Are you struggling with keeping food fresh for longer? Ever found your three days old Lettuces are already wilted and fuzzy while preparing a salad for your lunch? Even after you kept them in the fridge. Or found your berries are mouldy within two days? Well, these problems aren’t uncommon in our day to day lives. It happens because most of us don’t put much concern on storing our foods properly after returning from shopping rather than piling them into the fridge. As a result, a lot of foods get wasted every day.
So, how long can you keep your fruits and veggies fresh and crispy? Keeping food fresh does not only save your money but also is important for food safety. Here, I’ve come up with 11 genius hacks that would help you keep food fresh for longer than you ever thought. Keeping aside further ado, now let’s jump into the storing hacks for your food.
These simple but effective storing hacks would help you keep your food fresh for a long time and save your money through reducing waste.
Berries are very perishable among all the fruits and vegetables. They get mouldy soon if not stored properly. Besides, they’re one of the most expensive too. So you don’t want to see your berries are rotten within two days of purchase, nothing but wasting your hard-earned money. So, what to do?
No worries. There’s an easy solution to this problem. Before storing the berries in the fridge, give them a vinegar bath. Mix a cup of vinegar with three cups of water and wash the berries in the solution for five to seven minutes. This will kill the bacteria and mould spores on the surfaces of berries and increase their longevity. However, don’t forget to dry them thoroughly before putting in the fridge.
2. Put paper towels with your salad
Veggies are the main elements of salads, and they have a bad reputation for getting wilted and gunky sooner. It is because of the excess moisture generated from the condensation of veggies when they chill. You don’t want to find your veggies like this. If you want to keep your veggies fresh and crispy for a fine salad, all you have to do is just put paper towels with the veggies.
You might be wondering about how it would work. The method is simple. Paper towels absorb the excess moisture and keep the veggies fresh for a longer time. Moreover, it helps you keep your fridge clean. Moisture from vegetables eventually seeps and creates disgusting gunk at the bottom of your fridge. You can halt the process with these simple paper towels.
3. Keep an apple with the potatoes
Potatoes usually last for a long time, and you don’t need to refrigerate them. But the problem with potatoes is they get sprouted soon absorbing moisture from the air. And you won’t want to eat a sprouted potato. So, put an apple in your potato bag and keep it in the dark, cool place away from direct light. Ripe apple produces ethylene gas which prevents sprouting in potatoes and keep them fresher and firmer for a few more weeks.
4. But don’t put apples with other fruits and vegetables
The role of ethylene gas is to ripen fruits. So it can stop the sprouting of potatoes. But other fruits and vegetables don’t have the problem of sprouting, and you want to keep them fresh for longer. So ripe apples are good for potatoes, but they aren’t good for other fruits and veggies as they produce a huge amount of ethylene gas. The ethylene gas will ripe the fruits and veggies more rapidly and lessen their longevity. So try to keep apples away from other fruits. If not possible, then keep the apples in a plastic bag in the fridge.
5.Don’t store your tomatoes in the fridge
Tomatoes are normally a less lasting vegetable. Keeping them in the fridge may increase their lives, but it kills the flavour and taste of the nicely ripe tomatoes. Moreover, the juicy texture gets vanished in the cold temperature and the tomatoes ain’t no longer fresh as you wanted them. So, store tomatoes in a cool place out of your fridge and let them ripen to their full potential.
6.Brush avocado pieces with lemon juice or olive oil
Half-cut avocado pieces get brown coloured soon after leaving them in the air or even inside the fridge. It ruins the taste, and you may not like to see a gunky brown layer on the cut portion of your avocados. But you can easily avoid this problem. Brush the avocado halves with lemon juice or olive oil. The citric acid from lemon juice prevents the browning of avocado halves. Olive oil does the same by halting the oxidation process from the air, and you have fresh avocados for a longer time than before.
7.Wrap celery in aluminium foil
Celery usually lasts for a week in plastic bags. But if you want them to last for longer, you have to replace the plastic bag with aluminium foil. Aluminium foil lets the gas to escape that would be trapped inside plastic bags and spoil the celery.
8.Keep raisins in airtight containers
Raisins normally take years to completely go off. But the can get dried and lose their moist texture in a few weeks if not properly stored. So, you need to store them in airtight containers if you want to preserve the fat, soft and moist raisins for a long time.
9.Keep mushrooms in a paper bag
Mushrooms evaporate moisture over time. If you keep them in a plastic bag, the moisture will be trapped and condensed inside the bag. This moisture would eventually spoil your mushrooms. So, keep your mushrooms in a paper bag and keep the bag open. The paper bag absorbs the moisture and keeps the mushrooms fresh for longer.
10.Keep milk in the inside shelf of your fridge
To date, you might be keeping milk in the door of your fridge as there is a convenient shelf to keep milk bottles. But don’t you think the milk bottle is far away from the cooling elements? Yes, that’s true. So, keep your milk bottle on an inside shelf instead of the fridge door. It will keep the milk fresh for longer. However, don’t store milk in a plastic bottle. Use a glass bottle. It’s good to preserve the actual taste of the milk.
11. Don't put bread in the fridge
As we have trust in the fridge about keeping food fresh, we tend to store everything in the fridge. But that’s not a wise decision for bread. You won’t want to keep bread for weeks. Then why refrigerate it when the room temperature is perfect for keeping bread fresh for a while. Moreover, bread gets stale in the fridge quicker than the room temperature. So, keep your bread out of your fridge and it will stay fresh until your next breakfast.
Let’s wrap up
After going through this article, you’ve learned the hacks of keeping food fresh for longer. However, if you want to learn more about food hygiene and safety, a single article isn’t enough for you. In that case, you can consider taking an online course. Training Express is offering quality courses on food hygiene and safety. You can start with the Level 1 Food Hygiene and Safety Course. So enrol now and learn from experts.
I am Martin Jar a Health & Fitness Instructor In Training Express.I provide people useful information about health & fitness