Keeping your Vegetables Fresh and Crisp

Gone to supermarket today?

Notice that people do just unload the grocery stuffs from the bags and place it on the designated shelves. This includes plunking the vegetables into your refrigerator without any second thought of wrapping it. Time to learn how to use your refrigerator more efficiently and know why your lettuce turns brown, your carrots go limp, and your tomatoes taste like cardboard?

The following questions can determine the proper handling of vegetables:
1.    Which vegetable absord or release odors?
2.    How much humidity is best?
3.    Which vegetables absorb or release odors?
4.    Which vegetable adsorb or release ethylene?
5.    What’s your optimal temperature?


Get to Know Your Refrigerator

Your refrigerator should be in the right temperature of 34°- 40°F (1°-4°C) as disease-carrying bacteria grow above 40°F. Spoilage bacteria can still grow on foods at 40°F below. This case, the taste and smell are affected, but generally not harmful.

Vegetable can freeze if the temperature is too low as most refrigerators have particular compartments or commonly known as crisp drawers to store more fruits and vegetables, often with slide mechanisms to control the humidity in the drawer. You can spread an old newspaper in the crisps drawer to prevent mess and to keep it odorless. You can group vegetables by their temperature and humidity needs. Crisper drawers are most effective when they are at least two-thirds full.

Some households use a thermometer or a humidity gauge to examine temperature and humidity in different parts of the refrigerator. An open setting or ambient temperature and humidity in different parts of the refrigerator is good for green leafy vegetables, non-leafy, cucumbers, root vegetables, celery, collards, leeks, summer squash, and peppers. If the temperature stays below 40°F (4°C), food is safe to eat; if it goes above 40°F for over two hours, food should be discarded.