The Best Way to Save Food and Store Leftovers -- Savings Experiment

Saving food isn't just efficient use of resources. It's an efficient use of your money. So what's the best way to keep your leftovers for later?

The USDA and the Census Bureau discovered that American retailers and consumers throw away about 96.4 billion pounds of perfectly good food each year. That comes out to about 122 pounds of wasted food a month by the average family, or about $600. In theory, if we were to preserve all of the edible leftovers we've got, we could cut more than a quarter of our waste.

One benefit of food preservation is that it enables you to buy in bulk, which provides a cost benefit all its own.

Freezing
The FDA and the USDA say that any food kept at zero degrees Fahrenheit can be kept safe indefinitely. Whether its flavor will keep, and for how long, is a matter of taste. Many find that the flavor of potatoes, rice, pasta, raw veggies, cream sauces and cheeses will deteriorate over time, but if you eat them quickly enough, and don't let them frost over in the back of your freezer, the change in flavor may not be discernible.