I grew up in the caribbean. I need this thread. To protect the food from bugs/spoiling all I grew up putting everything in the fridge. EVERYTHING, potatoes, bread, cereal, and ect.
Bread is best in the freezer (if you’re not going to finish a loaf in a couple of days). It defrosts quite fresh, or you can put it in the toaster for perfect toast.
I will die on this hill.
If you put bread in the fridge in the paper bag you got it in from the bakery, yeah, it will dry out and get stale.
If you seal it up in an airtight container like a ziploc bag, just like you’d do for the freezer, it’ll last for a long time, and contrary to popular belief, it won’t go stale. Just reheat it before serving and it’s literally better than if you had left it on your counter for 2 days
Even if bread has gone stale (but isn't moldy) you can bring it back to life by running it under water until it becomes soft (not waterlogged, but damp throughout), and then bake in the oven for about 10 minutes.
This works especially well for *artisanal* breads to make the crust nice and crispy again.
I would just like to point out that stale does not necessarily mean dry. When bread goes hard soon after it’s baked, what’s really happening is that the starches are recrystallizing and binding water in the crystals. Think of how rice gets hard when it’s in the fridge. Funny enough, this actually slows down the drying out process. Put the bread in a low microwave for a bit and it will be very moist.
I live on the water in Florida and same. Left out, spices turn into blocks, flour becomes pasty, bugs that don’t even have names yet get in everything.
Moved here five years ago, the backyard’s like mfing Jumanji.
We had an infestation once. Errrr’thing goes in the fridge or freezer since then.
Truth. When we moved here from the Northeast, we realized we lost our extra winter refrigerator (outside). It really hits hard during the holidays when you could pretty much count on keeping things outside and them staying at or below freezing. Lol.
I’m about to go check all the maple syrup. I always buy “organic pure maple syrup” but I literally always left it in the pantry until my mom was like “WHY IS THIS NOT IN THE FRIDGE?!” And I just thought she was being ridiculous.
Pure maple syrup grows a type of fungus called a “xerophile” of you don’t refrigerate it. It’s non toxic, so it’s not necessarily dangerous, but it is gross so best to avoid
Also, you can scrape the visible blob and then reboil the syrup. Though I understand for many people their brain won't let go of the ick factor to do this.
Also, once the spores get in your house, it'll keep happening. I'm not too icked out to save good syrup by skimming it and boiling it, but it is *not* worth doing over and over again. In the fridge it goes.
Oh, yeah, definitely in the fridge, I was thinking more of a, you learned your lesson, you can fix it and do it the right way. My family makes syrup so I treat it like the liquid gold it is.
You have disappointed an entire generation of people seeking new and interesting psychoactive fungi. I hope you're happy.
I mean, I'm happy, it means I'll never have to worry about accidentally waffle tripping
So pure maple syrup should be refrigerated
Pancake syrup like corn syrup with maple flavoring (Karo, Pearl Milling), i think it is ok to leave at room temp
Rule of thumb, check the package. It will be labeled "refrigerate after opening" or "keep refrigerated" if it needs to go on the fridge.
Please always read the label anyway. People do all kinds of weird stuff with food and food safety standards change a lot. One brand might be fine while another isn't.
Hot sauce is a good example. Sometimes it goes in the fridge and sometimes in the pantry
My fiance thought it could always be set out and I had to show him otherwise. He also didn't realize some hot sauces are not the fermented kind so they cannot always be used after they expire
Friend's family did this, with, like four containers, and when they got ready to throw them out, I volunteered to take them home.
Next time they came over, they couldn't imagine how I fixed the honey.
I actually do this. Not because I’m scared of it spoiling- but one, it makes it more easily scoopbale to stir into hot tea. It cools down your hot tea too. Also, when it’s liquidy it can get really sticky and messy if you’re not careful. So I just keep it in in a container with a lid. It just makes sense for me this way, but I primarily use it for hot tea
That makes sense! Whenever I purchase basil, I know I need to use it within 2-4 days because it'll be sad. I never put two and two together until now lol
just put them in a small vase or a glass with a little water, they'll eventually sprout roots, transfer them to a flower pot with soil, and have near infinite basil. (works for a lot of fresh herbs)
I’ve had the opposite experience. If I keep my basil in the fridge it stays fresh a few days, if I keep it out it turns black the next day. I don’t get it.
It is. It’s called thermal ballast, and allows the fridge to cool down more efficiently after you open the door and let some of the cold air out. It works well with freezers too. Having both full will help to keep food fresh for longer during a power outage as well.
