Learning how to properly store food is essential to save money while ensuring your safety and that of your family. You can easily distinguish products that you can keep at room temperature from those that need to be stored in the refrigerator or freezer. Read this tutorial and stop throwing away spoiled food due to poor storage.
Steps
Method 1 of 3: At Room Temperature
Step 1. Use the FIFO system
This is the English acronym for "First in, first out" that is "First to enter, first to exit" and indicates that what is stored first must also be consumed first. Restaurant kitchens use this system to ensure the freshness of food, wherever it is stored. Restaurants, in fact, consume so many products that at each delivery there are only two or three foods that pass forward in the "queue" of the pantry. This system, at home level, requires that canned foods, in jars and all non-perishable foods should be labeled with the date of purchase. This way you are sure not to open a product you just bought.
Organize the kitchen cabinets, the refrigerator and all the spaces where you store food so that you always know what is there, where it is and which are the freshest products. If you find yourself with three open jars of peanut butter, you can rest assured that at least one will be thrown away
Step 2. If the fruit and vegetables need to ripen, leave them on the kitchen counter
Fruit should be left to ripen at room temperature without packaging or in an open plastic bag. When it reaches the degree of ripeness you want, transfer it to the refrigerator to extend its life.
- Bananas produce ethylene which in turn accelerates the ripening of other fruits. So, you can take advantage of this property and put a banana with the unripe fruit in the same plastic bag. Works great for avocados.
- Never put fruit in airtight containers at room temperature or it will rot in a short time. Check it carefully for dark spots or other signs of rot. Eliminate fruits that are no longer edible before they cause others to degrade.
- Be very careful of fruit flies that are attracted to that gear or so. Leftovers should be thrown away quickly. If you feel like you have a problem with fruit flies, start placing them in the refrigerator.
Step 3. Rice and cereals must be stored in sealed containers
You can put rice, quinoa, oats and all other dry cereals in the kitchen cabinets once they have been transferred to well-sealed containers. Glass jars, plastic tupperware containers and other similar items are perfect for storing this kind of food in the pantry and on the kitchen counter. This also applies to dried legumes.
If you leave your cereals and rice in plastic bags, be aware that beetle larvae could form. Plastic bags are perfect for storing this kind of food, but the small holes could allow insects to creep in, thus ruining large quantities of food. The best thing to do is to rely on sealed glass jars
Step 4. The tubers are stored in the paper bags
If they grow underground, they don't need to stay in the refrigerator. Potatoes, onions and garlic should be stored in a dark, dry and cool place and not in the fridge. If you want to keep them inside a container, use an unsealed paper bag.
Step 5. Fresh bread is kept fresh in paper bags at room temperature
If you bought fresh, crunchy bread, place it in a paper bag and leave it on the kitchen counter. In these conditions it will be great for 3-5 days, if you transfer it to the refrigerator you can keep it up to 7-14 days.
- If it comes to bread, you can also keep it in the fridge or freeze it. If you live in a region with a particularly humid climate, soft bread left at room temperature could mold very quickly. Then put it in the fridge or freezer, especially as you can quickly defrost it in the toaster.
- If you decide to leave the bread on the kitchen counter, never use plastic bags because they favor the formation of mold.
Method 2 of 3: In the refrigerator
Step 1. Keep the appliance temperature settings always at optimal values
Domestic refrigerators should be set at 4 ° C. Bacteria proliferate at temperatures ranging from 5 ° C to 60 ° C. Food exposed to temperatures within this range can cause food poisoning. Return cooked food to the fridge as soon as possible.
Check the temperature of the appliance regularly. In fact, this can fluctuate according to the amount of food present, so it is always worth monitoring it if you have an extraordinarily full or empty fridge
Step 2. If the food is already cold, put it in the refrigerator
Some foods can stay at room temperature on some occasions, but not on others. Where do you put the beer bottles? The pickles? Peanut Butter? The soy sauce? Here is the rule to follow: if something is already cold, it must stay in the refrigerator.
- Foods like peanut butter, pickles, and soy sauce can safely stay in the pantry until you open the package. At this point they must be put in the fridge. Foods in oil also follow the same rule.
- Canned food, once opened, must be stored at a low temperature. Anything from canned ravioli to green beans must go to the refrigerator once the package is opened. You can leave them in the original jar or transfer them to an airtight container.
Step 3. Wait for the leftovers to cool before putting them in the fridge
These should be stored in containers with lids, closed with cling film or aluminum foil. If the closure is rather loose, there are many chances that the food makes the inside of the refrigerator stink or, on the contrary, absorbs the odors of other dishes; all this, however, does not affect food safety.
