An ancient method that keeps Afghanistan's grapes fresh all winter | Hacker News Reader

An ancient method that keeps Afghanistan's grapes fresh all winter

atlasobscura.com

I once heard in central Anatolia people used to store grapes on the vine. They would trim the end of the vine, pluck one of the fresh grapes and stick it on the trimmed end. Finally vines would be hanged from the ceiling of a cool cellar.

My grandfather told me that the nutrients and moisture within that one grape would keep the others alive for longer.

I've seen the same thing done by my grandfather in Eastern Europe.

Actually I re-read OP's comment and that's not what my grandfather did.

He just cut the whole vine with the grapes still on the vine.

The anatolian process seems a bit more complicated, but I guess you cut less vine.

Actually the grape on the end is needed so the cellar knew it was the end of the vine. Otherwise the cellar would throw a compiler error.

Or the the grape on the end was used to properly indent from the wall as the cellar doesn't need EOL indicators since everything will have the proper white space.

Both of you need to hang on the vine.

How do you stick it back on to the vine?

Kind of prick the end of vine (the place where vine was cut/sheared) into that one single grape like a needle.

People do something similar with allium family plants as well. I think we’ve been doing this a lot longer than anyone really knows.

In Spain there's a variety of tomatoes called "tomates de colgar" [1], which means "tomatoes to be hanged". I've also heard the term "tomates de invierno" ("tomatoes for the winter"). The idea is that you hang them in a dark, dry place, and they'll last until the next summer. It's absolutely amazing picking up a tomato that was collected 6 months ago, and cutting it open to discover a fruit full of juices and flavor.

IMO the industrialization of agriculture and livestock was a huge leap forward in terms of yield and productivity, but a huge step backward in everything else (health, taste, variety, know-how, etc.)

[1] https://marksvegplot.blogspot.com/2016/09/tomates-de-colgar....

>but a huge step backward in everything else (health, taste, variety, know-how, etc.)

Absolutely. And we don't need no studies for it neither. Sheer sense of taste and common sense is enough.

I vehemently disagree. Stuff like this is very subject to "things were better in my day".

Did you even read and think about what I wrote, or did you just do a knee-jerk reply? I said sense of taste and common sense, not lamenting in a blanket kind of way for the past. Jeez. I'm big on innovation (see my work blog, HN comments, etc.), but I don't think that everything newer is automatically better, or that everything older is automatically better either.

And in case you didn't get it, I meant "sense of taste" as in the physical sense of taste of food, because that is what my parent was talking about, not taste as in aesthetics.

And did you know that the entire country of Denmark and the entire Indian state of Sikkim have gone organic, or plan to?

Also search HN (via hn.algolia.com) for my comments about Gabe Brown of Brown's Ranch, ND, USA. Check his videos, about regenerative agriculture (and why he switched to it, and the benefits he found over many years in money and health, vs. his conventionally farming neighbors across the road), nutrient density of food now vs. then, and more. Do some research on specifics, only then talk. Easy to generalize or handwave.

Also look similarly, on and off HN for Jean-Martin Fortier (Canada), Geoff Lawton (Australia), Richard Perkins (Sweden), Krishna McKenzie (India). I wrote about them too, on HN.

All of them have videos of their real work at their real sites. Many of them are world-famous in their field.

Those are just a tiny percentage of people applying more sensible techniques or permaculture and organic farming.

Did you know that the US Dept. of Agriculture has been recommending no-till for some years now, at least in some cases?

Edited for typos and grammar.

I don't like to hand out downvotes, but your conduct here is possessed of bountiful opportunities for improvement.

Might I suggest taking a walk? Perhaps come back when you're more inclined to engage with the commenter's not-completely-unreasonable point about cognitive biases?

I'm a bit busy, will reply after a while.

I finally replied, in other parts of this subthread. Your points were not important enough to me to reply earlier :)

Not worth my time to engage more, due to the silliness and insignificance of the whole (finger-pointing and moralising) issue.

I will end now, but, as a public service (like you grandiosely and egotistically thought you were doing, except that mine is sincere and better-motivated), to show others the cheapness and shittiness of such finger-pointing and moralising, I will leave you with this very relevant quote, by past U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, often termed "The Man in the Arena":

Video:

Watch "The Man in the Arena – Teddy Roosevelt (A Powerful Speech from History)" on YouTube

https://youtu.be/A311CnTjfos

Text:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_in_a_Republic

That point about cognitive biases wasn't really relevant, though. Writing off someone's (clearly well-thought-out) opinion as some run-of-the-mill "back in my day" remark also happens to possess bountiful opportunities for improved conduct.