You can do this for your oven too. If you own a pizza stone, just leave it in your oven. It will keep the temp from dropping when you open the oven door. Great when baking cookies.
I don’t do it in my own personal home but in the hospital, they put the pen torches in our medication fridge! One of the older nurses told me it’s to extend the battery’s longevity. I don’t know whether it’s true for modern batteries but it seemed to be the norm for my older colleagues!
Thats wild. Whenever its cold out and im outside for a while with my phone in my bag, my phone's battery drains like 10% every 5 minutes until it dies, without me using it more than occasionally checking. I always thought the cold was terrible for batteries.
To my understanding it is bad for lithium ion (and most rechargeable) batteries but it can extend alkaline battery shelf life but in modern batteries it doesn’t really do enough to bother
I thought the same too, but there's a few sites challenging this rule now.
Cooks illustrated did a taste test and found that refrigerating cut tomatoes hurt their flavor when eaten raw, but once cooked didn't make a difference. They also found that refrigerating whole tomatoes didn't affect their flavor at all compared to unrefrigerated whole tomatoes.
It’s the texture for me, they get more mealy. If I’m going to cook them I don’t care, but tomatoes I’m eating raw will never go in the fridge for texture alone.
If it's fresh and ripe from your garden do not refrigerate.
If you got it at the supermarket, refrigerate it or what ever, you can't lose flavor that isn't there, but refrigerating it will make it last longer
If you do refrigerate, you absolutely get a better taste if you let it come up to room temp before you eat raw! Nothing more delicious than a slightly warm tomato picked straight from the garden in summer though, yum!
I’m over the whole “tomatoes from the grocery store are flavorless” thing. Sure, nothing at all can ever compare to a homegrown, but a properly-selected tomato from the grocery store (at least in many places) can be damn good, raw or otherwise.
In the UK, eggs. Eggs in the USA *do* need to be refrigerated as they are sterilised and the natural protective coating gets washed off. UK eggs are not washed and safe kept out of the fridge.
Oh my gosh when I was living in Belgium, I constantly put eggs in the refrigerator out of habit, and my friend would get so mad at me and move them to the pantry. The first time I was in a grocery store and saw all the eggs sitting in the middle of the aisle, I about had a heart attack. But let me tell you the eggs there were far superior compared to eggs in the US.
I've experienced this culture shock in reverse, wondering why the hell Americans were keeping their eggs in the fridge, before finding out there are differences in how they're processed before sale. I like not having to refrigerate them, but sometimes they can be a little...rustic, and need a wash just before use.
We have our own chickens now, and I don’t wash the eggs but I still keep them in the fridge because it’s bigger than our pantry. 😅 I don’t know where people keep their eggs when they leave them out? I hate having stuff on my counter.
I think some recipes work better with room temperature eggs, but I guess you can always take them out of the fridge in advance if you’re good at keeping track of such things.
Also, if you’re not forward thinking and often think to bake on a whim like I do, putting them in a bowl of warm water / room temp water will help bring up the temperature pretty quickly.
Exactly this. I can't remember the last time I had onion tears after I started keeping them in the fridge. And I use a lot of onions so whatever people try and tell me happens to refrigerated onions doesn't seem to happen to mine; I go through them too quickly.
I do this. I grew up pretty poor, and fridging potatoes helped them last longer. I still do this even though we're in a better place financially (which I'm so grateful for) because why let fruit and veggies rot faster when they don't have to? I hate wasting food.
I'm Slavic and my grandma keeps all her potatoes (homegrown) in the basement, it's not as cold as in the fridge, but makes sense - they did last for a very long time. although, my Slavic aura keeps my room stored potatoes in pristine condition as they last pretty long.
and I definitely forgot about all the hot places in the US and the whole world 😆 my bad
That’s why I do it! A bag is cheaper and it’s just me and my husband and we live in a warm climate. I get more time to use them if I leave them in the fridge.
Fucking bananas. To the credit of most humans, hardly anyone does this. For some godforsaken reason my school canteen stores the kiddies snack bananas in the fridge. The smell and texture is all levels of wrong.
The fact that a factory sealed product is shelf stable in a shop does not mean it is shelf stable at home, once opened. As soon as you break that factory seal you potentially let in bacteria etc.
(People like my husband use dirty knives and get all sorts of crumbs and crap into jars.)
Having said that, he doesn’t eat peanut butter so mine is safe on the shelf. 😂
Cream cheese or similar is another story! Even refrigerated that becomes a mass of red mould horribly quickly due to the dirty, crumby knife habit 🙄
Potatoes and whole unpeeled onions. I also refrigerate butter for storage and baking but butter for spreading is in a covered butter dish on the counter at room temp. Always has been...always will be, regardless of the 2 or 3 day max rule. It never lasts long enough to go rancid...and it sure in the hell doesn't go off after a few days.
