If self-isolation taught us one thing, it was that home cooking has officially made a comeback. From baking bread to Sunday roasts, people discovered their inner master chef and turned to food and cooking for comfort. However, with fridge and freezer space a challenge at the best of times, the heaving fridge has become a sore point for many households. To help make kitchen life easier, celebrity dads Beau Ryan and Jimmy Rees share their fridge stacking game.
Beau Ryan
Hide the good stuff. Our son is a dairy addict, so we keep all the milk and dairy out of his reach. If we don't hide it on higher shelves, we find him raiding the fridge at midnight.
The crisper is your friend. Runs to the grocery store are harder than ever before so make sure you keep fresh fruit and veggies in the crisper. Our Westinghouse fridge has humidity-controlled crispers to keep unwanted moisture away and keep all the fruit and veggies fresher for longer.
Use what you have. If we know we won't use up fresh fruit and vegetables before they turn, we chop them up and freeze them. Perfect to whip out of the freezer for a cold smoothie.
The vertical stack. This is one for people who hoard things in the freezer - a great tip we've learnt as a family is to stack as many objects as you can vertically to save space. It makes it easy to see what we have on hand, saving us time and trips to the supermarket.
We group ingredients together to save time looking for them while we're cooking.
- Beau Ryan
Store like with like. We group ingredients together to save time looking for them while we're cooking. We keep condiments in the fridge door, creams and dairy in their own compartment and pre-cooked meals on the middle shelf. It also makes putting your grocery list together super quick and easy.
Jimmy Rees
Call me crazy. I keep all my sauces in the fridge. Cold tomato sauce is the best and I also keep Vegemite in the fridge. Don't ask me why, but melted butter on toast with a slightly cold spread (is) yum!
Height matters. I like to keep the top shelf of my fridge at a decent height so I can fit all those sauces and other tall items. We also put similar items together and keep most of the staples to each of the sides. This means I can chuck the random stuff that might not live in the fridge for long in the middle.
Batch cook. We make big batches of food for our one year-old twins and freeze them in snap lock bags. There is a drawer devoted to the twin's food, sometimes two drawers.
