How to Use Up a Glut of Courgettes, Tomatoes, Apples and Beans
- WRAP estimates that nearly 40% of the edible food wasted in UK homes is thrown away because it was not used in time, which is exactly what a glut invites.
- The Food Standards Agency says food can be frozen right up to and including its use-by date, and that defrosted food should be eaten within 24 hours.
- The US National Center for Home Food Preservation gives a water-blanching time of three minutes for both sliced summer squash and green beans before freezing.
- Plain vegetables are low-acid foods. Bottling or canning them safely needs a pressure canner, because a boiling-water bath does not get hot enough to deal with botulism spores.
- Hubbub's Community Fridge Network lists more than 700 fridges across the UK, and they accept surplus from households and gardens.
Late summer is when kitchens tip from plenty into mild dread. The veg box overlaps with the supermarket shop, the balcony pots hit their stride, and a neighbour leaves a marrow on the wall like a threat. Somewhere between good intentions and Thursday, the salad drawer turns into compost you paid for.
A glut is a logistics problem, and it has a short answer. This guide gives a ten-minute weekly sort, a crop-by-crop table, the UK and US food safety rules, and the places that will take what you cannot use.
Why does a glut so often end up in the bin?
Ripeness arrives all at once. Appetite does not. WRAP's research on household food and drink waste in the UK found that nearly 40% of the edible food thrown away at home is binned because it was not used in time. A quarter goes because too much was cooked, prepared or served. Both are about timing and quantity, not about caring.
UK homes threw away 6.0 million tonnes of food in 2022, of which 4.4 million tonnes could have been eaten. WRAP's March 2026 update puts the cost to an average household of four at £1,000 a year, or about £86 a month.
In the US, ReFED's 2026 report estimates 70 million tons of surplus food in 2024, roughly 29% of the food supply, at a cost of $762 per person.
What is the quickest way to deal with a glut?
Once a week in glut season, give the fridge, fruit bowl and windowsill ten minutes and sort everything ripe into three piles. Sunday suits most households.
One pot
Cook the biggest single thing your largest pan allows. Ratatouille takes courgettes, tomatoes, onions and whichever pepper is loitering, asks for no precision and tastes better the next day. A plain tomato sauce, a bean and tomato stew or a tray of stewed apple does the same job for other crops.
The mistake is planning six different courgette recipes. One big pot, eaten twice and frozen once, uses far more.
One freeze
Portion what you cooked but will not eat in the next two days, plus any raw surplus you can prep quickly, and get it into the freezer that day. Label each container with what it is and the date. Nobody recognises a mystery box in February.
One give
Bag the rest while it is still in good condition and pass it on. Options are listed further down. The give pile is surplus you would happily eat yourself, not the compost pile with better PR.
How do you store, freeze or preserve each crop?
Storage advice here follows Love Food Hate Waste, WRAP's consumer campaign. Freezing methods follow the US National Center for Home Food Preservation (NCHFP), which publishes tested times. Blanching means a short boil followed by a plunge into cold water. It slows the enzymes that turn frozen vegetables grey and limp.
| Crop | Store | Freeze | Preserve or batch cook |
|---|---|---|---|
| Courgettes (zucchini) | In the fridge. Eat cooked courgette within 2 days. | Slice 1cm thick and water-blanch for 3 minutes, or grate and steam for 1 to 2 minutes for baking. Love Food Hate Waste suggests grilling lengthways slices first. Best within 3 months. | Ratatouille, soup base, pasta sauce. Courgette relish or chutney made to a tested vinegar recipe. Do not bottle plain courgettes in a water bath. |
| Tomatoes | In the fridge to hold them; bring to room temperature before eating for flavour. | Dip in boiling water for 30 seconds, peel and core, then freeze whole or chopped. They collapse on thawing, so use them only for cooking. | Passata, roasted tomato sauce, chutney. Bottled or canned tomatoes must be acidified with lemon juice or citric acid. |
| Apples | In the fridge, where they keep far longer than in a fruit bowl. | Slice and toss with a little dissolved vitamin C (ascorbic acid) to slow browning, freeze flat on a tray, then bag. Or freeze as stewed apple. Best within 3 months. | Stewed apple, apple sauce, chutney, jelly. Apples are an acid fruit, so jams and jellies are the lower-risk end of preserving. |
| Green, French or runner beans | In the fridge, unwashed, and use within a few days. | Top, tail and cut, water-blanch for 3 minutes, cool in cold water, drain well and bag. | Bean and tomato stew for the freezer; pickled beans to a tested vinegar recipe. Plain beans are low-acid and need a pressure canner if bottled. |
Two honest notes on courgettes. They are mostly water, so cooked dishes freeze better than raw slices, and even blanched slices suit soups and sauces more than a stir-fry.