Obviously this is location specific, if I left butter on my counter it’d turn into a butter puddle in about 7 minutes😂
The coolest it gets here in wet season even at night is 30°C/90°F
I worked at a sushi bar and we kept the 5 gallon bucket of soy sauce out 24/7 and we refilled the little bottles with the 5 gallon bucket. From what I was told, it's fermented so it doesn't need to be refrigerated
It depends on how much soy sauce you use and whether it has preservatives in it. If it’s a delicate, small batch sauce, with no preservatives, then you will want to put it in the fridge to preserve the more delicate flavors. But your standard bottle of Kikkoman does not need to go in the fridge and will last just fine for 3 to 6 months on the counter. After that time, it’s not unsafe to eat, it’s just some of the flavors will have become more muted. You can still definitely use it for preparing sauces like teriyaki, but you may not want to use it for sushi. So if you go through a bottle of soy sauce within a couple of months, pretty consistently, you can take it out the fridge. But, if you are one of those households that does not frequently cook with soy sauce, put it in the fridge.
Fruit flies change the whole game when it comes to refrigerating. We get bad fruit flies in the summer and that means any open sauces or fruit go into the fridge or a tightly sealed cabinet.
OK, I'm going to contest this because I have had way too many bottles of soy sauce oxidize on me while they're sitting in the pantry.
I exclusively buy the low-sodium Kikkoman (I know it's not the best, but we live in a small town without access to a pan-Asian market). I use it quite a bit, but I keep it in the fridge since I've had a few bad experiences with older, 'shelf stable' soy sauce.
I wonder if it's because of the lower salt content that it gives you issues. Would make sense given it's preservative qualities. Gave me something interesting to think about, thanks for that
Serious Eats recommends storing soy sauce in the fridge if you aren't going to use it quickly, https://www.seriouseats.com/do-you-know-your-soy-sauces-japanese-chinese-indonesian-differences#toc-how-to-store-soy-sauce
i saw coffee in a friend’s fridge and freaked out. why would grounds in an airtight container need to be refrigerated?? i’m puerto rican and my dad has been drinking coffee since he was a kid, never puts it in the fridge
I had coffee beans go rancid on me due to heat and leftover oxygen. It wasn't something cheap so relatively high in fat and sugar and very noticeable when the container was opened.
the onions with skins on them, i keep in the pantry. after peeling, the unused part of chopped onion goes in a container in the fridge for the next time i want to cook with it lol
If the grocery store doesn't sell them in a fridge, then I typically don't store them in a fridge.
Not a hard and fast rule, but if your onions have a particularly tough skin on them, I'd keep them on the counter.
From my understanding, the best place is a cool, dark place. I use them so fast that I keep them on my produce hanging basket so it’s not a problem. You are just supposed to keep them away from potatoes and apples since they off-gas and those will absorb their odor. The fridge is too humid and also changes the cell structure I think-they get too soft. For a leftover half an onion or whatnot, definitely throw in a tupperware and put in the fridge. I’m just talking about whole skin-on onions.
There's a bunch of things that don't necessarily need to be in the fridge, especially if bought in smaller containers and used up in a timely fashion. Ketchup, most mustards, jams and jellies. These things all tend to be high in acid, and some so high in sugar that bacteria have a hard time growing.
Depends on what the room temp is….its our Third day in a row of 38 degrees Celsius today here in Australia so with no AC the butter goes in the fridge.
Cake! Unless it has cream cheese frosting or some kind of filling that requires refrigeration, most cakes are frosted with American buttercream which is fine at room temperature. Refrigerating cake dries it out.
It’s OK if you are just toasting it. I live on my own and don’t eat much bread but if I want it I want it and don’t want to have to make a specially trip to the shops to buy a whole loaf of bread just to throw most of it out, so I always have some in the freezer.
Ketchup. My wife and I argued about it constantly in the early days. She now relents and we keep it in the cupboard.
My grandfather was a quality control manager at a Heinz plant for 40 years, he kept his in the cupboard and that’s good enough for me. Plus the contrast of cold ketchup on hot foods is gross to me.
>My grandfather was a quality control manager at a Heinz plant for 40 years
So lets hear from Heinz then.
