A balanced and healthy diet requires sufficient consumption of vegetables and fruits. They have numerous benefits for your body and can make you feel much more energetic in the long run.
Keeping a diet or a regime is not an easy task since you have to keep track of many details and follow a large shopping list. Moreover, once you get the needed products in your kitchen, you need to accurately store them, otherwise they would go to waste due to early ripening and spoiling.
There are many tricks that you can bear in mind when storing your food to enjoy it for a long time without having to worry.
How to Keep Fruits and Vegetables Fresh at all Times
You’ve decided to make some changes in your lifestyle for the better, and that includes enriching your diet with some healthy veggies and fruits.
You stack up on these natural goods, but two days after you find they’ve started rotting and you have to throw away your supplies. That’s no reason to give up on your healthy lifestyle – keeping these foods fresh has its secrets that you can learn in no time and apply with minimal effort.
Read along and soon you’ll be enjoying an always fresh supply of fruits and vegetables in your kitchen.
General tips
It’s recommended to store fruit away from vegetables, since fruits produce ethylene when they get ripe, which could be passed on to the vegetables and lead to early spoiling.
When storing apples, some people wrap each individual apple in paper so that one rotting piece wouldn’t spoil the whole brunch.
When storing plant foods never put them in completely closed containers or bags, since the interrupted airflow can cause perspiration that leads to rotting.
Refrigeration
Most leafy and crunchy vegetables like carrots, cucumbers and lettuce are best preserved in the refrigerator. Avoid storing them in plastic bags that would reduce the air circulation and lead to rotting.
Use a paper or a mesh bag for the hard vegetables, and wrap greens and herbs in a damp cloth, as they require moisture to stay fresh, and the towel will allow for sufficient air circulation.
If the plants come in a container, make sure it’s well perforated so that they can breathe.
Apples are best stored in the refrigerator, as well as pears, grapes, melons, and stone fruits like peaches and apricots. To extend the life of berries you can wash them in a solution of water and vinegar, then store them in the fridge.
Room Temperature
Certain plants will stay fresh for a long time if they are kept out of the refrigerator. These include bananas, lemons and limes, potatoes and tomatoes.
Tomatoes keep more of their taste and nutritional properties if stored outside the refrigerator, and most fruits prefer to be stored on the counter at room temperature.
Garlic, onion and potatoes are also better stored in dry and dark places in a mesh bag that allows plenty of air circulation.
When the fruits like bananas or avocados reach a good level of ripeness you can put them in the refrigerator to preserve that level as long as you need it.