Have trouble with your food constantly going stale because you can't eat it fast enough? You could always freeze it, but that doesn't work for everything. Here are some great foods that can be easily repurposed or revived long after the expiration date ticks down.


We've shown you the best practices for preserving foods in the fridge, and you've shared your tips as well. But even still, certain foods—breads especially—can't be frozen. That doesn't mean you can't bring them back to life though. Here are some of the best foods you can revive, and how to revive them.


Revive Stale Chips, Snacks, Nuts, Bread, and More

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Sometimes it's really difficult to get through a whole bag of chips or an entire loaf of bread. The worst part is that after they're open they go bad quickly no matter how many precautions you take to keep them from going stale. Thankfully, bringing snacks of all types back to life is possible with nothing more than an oven and a microwave.

Revive Stale Cereal, Crackers, Popcorn, Chips, and Nuts in the Oven

According to Cozi, you can bring snacks back to life pretty easily. If your cereal, crackers, chips, popcorn, or nuts have gone stale, throw them in the oven for 3-5 minutes at 300 degrees. Pull them out and they'll be as tasty as ever. For larger chunks of bread, you can use ice cubes to bring them back to life


Revive Stale Bread with Ice Cubes Your bread has started down that inevitable path of turning into a brick only good for (maybe)… Read more

Toss Baguettes, Breads, Bagels, Cookies, Tortillas, and Chips into the Microwave

If you don't want to wait for the oven, or you just don't have one, many foods, especially thicker breads like baguette's and bagels can get tossed into the microwave for about 30 seconds. If they're especially stale, wrap them in a damp paper towel first.


For cookies, heat them up for one to two minutes to freshen them up. For dried out brown sugar, Real Simple suggest suggests tossing it in the microwave for 15 seconds. If you've accidently let your tortillas go bad and don't want to just fry them up, 15 seconds in a microwave and on top of wax paper will save your meal.

Refreshen Stale Coffee Beans on the Stove

The shelf life of coffee beans is pretty short, and a stale cup of coffee is usually really bitter. One trick to freshen them up a little is to throw them into a frying pan briefly. Lifestrong recommends you heat them until they're dry and no more. Will the stove magically make stale beans taste great? Nope, but they'll at least be a little less bitter. Photo by Victor Martinez.


Repurpose Stale Foods Into Other Things


Perhaps the microwave and oven can't save any of those breads and other snacks. In that case, it's time to start repurposing them. Thankfully, breads are incredibly easy to repurpose into a variety of different things. Here's just a few ideas to get you started.

Stale bread into croutons: Croutons are easy to make, and they're great for those last pieces of stale bread in your loaf. Chow recommends you

Croutons are easy to make, and they're great for those last pieces of stale bread in your loaf. Breadcrumbs: Breadcrumbs are great for all types of meals, and making them from your stale bread is easy. According to Wisebread

Breadcrumbs are great for all types of meals, and making them from your stale bread is easy. According to Stale bread or rice into puddings: Bread Pudding not terribly difficult to make

Fry it up: Frying up stale foods can often get rid the stale taste. French toast grilled cheese


Essentially, if you have any bread-type product—a loaf of bread, tortillas, pita, cereal, etc—you can bring it back to life somehow by either frying it up, using it as a stuffing, or dumping it in a soup of some kind. The best part is you don't really need to do much work. When you stock up on these foods, you can always find some use for them provided they haven't gone moldy yet. Photo by iris.

Title image remixed from Rubbermaid Products.