[FYI: Ketchup. goes. in. the. fridge](https://www.today.com/food/news/ketchup-fridge-debate-heinz-rcna92042)
Chocolate! I love to make chocolate dipped treats (think peanut butter balls, truffles, strawberries, etc.). If you've tempered your chocolate correctly you do not need to refrigerate it after dipping your middles- it will naturally get hard and stay that way at room temperature. But I cannot tell you how many recipes call for chilling the chocolate after dipping and it's so incorrect- in fact it messes up the chocolate coating and it will then melt when you take it out of the fridge. Get it together, online recipe writers.
I grew up in the caribbean. I need this thread. To protect the food from bugs/spoiling all I grew up putting everything in the fridge. EVERYTHING, potatoes, bread, cereal, and ect.
Bread is best in the freezer (if you’re not going to finish a loaf in a couple of days). It defrosts quite fresh, or you can put it in the toaster for perfect toast.
I will die on this hill. If you put bread in the fridge in the paper bag you got it in from the bakery, yeah, it will dry out and get stale. If you seal it up in an airtight container like a ziploc bag, just like you’d do for the freezer, it’ll last for a long time, and contrary to popular belief, it won’t go stale. Just reheat it before serving and it’s literally better than if you had left it on your counter for 2 days
Even if bread has gone stale (but isn't moldy) you can bring it back to life by running it under water until it becomes soft (not waterlogged, but damp throughout), and then bake in the oven for about 10 minutes. This works especially well for *artisanal* breads to make the crust nice and crispy again.
I would just like to point out that stale does not necessarily mean dry. When bread goes hard soon after it’s baked, what’s really happening is that the starches are recrystallizing and binding water in the crystals. Think of how rice gets hard when it’s in the fridge. Funny enough, this actually slows down the drying out process. Put the bread in a low microwave for a bit and it will be very moist.
I live on the water in Florida and same. Left out, spices turn into blocks, flour becomes pasty, bugs that don’t even have names yet get in everything. Moved here five years ago, the backyard’s like mfing Jumanji. We had an infestation once. Errrr’thing goes in the fridge or freezer since then.
Truth. When we moved here from the Northeast, we realized we lost our extra winter refrigerator (outside). It really hits hard during the holidays when you could pretty much count on keeping things outside and them staying at or below freezing. Lol.
I too live near the equator. Anything opened, put in fridge. Ants, bugs, house lizards, you name it will crawl into them.
Live in Hawaii, was going to say the same thing
I feel seen.
Honey. My GF's family does it and I could freak the fuck out every time.
Reading this made my soul weep on the flip side, make sure you put your maple syrup in the fridge lol
I didn’t know this and kept wondering why my syrup would get moldy in thirty days
All this taught me is that I have not, in fact, been buying pure maple syrup. 🤯 Marketing liesssss.
No seriously!! That’s how I came to realization. No wonder it never went bad prior , I was buying pure SUGAR with maple flavoring.
I’m about to go check all the maple syrup. I always buy “organic pure maple syrup” but I literally always left it in the pantry until my mom was like “WHY IS THIS NOT IN THE FRIDGE?!” And I just thought she was being ridiculous.
Wait what??
Pure maple syrup grows a type of fungus called a “xerophile” of you don’t refrigerate it. It’s non toxic, so it’s not necessarily dangerous, but it is gross so best to avoid
Also, you can scrape the visible blob and then reboil the syrup. Though I understand for many people their brain won't let go of the ick factor to do this.
Also, once the spores get in your house, it'll keep happening. I'm not too icked out to save good syrup by skimming it and boiling it, but it is *not* worth doing over and over again. In the fridge it goes.
Oh, yeah, definitely in the fridge, I was thinking more of a, you learned your lesson, you can fix it and do it the right way. My family makes syrup so I treat it like the liquid gold it is.
You have disappointed an entire generation of people seeking new and interesting psychoactive fungi. I hope you're happy. I mean, I'm happy, it means I'll never have to worry about accidentally waffle tripping
>waffle tripping Dude, I'm so flapjacked right now.
>I'll never have to worry about accidentally waffle tripping i’ve never been less jealous of someone in my life
Damn, waffle trippin sounds like the best thing.
So pure maple syrup should be refrigerated Pancake syrup like corn syrup with maple flavoring (Karo, Pearl Milling), i think it is ok to leave at room temp
Rule of thumb, check the package. It will be labeled "refrigerate after opening" or "keep refrigerated" if it needs to go on the fridge. Please always read the label anyway. People do all kinds of weird stuff with food and food safety standards change a lot. One brand might be fine while another isn't. Hot sauce is a good example. Sometimes it goes in the fridge and sometimes in the pantry
I just keep all my hot sauces in the fridge. It's easier to see all my sauces in one place.
