One of the most frustrating parts of fresh produce is having it go bad before getting the chance to enjoy it. We've found a couple of methods that have worked for us to help maximize fridge life.
Asparagus seems to work best of the wood stalks (not tips) wrapped in a moist paper towel.
Beets seem to do fine unwashed in the veggie drawer, though we do remove the beet greens, leaving about an inch on the fruit and store that separately, as described below.
Kale, collards, chard, mustard greens, beet greens, turnip greens, etc. Kale and collard greens are pictured to the left. It's amazing how fresh and crisp items like kale look when you first get them home, but after one day in the fruit basket or just out in the fridge they've pretty much gone limp. We've tried a few different ideas with these and found the following to work the best. Lightly dampen a paper towel or cloth and spread the greens out on the towel. Keep the layer pretty light, then just roll up the towel and place towel and veggies into a plastic bag. We pulled our kale out last week on Thursday, so 5 days later and it was still as crisp and fresh looking as when we picked it up Saturday. It would have been good for at least another couple days. For beets and turnips, we just cut the greens off the fruit when we get them home and store them separately.
Salad greens, spinach, arugula, etc. Moisture seems to be the biggest enemy with these, so we pull the salad mix out of their container and onto a dry sheet or two of paper towel then roll them up and place them in a plastic bag making sure to squeeze as much air out as possible. So the only difference from above is that the paper towel is dry. If you notice the paper towel is getting pretty moist, swap it out. To the right is a picture of two bunches of mezuna, the one on the left was prepped as noted above, the one on the right was just in a brown paper bag. There was the same amount of both and you can see that the one stored in the paper bag was starting to wilt down.Mushrooms do really well in paper bags. I learned this tip from one of the farmers at Green City Market. They'll start to look a little dehydrated if left too long, but I'll take that any day over them getting wet and slimy, like when left in a plastic bag or left in the grocery store container.
Onions and sweet potatoes have a pretty long shelf life and do best in a single layer stored in any cool place. In the summer we use the fridge and definitely don't have the space to put these in a single layer and the do ok, but find we end up with some soft spots if left too long.
Radishes and Turnips do fine loose in the veggie drawer.
These are some of the items we've been seeing in our csa baskets as well as some other staples, at least in our kitchen.
Thanks, Zack! This is so helpful. We've been doing individual plastic bags for most of the greens and haven't had much luck so far. Definitely plan on using these methods from now on.
ReplyDeleteHey Zack, random question but I figured I'd post it here. We've been saving and using bacon grease for a little while now. We save it in a leftover coconut oil jar. My question is: do you save your bacon grease and, if you do, how do you store it? In the fridge? Pantry/counter? Some in the fridge, some in the freezer?
ReplyDeleteJim, we save our bacon drippings as well, typically like you in some sort of used container. We put ours in the freezer, typically because we don't know when we're going to use it next. We reuse the same container for about 2 months then throw out whatever is left and start fresh. Fridge is fine if you're going to use it within a couple of days. I would not put it in the pantry, since you're going to have some amount of residual protein left in the mix that would go bad if left out. The protein issue is the same reason why you put butter in the fridge and can leave ghee out. I prefer to use glass as to avoid any BPA issues. If using a steel can, like from canned vegetables or coconut milk, let the fat cool down before pouring it into the can to avoid melting off the coating into your bacony goodness.
ReplyDeleteOk cool, yeah, that all makes sense. We use leftover coconut oil jars so we're good there. We'll go with the fridge/freezer from now on, though.
ReplyDelete