if you’re using them, they go on the BBQ too.
Get your buns out, half and butter both cut sides.
Take a swig of beer now that the knife isn’t gonna be used again. To the fire!
Start with the meat on the grill, butter to coat the burger before they go on, “Mo butter, Mo better” as Honey Boo Boo Says. Find the heat and start cooking for 5-10 mins.
Add the peppers or other BBQ veg sans butter until everything is looking and smelling gooood!
Make room for your buns to toast.
Dump your non-BBQ veg in a bowl and add your chilli oil.
Burger Assemble! – this is up to you I went classic bun, homemade ketchup, salad, more ketchup, bun, pepper – no sauce around the pepper it will slip out on the floor you will be sad - and some fresh chilli.
Take another swig of beer, take a sexy, saucy photo (of the burger) and tag @goodfind.io on insta so we can see the beautiful plastic-free beauties.
If you want that 20 min Ketchup recipe that fed me and a house of five 25-year-old Kiwi men for two months (way cheaper than shop-bought btw) let us know on socials!
Words by Faith Sugden