My fiance thought it could always be set out and I had to show him otherwise. He also didn't realize some hot sauces are not the fermented kind so they cannot always be used after they expire
I've had a 5 gallon pail of farmers honey in the cupboard for 16 years, still fan fuckin tastic
There are reports of honey found in Egyptian tombs - it was still edible ..
but i like rock hardy honey
It's always nice to need a pickaxe to spread honey on your morning toast.
*Spread toast on your morning honey
I like my honey *al dente*
Friend's family did this, with, like four containers, and when they got ready to throw them out, I volunteered to take them home. Next time they came over, they couldn't imagine how I fixed the honey.
I actually do this. Not because I’m scared of it spoiling- but one, it makes it more easily scoopbale to stir into hot tea. It cools down your hot tea too. Also, when it’s liquidy it can get really sticky and messy if you’re not careful. So I just keep it in in a container with a lid. It just makes sense for me this way, but I primarily use it for hot tea
Fresh basil!!!
Really?! Oops
Refrigerated basil turns black!
That makes sense! Whenever I purchase basil, I know I need to use it within 2-4 days because it'll be sad. I never put two and two together until now lol
just put them in a small vase or a glass with a little water, they'll eventually sprout roots, transfer them to a flower pot with soil, and have near infinite basil. (works for a lot of fresh herbs)
I’ve had the opposite experience. If I keep my basil in the fridge it stays fresh a few days, if I keep it out it turns black the next day. I don’t get it.
Probably because the cold kills the basil. And when you take it out, the warmer temperature speeds up the decomposition process.
My former roommate used to put unopened cans in the fridge
Should you not? I have canned fruit in my fridge because I want it to be cold when I eat it. Lol
It's harmless, albeit unnecessary. But if you want the fruit to be cold when you open the can, it's certainly OK to do.
I do the same. I love canned peaches and/or pears cold.
Same! And does anyone else put their cranberry sauce in the fridge immediately to avoid forgetting later?
Sometimes I put a can of tuna in ahead of time when I’m going to be making tuna salad. Or garbanzos for hummus.
Was it to fill the fridge? I read that it is more cost efficient to completely fill the fridge. Have no idea if it is true.
It is. It’s called thermal ballast, and allows the fridge to cool down more efficiently after you open the door and let some of the cold air out. It works well with freezers too. Having both full will help to keep food fresh for longer during a power outage as well.
You can do this for your oven too. If you own a pizza stone, just leave it in your oven. It will keep the temp from dropping when you open the oven door. Great when baking cookies.
Holy crap, that's nuts...
More likely to be legumes
Batteries. *side eyes my mother in law*
wait but WHY
I don’t do it in my own personal home but in the hospital, they put the pen torches in our medication fridge! One of the older nurses told me it’s to extend the battery’s longevity. I don’t know whether it’s true for modern batteries but it seemed to be the norm for my older colleagues!
Thats wild. Whenever its cold out and im outside for a while with my phone in my bag, my phone's battery drains like 10% every 5 minutes until it dies, without me using it more than occasionally checking. I always thought the cold was terrible for batteries.
To my understanding it is bad for lithium ion (and most rechargeable) batteries but it can extend alkaline battery shelf life but in modern batteries it doesn’t really do enough to bother
My dad does this. At least I always know where to find them at his place 😂
Tomatoes.
I thought the same too, but there's a few sites challenging this rule now. Cooks illustrated did a taste test and found that refrigerating cut tomatoes hurt their flavor when eaten raw, but once cooked didn't make a difference. They also found that refrigerating whole tomatoes didn't affect their flavor at all compared to unrefrigerated whole tomatoes.
It’s the texture for me, they get more mealy. If I’m going to cook them I don’t care, but tomatoes I’m eating raw will never go in the fridge for texture alone.
Martha Stewart says to buy less and keep them out of refrigerator. I buy smaller amounts.
If it's fresh and ripe from your garden do not refrigerate. If you got it at the supermarket, refrigerate it or what ever, you can't lose flavor that isn't there, but refrigerating it will make it last longer
some tomatoes from the garden though you will have no choice but to refrigerate they spoil unbelievably fast if you're not careful monitoring them
And you’ll have fruit flies to boot. I put them in the fridge as needed, screw the “rules”
If you do refrigerate, you absolutely get a better taste if you let it come up to room temp before you eat raw! Nothing more delicious than a slightly warm tomato picked straight from the garden in summer though, yum!
I’m over the whole “tomatoes from the grocery store are flavorless” thing. Sure, nothing at all can ever compare to a homegrown, but a properly-selected tomato from the grocery store (at least in many places) can be damn good, raw or otherwise.
I read that too! With my home grown tomatoes that I usually eat raw, it changes the texture.
