All common foods require proper storage. Food storage mistakes cost money and can lead to wasting the food and your precious time. Sometimes they can also lead to food poisoning and diarrhea. Often we eat our meal nicely and then end up putting all the leftovers in a messy manner.
This involves utilizing the wrong food storage containers and taking meals from the table to the refrigerator too quickly. Another component to suppose when it comes to food storage safety is shelf arrangement. After a long outing to the malls and markets, we begin to lay our perishables into the refrigerator before they spoil, placing items on shelves without great thinking.
This mistake seems insignificant, but it can impact us in many ways. While searching dates of expiry is widespread understanding, we hardly check what we should and should not be storing in the refrigerator. If one heeds their attention to fruits and vegetables getting from ripe to rotten too rapidly, it could be because one is keeping them in the wrong part of the refrigerator.
This not only barely wastes money, but finding that your produce is spoiled when we cook a meal is very frustrating. Here are 10 common one should avoid when storing food on refridgerator shelves:
10 Common Mistakes To Avoid When Storing Food In Refrigerator
1. Storing Food On Wrong Shelves
Selecting the wrong refrigerator shelf is an important food storage blunder. It is important to store food in the correct order to curtail the danger of cross-contamination. Foods that need more cooking must be placed at the bottom.
This way, even if liquids fall, they would be destroyed during the cooking process. For example, ground beef has to be cooked to an internal temperature of 155°F, so it should be stored above chicken, which must be cooked to 165°F. Hence, we must organise our food storage ensuring that foods which needless or minimal cooking are at the top.
2. Storing Food Uncovered
One often becomes lazy and makes the mistake of laying an uncovered plate or any food in the refrigerator. While this may not seem to be a primary problem, it can be a hazardous food storage mistake and lead to cross-contamination. By the way, this is followed to protect food from contamination but storing the food in covered containers moreover helps in lasting the food for a longer period.
If one is in a hurry, the least that can be done is to cover the food plate or bowl with a plastic wrapper or an aluminium foil. But one should take additional effort to cover the food in a container and store it in a refrigerator.
3. Storing Food Before It Gets Cool Down
One has to be extra careful while storing food in the refrigerator to keep it out of the danger temperature zone (41-135 degree Celsius). This is the only time frame when it is suitable to store food in the refrigerator uncovered. However, after the food has cooled adequately,one should move it to a covered container for long-term storage.
4. Using improper Food Storage Containers
The disastrous place to store food is in some takeout containers that many of us wish to keep away in our cabinets. They are good for transporting or storing our leftover dinner for lunch the second day, but they are not designed to be reused many times. The similar thing applies to yogurt cups and any sort of plastic tub that one buy food in.
5. Failing To Rotate The Food
Sometimes we observe that food in our fridge looks better on some days. It can look green and fresh or like after the date of expiry. This happens because one has not rotated the food. After going shopping for groceries, place the new food items behind the old items.
That is why sometimes commercial kitchens use this technique to help curtail the food waste.When one gets used to this habit, one would prefer to eat the oldest food first before it goes to waste.
6. Keeping Your Food Unsealed
One should not keep the tomato ketchup tossed up. One should tighten the bottles of mustard or salads. It is important to see that all your food containers are sealed properly.Or else one can end up with the rotting of food.Same principle applies to the food storage bags, plastic wraps or aluminium foil.One should seal everything very tightly.
7. Refrigerating The Wrong Product
Every product should not be stored in the refrigerator. Fruits that give us Vitamin C like citrus fruits should never be refrigerated as cold air may affect the taste of the fruits and perishable products.
However, some fruits need to be refrigerated like peaches, guavas,and other vegetables when they are ripe to prevent over ripening. A common mistake one happens to make is keeping apples open, but it should be kept in the refrigerator.
8. Keeping Refrigerator At The Wrong Temperature
If one notices that our food is getting spoiled or feels frozen in the fridge, then we can understand that the problem is not where and what one is storing but the temperature of the refrigerator plays an important role.
The temperature of the refrigerator should be set between 35° and 38°F and the freezer should be set to below 0°F. Hence, an optimal temperature should be set for the refrigerator. Finding difficulties in doing the same? Here is der-kuechenprofi.net with knowledge of easy tips for optimal storage, saving and adjusting temperature in the fridge.
9. Using Refrigerator Door For Perishable Items
One feels like the door of the refrigerator is the perfect spot to store perishable items like eggs and milk. However, this common mistake is very frequent because
The temperature tends to deviate there the most as we often open and close the door. Rather milk, eggs, and particularly meat should be stored in the frigid areas of the refrigerator.
10. Storing Food And Vegetables Together
Most of our refrigerators have a new product self at the bottom. And in the absence of space, we often blend fruits and vegetables in that same shelf.This is one of the common mistakes one makes which can curtail the lifetime of our produce.
Some fruits like apples, avocados, bananas, pears and tomatoes elicit a gas named ethylene which expedites maturation of other ethylene-sensitive produce around it. In the case of vegetables, this implies wilting and spoilage so it is best to keep fruits and vegetables distant in separate drawers or keep a barrier in between their shelves.
Conclusion
Having understood the common mistakes one should avoid while storing food on refrigerator shelves,we can understand that proper food storage is not something about which we carefully think about. But there is a lot more we can do to improve how we refrigerate our food and increase their shelf life.
One should make sure to encompass maintaining the fridge along with the other cleaning plans to correct some of these common food storage mistakes.
