Food Storage Tips: Onions, Carrots and Cucumbers

 

Food storage is a wisdom we should all have in our quest to be better budgeters.

 

Food Storage Tips: Onions, Carrots and Cucumbers

Our grandparents knew these tricks but somehow the secrets have been lost along the way of nuclear families, convenience foods, microwaves and takeouts. This new little series of posts aims to bring you food storage wisdom to help reduce the complete waste of food that goes on.  Accoprding to Love Food Hate Waste discarded food  costs the average household £480 a year, rising to £680 for a family with children, the equivalent of around £50 a month. £600 per year. That’s a holiday! So lets address that by knowing how to increase how long we can keep our food stored and fresh.

 

Know your onions

You should store whole onions in a cool, dark place away from moisture. For storing multiple onions, you could cut the legs off of a pair of clean tights; drop an onion into one of the legs, and tie it. Then you  drop in another onion and tie it off again. Continue doing this until the legs are full. Then, hang.  It will look very French !

Potatoes give off a gas that ripens onions so these need to be  stored separately.

Cucumbers

If you’ve ever wondered why cucumbers seem to turn soft and liquefied so quickly, it’s because the fridge is actually too cold – they’re best kept at 12-13°C.

Cucumbers do much better in the fridge than out in a warm kitchen. To protect them from the cold, try wrapping cucumbers in a tea towel and keep them in the salad crisper drawer. And keep them in their original shrink-wrapped plastic.

 

Carrots

To prevent condensation from forming, carrots should be wrapped in a paper towel and then placed  in a bag in the refrigerator, or use a perforated plastic bag. Excess moisture will cause them to rot. If the carrots still have the greens attached, cut them off.

 Photo Credit: John Morgan

P.S Wisdoms gleaned from family, friends, bits I have read here and there and time on my long gone allotment! If you know better or different enlighten me please!

 

Food Storage Tips: Onions, Carrots and Cucumbers – I hope you have found this post to be useful – you might also like my post on how to  cut down on what you are spending on food