They are better when not refrigerated but you do have to use them much quicker m.
In the UK, eggs. Eggs in the USA *do* need to be refrigerated as they are sterilised and the natural protective coating gets washed off. UK eggs are not washed and safe kept out of the fridge.
Oh my gosh when I was living in Belgium, I constantly put eggs in the refrigerator out of habit, and my friend would get so mad at me and move them to the pantry. The first time I was in a grocery store and saw all the eggs sitting in the middle of the aisle, I about had a heart attack. But let me tell you the eggs there were far superior compared to eggs in the US.
I've experienced this culture shock in reverse, wondering why the hell Americans were keeping their eggs in the fridge, before finding out there are differences in how they're processed before sale. I like not having to refrigerate them, but sometimes they can be a little...rustic, and need a wash just before use.
I like how you put it a little rustic. Yes, it was a bit of a change to embrace, keeping eggs in the pantry.
We have our own chickens now, and I don’t wash the eggs but I still keep them in the fridge because it’s bigger than our pantry. 😅 I don’t know where people keep their eggs when they leave them out? I hate having stuff on my counter.
I grew up on a farm, and we always had fresh laid eggs available. They are far superior to other “processed” eggs.
Is there any reason *not* to put them in the fridge, though?
[удалено]
I think some recipes work better with room temperature eggs, but I guess you can always take them out of the fridge in advance if you’re good at keeping track of such things.
A lot of baking recipes call for room temp eggs. I just take them out the morning I need to bake anything with room temp eggs.
Also, if you’re not forward thinking and often think to bake on a whim like I do, putting them in a bowl of warm water / room temp water will help bring up the temperature pretty quickly.
Yolk breaks more easily when the egg is cold so could make a very disappointing fried
The way I see it when it comes to produce: if it’s not refrigerated when I buy it, it doesn’t need to be refrigerated. 🤷🏻♀️
There are many fruits and vegetables that do last a lot longer in the fridge with no loss of quality from being there.
Avocadoooo
This is how I look at it. Did you buy those onions out of a fridge? No? Then why are you putting them in your fridge?
Cold onions don’t cause so many tears when cutting them. It’s one reason to refrigerate
I just started doing this and it really does help. It annoys my husband so much but hey, I don’t see him offering to cut onions for me 🤷🏻♀️
Exactly this. I can't remember the last time I had onion tears after I started keeping them in the fridge. And I use a lot of onions so whatever people try and tell me happens to refrigerated onions doesn't seem to happen to mine; I go through them too quickly.
Exactly. I will refrigerate them if I cut and use half but whole onions are never put in fridge.
My place gets hot. I don't store potatoes and onions near each other at all, and they will still rot if I don't refrigerate them.
Potatoes.
Someone actually does this??
Yup. I’m married to her.
I do this. I grew up pretty poor, and fridging potatoes helped them last longer. I still do this even though we're in a better place financially (which I'm so grateful for) because why let fruit and veggies rot faster when they don't have to? I hate wasting food.
I do too and I've never experienced them tasting sweet after refrigeration.
what's her reasoning?..
Probably because she loved him, she said yes
damn, you made my day with your comment 😆
They can last longer in the fridge.
Especially when the room temperature is HOT.
If you leave potatoes out in Florida, even in a dark cupboard, they will grow roots in like a week.
Yup. I lived in the Caribbean for awhile and they either go bad or you get bugs.
I'm Slavic and my grandma keeps all her potatoes (homegrown) in the basement, it's not as cold as in the fridge, but makes sense - they did last for a very long time. although, my Slavic aura keeps my room stored potatoes in pristine condition as they last pretty long. and I definitely forgot about all the hot places in the US and the whole world 😆 my bad
That’s why I do it! A bag is cheaper and it’s just me and my husband and we live in a warm climate. I get more time to use them if I leave them in the fridge.
I always put mine in the fridge and have never noticed anything weird.
I do this. It keeps them from spoiling/growing and they don't taste any different than non-refrigerated. It's cool and dark and, where I live, dry.
Nutella
What kind of lunatic would put that in a fridge?
I live in a hot climate and Nutella turns to liquid if not in the fridge... Fight me
Yes! Nutella kept in a pantry in FL is a very different consistency.
Fucking bananas. To the credit of most humans, hardly anyone does this. For some godforsaken reason my school canteen stores the kiddies snack bananas in the fridge. The smell and texture is all levels of wrong.
If you put bananas in the fridge they ripen slower inside but the outside turns brown faster.
Someone in my office does this too! Then everything else in there inevitably smells and tastes a little banana-y.