If the glut comes from your own pots, picking the fruit small and often slows the flood. One plant is usually enough for a household, a fact every grower learns one summer too late.
What are the freezing rules that matter for safety?
The Food Standards Agency describes the freezer as a pause button: food in it will not go bad, though quality slowly drops. The FSA suggests fruit, vegetables and baked goods are at their best within three to four months, and meat within two to three. The USDA gives a similar three to four months for frozen leftovers.
UK and US advice differs on one point. The FSA says to eat refrigerated leftovers within 48 hours or freeze them. The USDA allows three to four days in a fridge at 40°F (4°C) or below.
Both say to get cooked food into the fridge or freezer within two hours. The FSA adds that defrosted food should be eaten within 24 hours and reheated only once, and the USDA that leftovers should be reheated to 165°F.
For shop-bought food, the FSA is clear that a use-by date is about safety and a best before date is about quality. You can freeze food right up to and including the use-by date.
Freeze in the portion sizes you eat. A two-litre block of ratatouille that has to be defrosted in one go is the same problem at a lower temperature.
Is home bottling and canning safe?
It is safe when you follow a tested method, and risky when you improvise. The concern is Clostridium botulinum, a bacterium whose spores survive boiling and can grow in a sealed, airless, low-acid jar. The toxin it produces causes botulism, which is rare and can be fatal.
The NCHFP draws the line at a pH of 4.6. Low-acid foods, which it defines as meat, fish, poultry, milk and all fresh vegetables except most tomatoes, need to be processed at 240 to 250°F (116 to 121°C). Only a pressure canner reaches that.
A pan of boiling water tops out at 100°C, and the NCHFP notes that low-acid foods would need 7 to 11 hours in a boiling-water canner to be safe, which nobody does. Tomatoes sit close to the line, so tested recipes add lemon juice or citric acid.
In practice this leaves home cooks with plenty of lower-risk options: jams and jellies, fruit in syrup, and chutneys, relishes and pickles made to a published recipe with the full amount of vinegar and sugar.
Reducing the vinegar to taste changes the acidity and removes the safety margin. The riskier projects are plain vegetables, beans, soups and anything in oil, sealed in jars and kept in a cupboard. For those, use the freezer.
You do not have to preserve anything. Chutney is for people who enjoy making chutney.
Where to check, and when to get help
For preserving methods, use recipes from a tested source. In the UK, the Food Standards Agency covers chilling, freezing and date labels. In the US, the USDA's Complete Guide to Home Canning, hosted by the NCHFP, has tested processing times for common crops.
The NCHFP's rule is not to taste food from any jar with an unsealed or bulging lid, spurting liquid, mould or an unnatural smell.
The NHS lists botulism symptoms as blurred or double vision, drooping eyelids, difficulty swallowing and speaking, and weak muscles, particularly in the face. It is a medical emergency. Call 999 in the UK or 911 in the US.
What does one glut weekend look like?
Say Sunday's count is 3kg of courgettes, 2kg of tomatoes, 1kg of runner beans and a carrier bag of windfall apples. Here is one way through it in about two hours, most of which is a pan simmering while you do something else.
- 1.5kg of courgettes and 1.5kg of tomatoes go into a ratatouille with two onions. That makes roughly eight portions: two for Sunday, two for Tuesday, four frozen in pairs.
