Lining your crisper with a few sheets of paper towel absorbs the condensation that the veggies generate as they chill. Excess moisture can make your fresh foods wilt much faster, so the paper keeps them fresher for longer, and it keeps your fridge cleaner without any extra effort, because no one deserves to spend their hard-earned Sunday wiping up cucumber gunk.
2. Don't separate bananas before eating.
A photo posted by Make Up By Jinky (@jperidot70) on Oct 21, 2014 at 12:59am PDT
You may think you're being super productive packaging your 'nanas into day-to-day portions, but actually the trick to stop them going brown is to keep them together as long as possible. Wrap the stems of the bananas in plastic wrap when you first buy them, and only snap one off when you're ready to eat it. This should give you three to five extra days of perfectly ripe banana joy.
3. Put an apple in your bag of potatoes.
Sprouted potatoes are at the top of nobody's to-eat list. Keep an apple in the bag — apples produce ethylene gas, which keeps potatoes fresher and firmer, and ready for jacket-and-mash duties for a few more weeks.
4. But keep apples away from other fruits and veggies.
Ethylene gas may be good for potatoes, but it's bad for almost everything else. Keep apples out of the fruit bowl (and in a plastic bag in the fridge) and you should suddenly find that your other purchases keep much better.
5. Wash berries in vinegar.
Because fate is cruel, berries are both (1) pretty much the most expensive fruit and (2) the quickest to go moldy by a mile. You can extend their life by giving them a bath in 1 cup of vinegar and 3 cups of water before you put them in the fridge — this kills the mold spores and bacteria that turn them fuzzy. Just be sure to dry them thoroughly before storing.
6. Don't refrigerate your tomatoes.
Seriously. You'll kill their flavor, and their juicy texture doesn't survive so well in the cold either. To make the most of your tomatoes, keep them on a counter to allow them to ripen them to their full potential. FYI, other veggies that shouldn't live in the fridge include potatoes and onions, although they should be stored in a cool, dark place rather than within the sun's reach.
7. Wrap celery in foil.
In the plastic wrapper you get from the supermarket, celery will last a week or two at most – annoying if you only use a couple of stalks at a time. Swap the original packaging for a sheet of aluminum foil — it lets the gas that spoils your celery escape, rather than trapping it like plastic, so the celery stays crisp long enough for plenty more hummus-dipping adventures.
8. Treat herbs like a bouquet.
Buying fresh herbs in a bag and keeping them in there is a surefire route to grassy mush town. Instead, use what you need on the day, and then store the rest of the bunch in a glass of water on the windowsill. If you're enough of a successful adult to have dinner guests, you could even put a couple of different varieties of them on the table in place of flowers and let everyone garnish their meals themselves. You fancy biatch, you.
9. And when they're on the turn, freeze them in olive oil.
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When the method above has run its course, you can finely chop the herbs, add them to an empty ice cube tray, and then pour olive oil over the top. Freeze until set, and they'll last for months — to use, just add to a hot pan until the oil cooks down.
10. Keep mushrooms in a paper bag.
Proper grocers use these bad boys for a reason — paper bags keep mushrooms much more efficiently than the usual plastic tubs. Moisture is a slime sentence for mushrooms, so storing them this way keeps them clean and dry (and if you leave them too long and find they get too dry, you can give them a quick rinse in the sink and they'll plump right back up).
11. Let avocadoes ripen at room temperature.
There are few things in life sadder than going to make avo toast and finding a sad, rock-hard excuse for a fruit. Protect your brunch-making emotions by keeping avocadoes out till they're ripe (you know they're there when they give a little when pressed), then put them in the fridge to halt the process and keep them ready to eat. Once you've cut them, keep the stone in the remaining half and squeeze on a little lemon juice to preserve them even further.
12. Put your onions in tights.
Not your Wolford finest, obvs, but if you've got an old pair that have seen better days lying around, you could find a worse storage receptacle for your onions. Put them in one at a time, knot between each bulb and keep them in a dark, dry place until you need them. Yes, your housemates will probably question your life choices — until they've run out of dinner ingredients and it's old onion-tights to the rescue, that is.
13. Keep raisins airtight.
Raisin take years to go off properly, but going dry and rubbery takes them just a few weeks if you don't store them right. Putting your raisins in an airtight jar or tub will keep them fat, moist, and perfect for sprinkling over porridge. If they do shrivel up, soaking them in hot water for an hour or two will help, but as always, prevention is better than cure.
14. Ice your greens.
You're too good for limp lettuce and you know it. Rehydrate and refresh your leaves by separating them and tossing them into a sink full of iced water for anywhere from five to 30 mins, depending on how sad they're looking. Voilà – your dinner salad no longer earns itself a spot on Dimly Lit Meals for One.
From: Cosmopolitan
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