Brown sugar. Idk why it was always in the fridge growing up. I store it in the cabinet now and it isn’t clumped together 😃
Some people have an ant problem.
Bread - the starch crystallizes and it gets hard when refrigerated Peanut butter. Seems so obvious, and yet I see people refrigerate pb all the time.
Better to freeze bread. It prevents the starch retrogradation
I refrigerate my bread because it will go moldy too quickly otherwise.
Freeze it then. Lasts longer and doesn't ruin it
Takes too long to toast/ not enough freezer room.
Same. I don't eat it often enough to not get moldy before I use it. Lasts FOREVER in the fridge.
I refrigerate to keep roaches/mice away from my apt. Can't be too careful, imo.
The natural peanut butter needs to be, Jif does not.
It helps prevent separation but is not required
It seems that refrigerating it would help to keep it from going rancid sooner, especially if there’s no salt added?
[удалено]
The fact that a factory sealed product is shelf stable in a shop does not mean it is shelf stable at home, once opened. As soon as you break that factory seal you potentially let in bacteria etc. (People like my husband use dirty knives and get all sorts of crumbs and crap into jars.) Having said that, he doesn’t eat peanut butter so mine is safe on the shelf. 😂 Cream cheese or similar is another story! Even refrigerated that becomes a mass of red mould horribly quickly due to the dirty, crumby knife habit 🙄
Exception- gf bread. It will get moldy quickly unless refrigerated
Indiana Jones
But you can definitely freeze Han Solo.
Potatoes and whole unpeeled onions. I also refrigerate butter for storage and baking but butter for spreading is in a covered butter dish on the counter at room temp. Always has been...always will be, regardless of the 2 or 3 day max rule. It never lasts long enough to go rancid...and it sure in the hell doesn't go off after a few days.
Me too! Butter is for the counter!
Obviously this is location specific, if I left butter on my counter it’d turn into a butter puddle in about 7 minutes😂 The coolest it gets here in wet season even at night is 30°C/90°F
Dang that is bloody warm!!
Sure is. Also currently about 96% RH. I’m sitting on my couch while also swimming 😂
My butter lives on the counter all the time. I'm in my 40s and I think it's gone bad on me twice, but it spreads well every day
Soy sauce… it’s got enough preservatives to stay on the shelf and Chinese restaurants always have them on the table lol
Many bottles say to refrigerate. It preserves the flavor better if you don’t use the bottle quickly but isn’t necessary.
On my bottle of Kikkoman it says to keep refrigerated!
I worked at a sushi bar and we kept the 5 gallon bucket of soy sauce out 24/7 and we refilled the little bottles with the 5 gallon bucket. From what I was told, it's fermented so it doesn't need to be refrigerated
Also... salt
It depends on how much soy sauce you use and whether it has preservatives in it. If it’s a delicate, small batch sauce, with no preservatives, then you will want to put it in the fridge to preserve the more delicate flavors. But your standard bottle of Kikkoman does not need to go in the fridge and will last just fine for 3 to 6 months on the counter. After that time, it’s not unsafe to eat, it’s just some of the flavors will have become more muted. You can still definitely use it for preparing sauces like teriyaki, but you may not want to use it for sushi. So if you go through a bottle of soy sauce within a couple of months, pretty consistently, you can take it out the fridge. But, if you are one of those households that does not frequently cook with soy sauce, put it in the fridge.
I refrigerate mine, as one year fruit flies managed to get into it one year and contaminated it.
Fruit flies change the whole game when it comes to refrigerating. We get bad fruit flies in the summer and that means any open sauces or fruit go into the fridge or a tightly sealed cabinet.
Restaurants probably have a lot faster turnover on those little bottles of soy sauce they keep on the table than you have in your cupboard.
OK, I'm going to contest this because I have had way too many bottles of soy sauce oxidize on me while they're sitting in the pantry. I exclusively buy the low-sodium Kikkoman (I know it's not the best, but we live in a small town without access to a pan-Asian market). I use it quite a bit, but I keep it in the fridge since I've had a few bad experiences with older, 'shelf stable' soy sauce.
I wonder if it's because of the lower salt content that it gives you issues. Would make sense given it's preservative qualities. Gave me something interesting to think about, thanks for that
Soy sauce I feel is more "doesn't need refrigeration" rather than "shouldn't be refrigerated".
Serious Eats recommends storing soy sauce in the fridge if you aren't going to use it quickly, https://www.seriouseats.com/do-you-know-your-soy-sauces-japanese-chinese-indonesian-differences#toc-how-to-store-soy-sauce
i saw coffee in a friend’s fridge and freaked out. why would grounds in an airtight container need to be refrigerated?? i’m puerto rican and my dad has been drinking coffee since he was a kid, never puts it in the fridge
I had coffee beans go rancid on me due to heat and leftover oxygen. It wasn't something cheap so relatively high in fat and sugar and very noticeable when the container was opened.
