Tips for Storing Vegetables in the Refrigerator
Vegetables are a term for plant foods that contain high water content and can be consumed after cooking or processing with certain techniques. The weakness of vegetables is that they easily wilt or rot, so special care is needed in storing vegetables in the right way to keep them fresh and safe to eat. The following are tips for storing vegetables.
- Choose Quality Vegetables
You have to choose the type of quality vegetable products. This means, you can try every effort to prevent vegetables from wilting when stored, but if the vegetable products you store are not of high quality, the vegetables will still wilt and may rot.
2. Separate vegetables and fruit
Fruits like apples, pears, and many other fruits produce a gas called ethylene, a gas that can speed up the ripening process of other fruits and vegetables that happen to be nearby. Therefore, you should separate between fruits and vegetables. Place vegetables and fruit in separate refrigerator drawers.
3. Don’t Wash Vegetables
Avoid pre-washing vegetable products, as moisture will speed up the spoilage process. The only two vegetables that are exceptions to this rule are scallions and asparagus. Both of these can be kept submerged in water, standing upright (but only 2-3cm of water).
4. Wrap Green Vegetables
Green vegetables should be consumed within 1-2 days after purchase to ensure the freshness of the vegetables and you can get all the nutrients of the vegetables. However, if you are going to store these vegetables, it is best to wrap the leaves in a paper towel so that the towel can absorb the excess water.
Leafy greens can retain excess moisture, so they will rot quickly. Once wrapped in a paper towel, put it in a plastic bag and store it in the refrigerator, you need to store the different varieties in separate bags. You can do this with lettuce, bok choy, Swiss chard, kale, and spinach.
5. Get rid of the Vegetable Stems
Leaves left on vegetables and between other vegetables can continue to give off moisture, which is a bad thing if you want to store for a long time because it makes the vegetables rot easily. You should cut the stalks on vegetables such as carrots and beets before storing.
6. Keep the Refrigerator Clean
Storing food, both vegetables and fruit, in a clean place, as well as a refrigerator where to store it. Ensuring that there is no stale or smelly food in the refrigerator ensures that the quality and freshness of the vegetables is also maintained because they are not affected by the spoiled food.
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