Storing food safely helps to reduce food waste and keep you and your household safe from food poisoning.
There are several things you need to be aware of to store food safely. Storing food properly helps to:
Follow our advice on how to store, handle and prepare foods safely such as eggs, rice, fruit and vegetables.
Always check food labels so you’re sure about the right way to store your food. Check the food label to confirm:
If the label doesn’t show any storage instructions and it's a type of food that goes off quickly, put it in the fridge and eat it within 2 days.
Wasted food is wasted money — storing food correctly will help to reduce food waste and save money.
Different food types need different storage methods. Understand more about how to store food safely at home.
It's especially important to store meat and poultry correctly to stop bacteria from spreading and to avoid food poisoning. Make sure you:
• keep raw meat in a clean, sealed container on the bottom shelf of the fridge so that it doesn’t touch or drip onto other food
• follow storage instructions on the label
• don’t eat it past its use-by date
• cool cooked meat as quickly as possible and then put it in the fridge or freezer
• keep raw and cooked meat separate
Uncooked rice can contain spores of a bacterium called Bacillus cereus. This bacteria can cause food poisoning. Its spores can survive being cooked, which is why you need to take extra care when cooling and storing cooked rice.
The longer cooked rice takes to cool and is left at room temperature, the more likely it is that the bacteria will produce a toxin that will make it unsafe to eat.
It’s safe to eat cold cooked rice if it’s cooled down quickly, stored in the fridge and eaten within 24 hours. To store cooked rice safely:
Potatoes should either be stored in a cool, dry place or in the fridge. Acrylamide is a chemical substance formed when starchy foods, such as potatoes and bread, are cooked at high temperatures (above 120°C).
In the past we have advised not to store potatoes in the fridge. But a study in 2020 showed that this will not increase the level of acrylamide-forming sugars. For more information, please see the Food Standards Agency's advice on acrylamide.
Many types of food don't need to be kept in the fridge. For example, dry foods such as rice, pasta and flour, many types of drinks, tinned foods, and unopened jars. But it's still important to take care how you store them. To store these types of food safely:
To store food from a tin can safely:
This advice doesn't apply to foods sold in cans that have resealable lids, such as golden syrup and cocoa. This is because these types of food don’t react with the can.
It's best not to use kitchen foil or containers made from aluminium (such as aluminium pans) to store highly acidic foods such as:
Aluminium foil or containers can affect the taste of these sorts of food, especially if they are stored for a long time.
When using cling film, remember:
To cut down on plastic waste, opt for clean, sealable and reusable containers instead of cling film when you can.
