Part of the battle of taking control of your kitchen is working to store your precious ingredients such that you can get the most out of what they have to offer. Here are 12 clever tricks to help you master the art of food storage preservation.
1. Store Apples and Potatoes Together
There’s some poetry to this one, given that the French for “potatoes” translates to something like “apples of the earth.” Some experts affirm that the ethylene gas emitted by ripe apples keeps potatoes from sprouting, and thus fresh and ready for cookin’. Just make sure the apples themselves are fresh!
2. Keep Ginger in the Freezer
Ginger can lose its freshness more quickly when left naked in the freezer. Do yourself a favor and keep it in a plastic bag. Not only does this help to preserve the ginger, but the cold will ensure that it stays firm and thus is easier to cut and grate.
3. Store Lemons and Limes in a Jar of Water
Lemons and limes losing their zest on you? Keep the juicy little buggers in a large mason jar filled with water. This will keep them fresh and ready to squeeze. Keep the jar in your fridge and you can also have yourself some citrus rain juice, provided you’ve used drinkable water.
4. Store Cut Avocados with Onions
Avocados can go from lovely, thank-god-for-these green to that please-god-why brown fairly quickly. To preserve the happiness inherent to their beautiful flesh, store cut avocados with a ripe onion. The sulfur that the onion contains will prevent the avocados from browning. That is to say, We like to imagine that the two are food buddies helping each other through hard times.
5. Bay Leaves to Keep Unwanted Guests Out of Flour
Don’t let grubby little pests keep you from achieving your baking dreams. Such pests hate the smell of bay leaves, so pop a few in your open bag of flour to keep it free from intruders. What’s great about this technique is how clean and simple it is. Therefore, Just make sure you don’t accidentally scoop a bay leaf into your next batch of cookies!
6. Store Lettuce With a Paper Towel
Another simple and easy trick, keep lettuce fresher longer by placing a paper towel on top within your storage container. The towel will work certainly to keep excess moisture from building up, keeping the lettuce crisp and ready for your next salad or sandwich.
7. Stir, Salt, and Freeze Your Eggs
Eggs are one of those ingredients that we often buy in bulk. So unless you’re eating them every day, which is honestly great, here’s a way to keep them cozy and ready for use for much longer. Crack the eggs into the pockets of a muffin tray and give them a quick scramble. Salt them to ensure they do not over-thicken, then freeze. You can pop them out when needed, and the process hardly affects the taste at all!
8. Keep Sliced Apples from Browning
Do you know those hair ties that keep disappearing like you’re haunted by some kind of hateful pixie? Put them to good use to keep your sliced apples fresh throughout the day. After slicing, keep the slices and core bundled up in their original shape to prevent air from getting to the goodness inside.
9. Store Cilantro With Water and a Plastic Bag
Unless you’re one of those poor souls that taste soap when eating cilantro for some god-forsaken reason. Therefore, here’s a way to keep this delicious herb from wilting. Firstly, Snip the bottom of the cilantro’s stems and place them in a bottle full of water like some beautiful flavor-giving bouquet. After that, Wrap the leaves themselves in a plastic bag and keep them in your fridge for food storage.
10. Store Onion In a Pantyhose
No, really. Keep onions nice, cozy, and fresh with a pantyhose by sliding them in one by one, tying at each onion. The pantyhose will keep moisture from getting to the onions, and you can store them in food storage hanging down like the rustic, ingenuity-seeking maestro you are.
11. Store Melons in a Cauldron
Keep your cut melons, whether honeydews or that king of summer fruits and watermelon in a cauldron placed over an appropriately sized bowl. The cauldron will allow you to drizzle water over the fruits before placing them in the fridge, keeping them hydrated without soaking them. Also, can we appreciate how witchy using a “cauldron” in your kitchen sounds?
12. Wrap Bananas Stems in Plastic Wrap
We can always appreciate the way bananas announce to the world that they’re ready to eat with their various hues, but brown is something we definitely don’t like to see. Keep the fruits fresher for longer by wrapping the stems of the bunch with a plastic bag. This prevents the ethylene gas that keeps the bananas fresh from escaping as quickly and giving you more food storage time to enjoy your daily boost of potassium.