Everyone loves eating the brightly coloured fruit and veg that is increasingly available in markets and supermarkets. Tasty and fresh, they awaken and delight the taste buds. However, the tricky bit is in the conservation! Fruit and veg have a limited shelf life, and at a certain moment can suddenly become over-ripe, if not completely rotten. What you don’t know is that it could be poor storage habits that are not helping matters. We often think we are doing the right thing by putting everything in the fridge, but not all fruit and veg need this, and it can do more harm than good. It can even happen that we wash the fruit with the best of intentions on our return from the shop, but in the end this innocuous action damages our purchases (which may benefit from being washed only before use!). Here are a few tips to become the king or queen of food conservation.
[media-credit name=”ncstepstohealth.ces.ncsu.edu” align=”aligncenter” width=”800″]
[/media-credit]
A few supplementary tips:
1) Avocados
Avocados are notoriously difficult to choose and we often find ourselves with one that is not ripe enough. If this happens to you, put it in a paper bag with a banana. By contrast, if you want to keep it from ripening, you can put it in the fridge until you want to eat it.
2) Bananas
Bananas produce a lot of ethylene, meaning that it is better to separate them from other products to stop them from ripening them too quickly. If you would like to ripen something more quickly, put it with the bananas! This works even for apples.
You should store bananas at room temperature. If they ripen too quickly for your tastes, put them in the fridge in a sealed bag. You can also put a little cling film or tin foil around the ends to prolong their shelf life. In the fridge, the skin will blacken but the fruit will stay perfect.
3) Kiwis, melons, peaches, plums, nectarines, pears and apricots
Keep them at room temperature until they ripen.
Once they are perfectly ripe, put them in the fridge in a plastic sachet.
4) Onions and potatoes
Never put onions near potatoes, unless you want to rot the whole lot! They need to be stored in a cool, dry, ventilated area.
Related articles