Happy to take part in undoing downvotes, though, while we're on the topic of HN metadiscussions. Or is defending one's own arguments/positions out of line on HN these days?

For my own part, I mark a difference between fairly defending one's position and what we witnessed above. That was:

* Poorly formed. It has no clear central thesis and could have been reduced to and improved by a handful of relevant links.

* Lacking in charity. The comment in question did not have to be read as a personal attack, as others demonstrate.

* Egotistical. Your typical user does not check the CV of every commenter they engage with. This is not a reasonable expectation. Very few commenters are particularly notable people, and this user does not appear to be a noted agronomist whose opinion could be reasonably regarded as authoritative.

All of these combine in my eyes to create a comment worth discussing as poor in the hopes of improving the contributor's behavior. They clearly have good information to share. We would all be better off if that was what took place.

I agree with you that the comment that received this response is also far from ideal. I think it is reflexively glib, but perhaps without rising to the level of meriting a call-out. I recognize that this is a judgement call on which reasonable people might disagree.

Just to have fun (as you probably thought you were having with me, even if subconsciously), I'm reviewing a few of your points "in the hopes of improving the contributor" (presumptuous and prissy!), as you said about me:

Poor command or at least poor usage of language, even though guessing English is your native tongue:

Minion, one does not say:

>a comment worth discussing as poor

Instead, one says something like:

A poor comment.

Or even:

I did not like that comment.

KISS!

>They clearly have good information to share. We would all be better off if that was what took place.

Ahhh. The vain and unwarranted use of the royal "we". Sadly, "we" can see that "thee" have (or is it "thou hast", I don't care, ha ha) aspirations of greatness beyond thy abilities, as said in a sibling or nephew/whatever comment, varlet :)

Also, how doth thou know that they have good information to share, if thou implieth (above) that such did not take place?

Har de har har.

1. Might I suggest that you try to sound less prissy / less like a scandalized Victorian schoolmarm in your choice of words, and meaning?

2. See what I said to user maccard in this subthread, here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26683149

Much of that reply applies to you too, both about thinking too much (mathematically or analytically) (or prissily :) about really simple staightforward issues, as well as the reverse, i.e. not thinking (clearly) enough about stuff that is really easy to understand (like my comment that you responded to). All you have to do is not let you own biases (as you presumptuously, wrongly and hastily accused me of) get in your way.

>engage with the commenter's not-completely-unreasonable point

Wow.

Might I suggest you stop using weasel words, or stop waffling.

You could have said "reasonable point", unless you're waffling to leave yourself with an escape hatch (because you don't have the courage of your convictions), which your later reply to yellowapple also suggests:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26607927

That reply sounds heavily like weasel words to me.

Even your first sentence above smacks of weasel words:

"I don't like to ...".

Just "hand out" [1] the freaking downvote or comment and be done with it, FFS. Qualifying with "I don't like to" is weak. But then again, it's clear that you are ... weak.

[1] Jeez, "hand out", ha ha. Seems like you are trying to sound like a king, or more likely, queen, from on high, to boost your ego, what else.

But no thanks, Your Majesty. I'll skip kissing the tip of your robe, or whatever that fucking retarded feudal custom is. /s

Yeah, right :)

I agree in general, but in this case you can prove it for yourself by growing your own tomatoes (or whatever works in your climate) and comparing it to what you get in the store.

At least in California, the difference is often night and day.

Well that's a bit cheaty, I think. California's an agricultural powerhouse for good reason: lots of sunshine, temperate climate, rich soil, decent amount of water (droughts notwithstanding).

Having an orchard at home, at neighbors'/friends' homes, etc. is one of the few things I miss about growing up in the Central Valley.

It's not only California. I grew up a bit south of the Arctic Circle, home-grown tomatoes up there are also leaps and bounds tastier than the supermarket stuff. Of course the time window for your own tomatoes is very limited so it's just an autumn delicacy.

I will defend many things provided by industrialization but I will never defend the modern tomato

When I eat a tomato from my own garden it tastes better than anything I can usually get from the supermarket. And for this finding I am factoring in the fact that I might want it to taste better because it is my garden after all.

A lot of supermarket tomatoes are flavourless red balls of water.