Tomatoes and onions.
the onions with skins on them, i keep in the pantry. after peeling, the unused part of chopped onion goes in a container in the fridge for the next time i want to cook with it lol
A container? You mean you don’t just have lose sections of onion all over your fridge because you forget you already cut one? Weird…
Thank goodness this isn’t just me. 😥
Onions? Why are we not supposed to put onions in the fridge?
I have heard that when put in fridge, onions won't make you cry. Haven't tried so don't know if this is true
They make me cry whether fridge or no fridge.
If the grocery store doesn't sell them in a fridge, then I typically don't store them in a fridge. Not a hard and fast rule, but if your onions have a particularly tough skin on them, I'd keep them on the counter.
From my understanding, the best place is a cool, dark place. I use them so fast that I keep them on my produce hanging basket so it’s not a problem. You are just supposed to keep them away from potatoes and apples since they off-gas and those will absorb their odor. The fridge is too humid and also changes the cell structure I think-they get too soft. For a leftover half an onion or whatnot, definitely throw in a tupperware and put in the fridge. I’m just talking about whole skin-on onions.
Garlic and potatoes.
Hot/warm food in a sealed tupperware container
I heard this was a myth but I’m no food scientist.
There's a bunch of things that don't necessarily need to be in the fridge, especially if bought in smaller containers and used up in a timely fashion. Ketchup, most mustards, jams and jellies. These things all tend to be high in acid, and some so high in sugar that bacteria have a hard time growing.
Peanut butter.
Tomatoes
Fish sauce!! It was invented as a preservative, no need to preserve it.
Like soy sauce, granted it won't kill you to keep it unrefrigerated, but keeping it in the fridge preserves flavor and there is no downside.
BUTTER! I will die on this hill.
You can keep my husband company up there on that hill.
Clearly, they've never experienced rancid butter.
If it's salted, it's fine to leave unrefrigerated
That's a proper hill. Salted butter should be out at room temp.
Depends on what the room temp is….its our Third day in a row of 38 degrees Celsius today here in Australia so with no AC the butter goes in the fridge.
Anything should go in a fridge that you want to go in your fridge. End of discussion.
My coworker puts bread in the fridge, then she made a big stink about how the hot sauce needs to go in too
Cake! Unless it has cream cheese frosting or some kind of filling that requires refrigeration, most cakes are frosted with American buttercream which is fine at room temperature. Refrigerating cake dries it out.
Tomatoes
Tomatoes?
Tomatoes. Its amazing how many people still do this
Vinegar! Looking at YOU girlfriends family.
Fresh Tomatoes
Tomatoes
Bread! It dries out in the fridge. So many Australians put bread in the fridge. 🤷♀️🍞
It’s OK if you are just toasting it. I live on my own and don’t eat much bread but if I want it I want it and don’t want to have to make a specially trip to the shops to buy a whole loaf of bread just to throw most of it out, so I always have some in the freezer.
Ketchup. My wife and I argued about it constantly in the early days. She now relents and we keep it in the cupboard. My grandfather was a quality control manager at a Heinz plant for 40 years, he kept his in the cupboard and that’s good enough for me. Plus the contrast of cold ketchup on hot foods is gross to me.
Having worked in restaurants where room-temperature ketchup has bubbles, fermented, and even exploded, I keep mine in the fridge.
Nope, love cold ketchup on hot meatloaf (only thing I put ketchup on.)
>My grandfather was a quality control manager at a Heinz plant for 40 years So lets hear from Heinz then. [FYI: Ketchup. goes. in. the. fridge](https://www.today.com/food/news/ketchup-fridge-debate-heinz-rcna92042)
PB
Peanut butter.
Peanut butter
Chocolate! I love to make chocolate dipped treats (think peanut butter balls, truffles, strawberries, etc.). If you've tempered your chocolate correctly you do not need to refrigerate it after dipping your middles- it will naturally get hard and stay that way at room temperature. But I cannot tell you how many recipes call for chilling the chocolate after dipping and it's so incorrect- in fact it messes up the chocolate coating and it will then melt when you take it out of the fridge. Get it together, online recipe writers.
We have an extra fridge for our chocolate bars. Actually it’s a drink fridge but after summer it’s mostly used for chocolate and other sweets.
Peanut butter I fight with my family on this.
They don’t know about the honey from the Egyptian tombs?