this must have been a high school project…
berries - do NOT wash in advance - that simply spreads any disease/spoilage to the whole batch, which goes bad before you can use them.
celery - aluminum is the most energy intensive packaging material - fyi for the carbonbigfoots. usually comes in a plastic sleeve - trim top to fit inside bag, give it a rinse with cold water to maintain humidity in the bag.
sealing greens inside an airtight container simply produces slimy leaves on a wet paper towel.
I did wonder about some of the advice. Thanks for your input. I was just about to try some of it.
I have to say I’ve done the washed lettuce in paper towels in a closed containers as son as we get our CSA box and it turned out quite well, or at least way better than not washing it and never using it.
I may have washed and spun them before layering flat with paper towels.
It took me forever to accept that berries and mushrooms should not be washed in advance. I am the type of person who will wash and store away everything as soon as I get home from the grocery store or farmers’ market.
Yuck. Was that recommendation in the article?
Mostly. Something I learned provisioning for long passages is to disinfect produce (1 Tbsp chlorine per gallon) before storage. This works for berries as well as other fruits and veg. The science bears this out.
Some world cruisers wash everything as moved from dinghy to boat and allow to dry in the sun. The goal is to keep bacteria, viruses, and insects out of the boat.
No solution better than bay leaves for weevils in grains. sigh
I agree with Tom about leafy veg in containers. I’ll go further and suggest that airtight containers are overused to the detriment of food life. The best storage I’ve found for mushrooms is a brown paper bag.
I also agree with @Respectfully_Declined that keeping produce in water in the fridge is impractical. The space impact is high, the high center of gravity leads to spillage, and the water needs to be changed often. Maybe if one has servants, or submissive teenagers.
How do you folks treat your leafy greens such as various lettuces? The ones I’ve had success with washing, spinning and storing wrapped or layered with paper towels in a container (not sure if “tightly sealed”), has been Romain, and maybe some of the softer ones l call “butter”.
I find if I don’t make them easy to use, nobody uses them, including me, and while while we all enjoy salads when dining out, I waste a lot of lettuce. I’ve also had some succes with storing in a “salad spinner”, but it’s big and bulky, and drips.
I think at least some folks are saying paper towels are okay, “sealed” containers are not.
“Master Class” on butter lettuce
" How to Prep and Store Butter Lettuce
If lettuce comes with the root attached, store lettuce head in its original container or a plastic bag, leaving the roots in tact and moist. If it is without the root, wash and dry the loose leaves, wrap them in paper towels, seal in a plastic bag, and refrigerate for up to 1 week."
Bingo. Sometimes being able to grab some washed stuff and get my dinner together quickly is the difference between cooking and ordering in. I wash lettuce, spin it dry and store it in one of these with a paper towel underneath:
Works good. Pretty much the only thing I don’t pre-wash is mushrooms.
I don’t buy much lettuce but parsley, thyme, rosemary, green onion, chives, asparagus, and cilantro I wrap in damp paper towel or pink butcher paper then store in the crisper drawer. Their shelf life far exceed my usage.
We put them in the vegetable crisper and eat them as fast as we can. My wife bought some patent ventilated containers that help a little but end up not getting looked at, at least by me, often enough.
In fact, it is not unusual for me to pull things out of the fridge and put them on the counter in baskets so I can see them and use them. Who cares if you lose a day or two of life if you eat them in time?
We make salad in bulk. Two days life for my wife - three days for me.
We work hard to avoid food waste. I call scavenging the fridge “refrigerator scraping” and our weekly meal plan gets edited based on how things are dying. “What’s for dinner?” “Something with mushrooms. And lettuce. And at least three tomatoes.”
This is all after meal planning for produce life. Avocados eaten right away, lettuce within days, cabbage longer, roots (carrots, onions, potatoes, last a long time).
We love chopped salads. I do like a salad that lasts several days. Is that a lettuce salad?
tee hee
Washing, spinning, and layering with dry paper towels in a sealed container has worked pretty well for me.
I’m terribly wasteful which is one reason I shop more frequent than most. Far too frequently I toss uncooked steak because I work too late and lose the ambition to cook.
You could make the case that it wastes plastic and maybe money, but those vacuum sealed bags add time for situations like that.
I have containers that vacuum seal as well, but find them trickier to use, and less reliable.
Good advice. I have a vacuum sealer. I will start do that as a matter of routine. Thank you!
We mostly use Romaine. Celery, carrot, peppers, sometimes onions. Tomatoes separately so the salad doesn’t get soggy. My wife will eat it over two days. I’m good for three but admittedly some of the lettuce is brown. Cabbage-based salads last longer.
when I want to taste bleach on/in my xxxx, I’ll find a different method…
Um, if you taste bleach then you’re doing it wrong.
The concentration of sanitizer in the wash water must not exceed 2000 ppm hypochlorite.
• The produce must be rinsed with potable water following the chlorine treatment.
Are you on utility water? How do you feel about chlorine or chloramine and flouride in your water from the tap? Look up the evaporation rate of chlorine.
My husband helped convince me to get a counter depth refrigerator inside ( with the workhorse refrigerator in the garage) bethis? Of things like compressors and things that are supposed to extend shelf life with filters like this
I have yet to add that part . Any thoughts about things like, this?
We have little porous packets of ethylene absorbent in our crisper drawers.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000QA8Q0K
Not magic by they do extend shelf life. Something built into the fridge would be nice. I suspect you’ll still have some element that has to be replaced every 60 to 90 days.