Disagree away. It's your right to disagree with my opinion, as it is mine to disagree with yours, or with your opinion of my opinion :)

You need to get out more. I grew up in India and watched this trade off play out in real-time. Yields went up, taste and quality declined. But still not as bad as the US.

>You need to get out more

Ha ha, you put that well. He or she sure does. It shows.

The person didn't get the point from my reply, though I made it fairly clear. Hope they get it, at least from the multiple replies to them, about taste of tomatoes and other produce, etc. The point being, not to make blanket unqualified statements, and not to reply without properly understanding what the person they are replying to, is talking about. That is an all too common failing by Hasty Harry-type people, on many online sites, not just HN. And often, the same people who make that mistake, criticize others for it.

Right, but only sometimes.That does not mean that what you said applies in my case above. just that you think so. "Very subject to" is not hard facts, it is hand-wavy. Very poor logic on your part, because I clearly said, above:

>Sheer sense of taste and common sense is enough.

Those are good enough ways of judging situations in some cases, particularly day-to-day life issues, i.e. applying heuristics, common sense, empirical reasoning, etc. Works for me and many others, for many, even most, non-hard-science cases. E.g.: See what others said in this thread about tomatoes. Do you do a mathematical proof for every such judgement call (like which tomato to buy, organic or industrial), that you make in life? if so, you must have a huge backlog, ha ha, or not have time to have a life at all.

I've noticed that when you put a bag of potatoes in the fridge, they will still keep far shorter than if you had them in a dedicated potato cellar. Likewise, most of the old houses around the farmstead I grew up had unheated walk-in pantries next to the entrance. Often vegetables keep for far longer in those pantries than in the fridge. But of course the fridge beats out storing the veggies on the counter every time. Many of those farms also had standalone earthen cellars that served as "fridges" during the summer, often in conjunction with a small brook flowing with cold mountain water, where perishable things such as milk pails could be sunk into during warm summer days. Really wish I could have something like that in the city lol.

Potatoes will keep for weeks as long as you keep them dark. They don't need to be particularly cold. Do people really keep potatoes in the fridge?

If you don't wash em, and ideally get them with a good coat of soil, potatoes can be stored till next summer.

that's how my parents & ancestors kept potatoes, one of staple foods in central/eastern europe - dirty with bits of earth, in non-heated dark room/place. They get the only wash just before cooking. Same for other crop like carrots, onions etc.

They lasted from autumn harvest till, well, next autumn. Yes, they were a bit sprouty and wrinkled, but very much eadible.

Is there anything about potatoes that makes it obvious that a fridge is not required?

The fact you can leave a potato out for two weeks and its fine to use?

IF you don't have prior knowledge, you then have to either forget to store them in the fridge or make the experiment.

And personally, I've had things go bad, and most of the times I just think "I'll try to eat that sooner next time", without really thinking hard about how long I had it.

Supermarkets don't keep them in fridges.

In many countries supermarkets don't keep eggs in a fridge, whereas in others they do.

Apples can be kept for months in a fridge. Salads don't last long outside of one. Supermarkets don't keep them in fridges (unless they've been processed).

In those countries where supermarkets don't refrigerate eggs, they don't need to be refrigerated at home either.

Apples can be kept for months outside a fridge. Depending on season and variety, they might be 6 months old before they even get to your supermarket.

Only in places where you have cold seasons, and only during those, unless you have a cellar/basement, or something that can work as a proxy for one, but then you need knowledge about what's best stored where anyway.

Eggs are usually refrigerated in Norwegian supermarkets. I usually keep them in the fridge at home too, but they usually keep a couple of months past the expiry date. When in doubt I just try the water trick before I fry it. I'm sure it would be safe to keep them in the pantry too, but we don't eat eggs that often, so I just put it in the fridge.

Not in themselves. All of the tubers in culinary use in the west are stable for storage in the dark for months but if you don't have that cultural knowledge then you'd need someone to tell you not to put potatoes in the fridge I guess.

It’s clearly not obvious unless you’ve been told, but the point is that people have grown strangely disconnected from food in a “bacon comes from plastic sachets” sort of way.

The product packaging, if you buy them by the bag (instead of bulk).

Here's an example from Sam's Club web site:

https://scene7.samsclub.com/is/image/samsclub/0003338353070_...

At the bottom right, it says, "Store potatoes in a cool, dark, well-ventilated place."

I would say that this is one of those things that gets passed on from generation to generation, but for some reason, much of the western world is forgetting about it.