- After cooking a food, store it in a large, shallow container instead of a small, tall one. The first guarantees a higher and uniform cooling speed for the whole dish.
- Meat and meat dishes must cool to room temperature before being placed in the refrigerator. If you put the cooked meat inside a closed container and then immediately in the fridge, the condensation will cause it to rot faster than normal.
Step 4. Store the meat the right way
Eat or freeze it within 5-7 days. If you can't eat leftovers quickly enough, put them in the freezer and defrost them at the appropriate time when you have less food in the fridge.
Raw meat must always be kept in the refrigerator and away from cooked meat and other foods. It should be wrapped tightly in cling film. Before consuming it, carefully check that there are no signs of rot (black or brown spots and bad smell)
Step 5. Refrigerate the eggs purchased at the supermarket
Those that are marketed in large distribution chains are quite old and it is best to store them at low temperatures until it is time to cook them. Check that they are still edible after breaking them and always open them in a separate container before incorporating them into the recipe you are preparing.
Freshly laid eggs do not need to be washed and are perfectly safe if kept at room temperature. If you bought them at the farmer's market recently, ask the farmer if they need to be washed and some advice on how to store them
Step 6. Cut vegetables should be kept in the fridge
Green leafy vegetables, tomatoes, fruit and vegetables should be placed in the appliance once they have been cut. To ensure maximum freshness, wash and dry them carefully and put them in the fridge in containers sealed with kitchen paper to absorb excess moisture.
You can keep the tomatoes at room temperature until you slice them. In fact, in the fridge they tend to become watery and keep for less time. Sliced tomatoes should be kept in a plastic container and at low temperatures
Method 3 of 3: In the Freezer
Step 1. Freeze the food after placing it in suitable sealed bags
Regardless of what you want to store in the freezer, the best thing to do is protect the food with a hermetically sealed bag after letting out all the air. This way you prevent cold burns on food that cause it to dry out. Freezer specific bags are the best tool for this.
Plastic containers, such as tupperware, are also good solutions for some foods. Berries with their juice or cooked meat are sometimes less appetizing when kept in bags, as are soups, in addition to the fact that it would be more difficult to defrost them
Step 2. Freeze the food in the right portions
To consume a frozen product, you must defrost it in the refrigerator. For this reason, it is good practice to freeze foods in portions that respect the needs of your family. So don't freeze a whole salmon, but individual steaks, so you'll only defrost as much as necessary.
Step 3. Label each container with the name of the food and the storage date
In that bag, inside the freezer, are there last summer's blackberries or 1994's venison? When foods freeze, they are not easy to recognize. To avoid this kind of dilemmas and identify everything, label each item you put in the freezer so you can quickly recognize it later.
Step 4. Cooked or raw meat can stay in the freezer for 6-12 months
This will be great for six months, after which it will start to become dry and less tasty. It will still be safe to consume, even if the flavor will have a “frozen” aftertaste and will lose the specific characteristics of the meat.
Step 5. Blanch the vegetables before freezing them
It is usually recommended that vegetables be cooked quickly before placing them in the freezer instead of freezing them raw. Unfortunately, once defrosted vegetables lose their original consistency, it is better to incorporate them into soups, stews or sauté them in a pan to be able to reuse them at best.
- To blanch them, cut them into large chunks and quickly dip them into boiling salted water. It only takes a minute or two of cooking, after which you have to transfer them to ice water to stop cooking. They will remain hard but partially cooked.
- Divide the vegetables into single-serving bags, label them and place them in the freezer. Wait until the vegetables are completely cold before freezing them.
Step 6. Return the fruits you want to keep in the freezer
The fruit freezing technique varies based on how you want to use it. If you have a lot of berries with which you want to cook a tart, anticipate the times and sprinkle them with sugar turning them into a filling before freezing them; all this will make future operations easier. If you want to freeze peaches, peel them as it will be difficult to do once thawed.
As a general rule, cut the fruit into pieces that are all the same, so that the freezing takes place evenly. You can also put a whole apple in the freezer, but it will be difficult to consume it later
Advice
- Make sure that between one food and another stored in the refrigerator there is enough space for air to circulate.
- Always use the oldest broth first.
- Mushrooms should be kept in the refrigerator in paper bags, plastic ones make them soft.
- Once you open a package of tofu, store the unused portions in an airtight container filled with water. Change the water every day. Tofu should be eaten within three days.
