It’s that time of year again, when you could find yourself with a refrigerator and cupboards full of leftover food. In this nutrition story from our archives, Jennifer Bowden wrote of the best ways to safely store those leftovers – and how humans are naturally averse to eating the same food repeatedly.
Question:
We get a large ham as a Christmas gift each year. I’m never sure how long we can safely store it in the fridge or what to do with the leftovers, as the family get tired of eating sliced ham in sandwiches and for dinner for weeks after Christmas.
Answer:
A Christmas dinner of succulent, honey-glazed ham sounds delicious, but eating leftovers for weeks afterwards is much less appealing. However, with food prices rising, minimising waste makes good sense. So, how to reduce waste while preventing ham overload during the holidays?
Cooked ham and turkey can be stored in the fridge in the short term, or for longer in the freezer. New Zealand Pork advises consumers to store their leg of ham in a ham-bag or wrapped in a damp tea towel in the fridge to stop it drying out. Ideally, wrap the ham loosely to allow air circulation, then place it in the coolest part of your fridge.
A ham with intact packaging can last up to three months (check the use-by date), but once it’s opened, the shelf life reduces to 1-2 weeks.
It’s best to freeze leftover ham immediately, as the freshness and quality of foods at the time they are frozen significantly influence the quality of the thawed product. So, on Boxing Day, decide how much leftover ham you will eat fresh in the next week or two, then freeze the rest immediately.
You can reasonably expect cooked poultry and ham to freeze well for up to four months and thus still thaw in good condition until late April (longer storage will likely result in quality deterioration).
To maximise the quality of your thawed ham, freeze it quickly. Rapid freezing stops the formation of large ice crystals, which damage cells during thawing, dissolving emulsions in the food and detrimentally changing the texture. To ensure foods freeze quickly, store them in a package no thicker than 5cm in a single layer over various freezer shelves; they should freeze within two hours.
It’s preferable to slice ham thinly before freezing. If necessary, rearrange foods temporarily to achieve single-layer freezing, then restack all the foods once they’re frozen solid.
Humans are naturally averse to eating the same food repeatedly, so consider various ways to include fresh ham and turkey in your meals. Sensory-specific satiety (SSS) is the name given to the decline in perceived pleasantness of a food as we eat it, compared with other foods.
Researchers usually talk about this phenomenon in relation to one mealtime, but studies have found it also occurs over six-month periods. For example, we might merrily tuck into a large bowl of pasta and enjoy the first mouthfuls, but halfway through, another forkful of pasta becomes the last thing we want to eat – this is SSS.
In the 1980s, researchers proved SSS existed over several months when they studied the food offered in an Ethiopian refugee camp. They found refugees rated the taste of three foods eaten for about six months as less pleasant than those of three new foods. In contrast, new refugees who had eaten only the regular diet for two days found the taste of these foods as pleasant as the new foods.
SSS encourages us to stop eating the same food and instead seek alternatives that differ in sensory characteristics, such as flavour, texture and macronutrient content. Hence, regular servings of sliced ham for dinner or in sandwiches become undesirable.
Instead, use leftover ham and turkey in a diverse range of salads, quiches, rolls and wraps. Slice it, dice it, shred it, eat it hot, eat it cold – the more variety, the better.
Hopefully, you can start the year with a supply of ham and turkey to enjoy over the holidays and the rest safely frozen for the coming months.
This story originally appeared in the December 24, 2022, issue of the New Zealand Listener.
