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Back to Basics Food Storage
By Wendy Priesnitz
Refrigerators serve their purpose, but sometimes
low-tech solutions are better for preserving food.
Refrigerators are taken for granted as an
essential part of kitchens in the developed world – the bigger and fancier
the better. In our culture, they are assumed to be necessary for keeping
food safe and preserving its nutrition, as well as eliminating
labor-intensive daily food shopping. And, in many cases, they accomplish
those goals well, especially protecting us from harmful bacteria and
rancidity.
However, not all foods need to be kept in the
refrigerator. Some keep just as long, if not better, and preserve their
taste and nutrients better if they are kept elsewhere. Is your fridge are
filled with stuff that would last just as long and probably would taste a
lot better if it was never lost in the back corner?
At the same time, refrigerators take up a lot
of space and use a lot of energy – two commodities that we need to conserve
if we are to live more sustainably. According to the U.S. Department of
Energy, in most homes, the refrigerator is the second biggest user of
electricity, right after the air conditioner, even though the newer, Energy
Star rated appliances are much more energy-efficient than older models.
Are you paying a lot of money to store what
Shay Salomon called “C and C: condiments and compost” in her book Little
House on a Small Planet (Lyons Press, 2006)? If so, you might be able
to live comfortably and safely with a smaller refrigerator – or even get by
without one at all.
Before the refrigerator was invented, people
used low-tech solutions to keep food cold in cellars or underground caves.
Otherwise, food was preserved using methods such as smoking, salting,
pickling, fermenting, or drying. Kris De Decker of No Tech Magazine
“refuses to assume that every problem has a high-tech solution,” and shared
the innovative out-of-fridge design work of Korean designer Jihyun Ryou, who
says, “We hand over the responsibility of taking care of food to the
technology, the refrigerator. We don’t observe the food any more and we
don’t understand how to treat it.”
Whether you want to avoid upsizing your
refrigerator, are living off-grid and need to conserve battery energy, want
to go fridge-less, or simply have a harvest bounty to store, here are some
foods that don’t need refrigeration, and some suggestions for better ways to
store them.
Potatoes: The cold temperatures in
your fridge will actually turn potatoes’ starch into sugars, changing the
flavor and darkening their flesh upon cooking. You can store potatoes at
room temperature in a paper bag with holes punched in it. (Plastic bags
increase condensation, which leads to mold.) Store in a cool, dark place,
with ventilation. A root cellar or cool basement is best, but for short-term
storage of a week or so, a pantry or cupboard away from light and
heat-generating appliances will work; direct sunlight is harmful. Check
regularly and remove soft, shriveled, or sprouted potatoes. Sweet potatoes
also require low humidity and higher temperatures, which makes them
unsuitable for refrigerator storage; store them at room temperature but
check often because they are more delicate than regular potatoes.
Onions: Onions will soften in the
fridge and spoil faster than when stored at slightly higher temperatures.
(Their smell will also migrate to other foods in the refrigerator.) The
simplest way to store onions for regular use is in a hanging basket in your
kitchen – preferably in a relatively dark place and certainly out of direct
sunlight. For longer storage of onions from your garden, cure them first by
allowing them to dry for several weeks after harvesting. When the outer
skins have completely dried, you can either braid the stems together or cut
them to around an inch above the bulb. Store in any cool, dark, dry place
with adequate air circulation, such as a garage, root cellar, or dry
basement.
Garlic and spices: These also
require low humidity and temperatures that make them unsuitable for
refrigerator storage. Braids of garlic can be hung in any cool, dry place
away from direct sunlight; individual heads can be stored on the kitchen
counter in a specially designed garlic keeper with a lid and ventilation
holes. Fresh ginger can also be stored in such a container. Store dried
spices and other seasonings in air-tight jars topped with a bit of rice to
absorb humidity.
Fresh Herbs: Do not wash fresh herbs
until you’re ready to use them. (If you are growing them yourself, don’t
harvest until you’re ready to use them.) Snip off the bottom of the stems,
gather a bunch together, and place in a small jar or vase of water as you
would fresh flowers. Change the water daily. Loosely placing a plastic bag
over the herbs will conserve moisture while allowing air to circulate.
Tomatoes: Tomatoes can get mealy and
mushy if refrigerated. However, along with peppers, squash, and eggplants,
they need high relative humidity. They all can be stored on the kitchen
counter in humid weather. Or you can put them in a colander or unglazed
pottery bowl placed inside a tray of water, which will help increase the
humidity and help to keep them cool as well.
Bread: Bread (like other baked
goods) doesn’t have to be refrigerated; although it will last longer there,
its texture will change. If it will be eaten within a few days, you can
protect freshly made, uncut loaves of bread from pets and other creatures by
storing it in a wooden or metal breadbox on the kitchen counter, just like
grandma did.
Butter: Many people prefer to leave
their butter out of the fridge in a covered container so it is easy to
spread, and that is fine providing your kitchen isn’t so hot that it melts.
Or use a crock based on a French design (sometimes called a “butter bell” or
“butter boat”), which keeps butter fresh without refrigeration for up to a
month. Butter is packed into the underside of the bell-shaped lid and then
put into the crock filled with cold water.
Eggs: Since eggs have porous shells,
they easily absorb odors from other foods in the refrigerator. In fact,
fresh eggs don’t have to be refrigerated, and many people outside North
America store them in the pantry rather than the fridge. (You can test an
egg’s freshness by floating it in a bowl of water; the fresher it is, the
further it sinks. An egg that sinks but stands on its end is about two weeks
old and should be eaten soon; if it floats, don’t eat it.)
Vegetables: Many fresh vegetables
don’t need to be refrigerated. For instance, green beans can be kept in an
open container on the counter, covered with a damp cloth. Put upright stalks
of fresh asparagus loosely in a glass of room temperature water and they’ll
stay fresh for up to a week. Zucchini can also be kept for a few days on the
counter in a cool kitchen.
For longer storage, place carrots and other root
vegetables vertically in boxes of damp (not wet) sand, which will keep them
cool and maintain the necessary humidity. Keep the boxes in a cool basement
or root cellar, spraying the sand with water occasionally. In Northern
Nigeria, a man named Mohammed Bah Abba won an award for an improvement on
this idea. He put an unglazed earthenware pot inside a larger one. Fill the
space between the two pots with wet sand, place vegetables inside the
smaller pot, and cover with a wet cloth. As the water evaporates, it removes
the heat.
Apples: Since apples emit ethylene,
if you refrigerate them, they could hasten spoilage of adjacent produce. So
store apples in a bowl or basket on your kitchen counter. You can keep them
for three or four months in a box in a cool, dark spot where they won’t
freeze. Prevent contact between each apple (so one bad one won’t spoil them
all) by wrapping them individually in sheets of newspaper.
You can also try drying or canning for long-term
storage. The bottom line is that the more food you can keep out of the
fridge, the smaller it needs to be, the less energy (and money) it will
consume...and you just might find that less of your valuable food ends up as
compost.
Wendy Priesnitz is Natural Life Magazine’s editor. She has been a journalist for over
forty years and is the author of thirteen books.
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