If you're opting for more meat-free meals, trying to improve your diet or just getting a taste for salad as the weather warms up, your fridge is likely to be packed with colourful fruits and vegetables. But the healthy food stuffs are also be very particular with how they like to be stored.
One wrong foot and you could end up with sprouting potatoes and mouldy melons. Too Good To Go says Brits throw away 80 million usable food items each week, including 30.9 million fruit and vegetables.
To mark National Vegetarian Week, the unsold food app has shared some of the best tips and tricks for making your food go further and reduce waste. Here are five things to think about when storing your fruit and veg:
1. Keep your fruit and vegetables apart
A lot of fruits give off high levels of the natural ripening agent, ethylene, which can prematurely ripen and spoil surrounding produce. Examples include asparagus, cucumbers, broccoli and mushrooms - so it’s always best to store these on their own.
2. Don’t store onions with potatoes
Onions can make root vegetables go bad quickly, so it’s better to keep potatoes alongside things like pumpkins or squash in a cool, dark place (often in a paper bag works well) to preserve freshness. A better companion for onions is garlic as they can be stored near each other without ripening or spoiling. Just make sure it’s in a well-ventilated space, and that the skin of the garlic stays intact.
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3. Remove the tops straight away
Sometimes, root vegetables like carrots or beetroots come with the top still attached. These draw away moisture from the root part of the vegetable, causing it to wrinkle and wilt more quickly. As soon as you get the veggies home, remove the leafy tops and set them aside to be chopped into a salad, boiled into a stock, or whizzed into a pesto or smoothie.
4. Store raw vegetables in water to keep their crunch
Certain vegetables like carrots, celery or cucumber can go soft if left for a while. To avoid this, simply chop into sticks and place in a jar of cold water in your fridge - just make sure it’s airtight.
And remember to change the water every day or so to maintain the freshness. This hack also works to revive vegetables that have already softened.
5. Put a damp tea towel in with greens
For greens like lettuce, bok choy, kale and spinach, it is best to wrap them in a tea towel after rinsing to avoid excess moisture from causing it to deteriorate.
