Grocery Store Glass

For the past few years I have been using grocery store glass as my food storage and meal prep containers. These are things like pasta sauce jars, pickle jars, etc. I kind of fell into this habit when I was moving around in college. Every year I would move into a new place and have a new schedule, so to help adjust I decided to make most of my meals pasta and sauce. This was something I could make fast and it allowed me to spend minimal time in the kitchen and more time doing other things. As I would go through the sauce jars I would clean them, remove the label, and save the lid. Within the first couple months of moving into my new place I would have a decent amount of glass containers. When I eventually had more time to spend in the kitchen making different meals, I had an assortment of glass containers to store leftovers and extra ingredients as well as for drinking beer water (crazy if you think I'm going to buy glassware to drink out of when a pasta jar can hold liquid just as well. *source below). When I needed to move again, I would recycle all of the jars I had collected to minimize what I needed to move around.

Not only did this save me time when settling into a new schedule as well as when I needed to move, it saved me money on food and having to buy food storage containers. I was already going to buy the sauce, why not keep the container, it's like it's almost free. Fancy meal prep containers are expensive and in my experience break easily. In my time of freezing food in these jars I have only ever had one crack on me, which cost me that meal and that glass. I had about 10 glass meal prep containers at the start of my meal prep journey, I only have 4 of the original. Most of them either chipped or shattered when moving and cleaning them. If one of my pasta jars break, it's no big deal. I go buy more sauce and I get to have the experience of making a good pasta, and at the end of it I have my food storage container back.

So how do I use these day to day? When I am meal prepping I typically try to make a months worth of meals at a time. I then scoop whatever I made into the various glass jars, I let the food cool in the fridge then I put them in the freezer. I try to count my calories, so I have a set amount of food I eat typically predetermined in grams for specific meals. I will take out a couple of jars from the freezer and defrost them in the fridge. In the morning before I leave for work, I will take one of my 4 original meal prep containers and tare it on a scale. Then I scoop in however much food I need into that container and take that to work. Over time since the meal prep containers are all the same size, I can eyeball how much I need to put in the container as it always gets filled to the same amount. As the week goes on I take jars out of the freezer to defrost in the fridge as needed.

If I have any leftover ingredients from meal prepping, I can throw them into a jar and put them in the fridge to use through the week. This has happened a lot with onions, peppers, and cheese. I will pre-shred a block of cheese, and pre-dice peppers and onions to add to the meals I make for dinner. This way the extras from my large meal prep do not go to waste. If I have an ingredient I don't think I will use soon and would spoil in the fridge, I will put it in a jar and into the freezer. Typically I am able to incorporate it into something eventually. I also use them to store dry ingredients in the pantry. I have a jar of indian chilli powder, cardamoms, etc. I have even made a copy cat instant pasta recipe with dry pasta and cheese powder that I would pre portion into a jar and when I was ready to make it I would empty the contents into a pot of boiling water. This is nice to prep when I have a camping trip coming up.

So how can you do this too? Start saving the glass jars you bring home from the grocery store. Jars with a wide mouth opening and uniform shape are best since they are easier to clean and get food into. The uniform shape helps it keep it's structural integrity when you freeze it and the food expands. Wash them when go through them, then run them under hot water to soften up the glue holding on the label. After a while a paper label will become wet and easy to peel off, if it is plastic the glue underneath should become soft and you can easily peel it off. If the label wont scrape off easily and you don't want to keep running the water, try covering the label with a paper towel and throughout the day making sure it stays wet, eventually the label will be soaked and should come off easier. The glue that is still on the jar will get softer under the hot water. Once soft, use the scrubby side of the sponge and some soap to scrape off the glue. This will ruin the sponge since the glue will be all in the sponge, so I typically wait until I have a few jars to scrape glue off of to make it worth tossing the sponge after. If you are finding that the sponge is not taking the glue off as fast anymore, you might need to grab another sponge as it is probably saturated with the glue and your just rubbing it around at this point. Wash the lids of the jars and then when everything is clean let it all dry. Then you can use them for any kind of storage.

When freezing food in the jars, I tend to only do so in jars that have a uniform shape, and I let them cool completely in the fridge before freezing. Also be careful freezing meals that are soup like, as they will expand more and have a better chance of breaking the jar. And I wouldn't use a 'fancy' or odd shaped glass jar to freeze soup like meals, as when it expands it could put pressure on odd parts of the glass and break it. The one jar that I did break was an odd shape and packed full of chilli. Something you could try when freezing soup like meals, is leaving some empty room at the top of the jar and freezing it on its side to give the food more room to expand. I have not tried this yet so I will see how well it works next time I make something sufficiently viscous. (Edit: I have tried this with a lentil curry that was very dense and soup like, and the jar did not break)

After freezing, pull out the food and defrost it in the fridge for 24hrs. Then pack food into another container that is a reasonable size to bring to wherever you are going, or if your forgetful like me and the container is a reasonable size, just bring that to work. Below is one of my containers that I just pulled out of my freezer this morning, and i'm letting it defrost on my desk for a while so it will be thawed by lunch time.

I encourage you to start saving some of the glassware you end up with after going to the grocery store. You will end up saving time and money, and it is better to reuse something than it is to recycle it.