- 1kg of courgettes is sliced, blanched for three minutes in batches, cooled, drained and frozen in two bags for soup.
- The remaining 500g of tomatoes are dipped, peeled and frozen whole for winter sauces.
- The beans are blanched for three minutes and frozen in three bags of about 300g.
- The best apples go into the fridge. Bruised ones are stewed the same day, with two tubs frozen for porridge or crumble.
- The last 500g of courgettes and a dozen good apples go to the neighbours or the community fridge on Monday.
Where can you give surplus produce away?
Giving food away is the most under-used option, mostly because it feels as though it needs an occasion. Late summer is the one season when everyone understands. A bowl in the work kitchen or a bag on a neighbour's step needs no note.
For anything larger, the UK has two easy routes. Hubbub's Community Fridge Network lists more than 700 community fridges, which take surplus from households and gardens as well as shops, and are open to anyone with no means test.
Check your local fridge's own rules before you turn up, as many accept fresh produce but not home-cooked dishes. The Olio app lets you list food for people nearby to request and collect.
In the US, AmpleHarvest.org runs a free national registry that connects home gardeners with local food pantries willing to take fresh produce.
The organisation estimates that 11.5 billion pounds of garden produce go to waste each year, which is its own figure and hard to check independently, but the registry itself is a practical tool. Many pantries take produce only on set days, so look up the hours first.
The EPA's Wasted Food Scale ranks preventing waste and donating food as the best outcomes, with composting in the middle and landfill, incineration and the drain at the bottom.
How do you stop wasting the veg box?
Unpack it the day it arrives and put the fragile things where you can see them. Tomatoes, salad, herbs and soft fruit go at eye level in the fridge. Roots, onions and squash go lower down. Anything already on the turn goes straight into that week's pot or a freezer bag.
Love Food Hate Waste calls this an "eat me first" shelf, and it works because most box waste is a visibility problem.
If the same item defeats you every week, swap it, downsize the box, or pause deliveries while the garden is supplying you.
If you grow your own, the end of the courgettes is the moment to plan what follows them. Our guide to the autumn and winter garden covers what to sow next.
Questions readers ask
Can you freeze courgettes without blanching?
You can, and they will be safe, but the texture suffers, because enzymes keep working slowly in the freezer. The NCHFP recommends a three-minute water blanch for slices. Grated courgette for cakes and fritters gets a shorter steam of one to two minutes. Cooked dishes such as ratatouille freeze best of all.
How long do frozen vegetables keep?
For safety, as long as the freezer stays cold, because bacteria cannot grow on frozen food. Quality is the limit. The Food Standards Agency suggests three to four months for fruit and vegetables, and Love Food Hate Waste gives three months for courgettes and apples. Older bags are fine for soup.
Is it safe to make courgette chutney at home?
Yes, if you follow a published recipe and keep the full quantity of vinegar and sugar, since the acidity is what makes chutney a lower-risk preserve. Bottling plain courgettes in water is a different matter and needs a pressure canner.
Sources
- WRAP. Household Food and Drink Waste in the UK 2022; and press release on the cost of household food waste, 9 March 2026.
- ReFED. 2026 U.S. Food Waste Report (2024 data). April 2026.
- Food Standards Agency. How to chill, freeze and defrost food safely; Best before and use-by dates; Christmas food hygiene (freezing up to the use-by date). GOV.UK.
- USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service. Leftovers and food safety.
- National Center for Home Food Preservation, University of Georgia. Ensuring safe canned foods; Blanching times; Freezing summer squash; Freezing tomatoes; Freezing apples; Identifying and handling spoiled canned food.
- Love Food Hate Waste (WRAP). Courgettes; Apples; Nine foods you've been storing in the wrong place; Good food habits.
- Hubbub. Community Fridge Network. Olio. Olio food sharing app.
- AmpleHarvest.org. What we do.
- NHS. Botulism.
- US Environmental Protection Agency. Wasted Food Scale. Updated September 2026.
© The Reset Edit™ 2026 — Modern Tools + Lifestyle Essentials for Sustainable, Reset Living. All rights reserved.