One reason might very well be urbanization. When I was a child, my parents would buy "cellar potatoes" at the home improvement's garden center every fall. Large sacks filled to the brim with potatoes, which we'd put into a special storage/dispenser combo (basically wooden lattice box, with an opening on the front bottom to remove potatoes over the winter/spring - gravity fed by the potatoes stored on top). That was in the corner of the basement and the sides and top of that contraption were blocking the light by being lined/covered with newspaper.

That's how I learned that potatoes should be stored like that, because I was helping out with it all. First, as a small child, I was only allowed to put the newspaper and to cut the sacks and would "throw" some potatoes in. That's how I learned that potatoes shouldn't be bumped around too much and my parents would take those and the ones I hit with it out, so that it wouldn't spoil the whole thing. Of course potatoes can be bumped around quite a bit more than say bananas, but not too much either. Later I'd help carry the sacks etc. That's how it's "obvious" like so many other things you don't learn in school.

This requires both this tradition existing in the first place though as well as the space to do it. We had a house with a basement. Many people don't, especially inner city dwellers.

Lots of people put every food in the home time-freezing device called fridge, from tropical fruits to potatoes to jar of peanut butter, very few recognize that that's not how things work.

Well, on a general base, the concept that cooling things, prevents degrading is quite true. It just not works for everything, for certain reasons.

But if you would have a potato only fridge, with low humidity, that you never open - I think that would work quite well, too.

Peanut butter absolutely works that way. It lasts longer in the fridge once opened: https://www.nationalpeanutboard.org/wellness/how-long-will-t...

Now, most people are likely to use it up before that becomes an issue, but it is a food for which the fridge applies your "time-slowing" mechanism.

Also, if you buy the natural kind, it keeps the oil from separating back out once you've mixed it.

I regularly have peanut butter thats been unrefrigerated for very long times and haven't noticed anything off about it. The jar I just used was from pre-pandemic (costco size) and it's still fine. I never put peanut putter in the fridge, that's just weird.

Does your peanut butter contain ingredients other than peanuts? Because the peanut butter I buy is really just peanuts and it keeps way better in the fridge.

Yeah I have a mix of a few types. The raw peanut butter is fine too. I can see the oil in that going rancid after a while but not quick enough where I wouldn't use it over a few months.

Could depend on climates. There’s an anecdote of a chemist trying to replicate an experiment to no avail, until he realized the author is from Eastern Europe where “room temperature” roughly translates to freezing point...

Yep. I lived mostly without refrigeration for years and you'd be surprised how many things really don't need to be refrigerated.

What I missed was ice cream, cold drinks/ice, the occasional frozen product and meat. That's not to say that I couldn't have those things, just that if I did, I'd have to buy them the same day, or eat them at a restaurant, or get them in alternate forms (thermos, "astronaut ice cream", canned food, preserved meats etc.) Much less limiting than you'd imagine. I also realized that I prefer the taste of many foods at room temperature. Everything from butter to sausages is so much better when it's not weirdly cold, and you no longer deal with the strange effects on texture and moisture levels from reheating food.

Of course, refrigeration doesn't prevent things from going bad - it mostly slows bacterial and mold growth. It's not too hard to get a handle on mold - a HEPA filter plus controlling moisture will usually get rid of most mold spores, so things you buy will mold much less quickly. Bacteria is less easy, but smelling + looking, common sense and a knowledge of what's safe will usually tell you enough. Until 1998, the official USDA method of investigating meat in slaughterhouses was the "poke and sniff method" - I am not kidding [0]. If you're skeptical, this guy [1] (who runs a supermarket) got along fine with a similar method, eating only expired food for a year. His thoughts seem to be based off the idea of "the vast majority of the time food starts to lose its taste/texture before becoming unsafe", which is not wrong - but personally, I try to be a bit more safe. So I looked at exactly what will kill or hurt you, statistically speaking. (At 1300ish total deaths a year, most of which are old people, it's unlikely you'll die from a foodborne pathogen, but there are 50x as many hospitalizations, and that is never fun or cheap.)

The main risks are various bacteria (Campylobacter, Clostridium, E. Coli, Listeria, Salmonella, V. vulnificus etc.) Some of these aren't affected by the way you store your food; for V. vulnificus you just need to cook your shellfish; to avoid the scary but uncommon C. botulinum you just need to be safe about home-canning and fermenting. E. Coli thankfully is tested for all over the US, so it's pretty rare to eat something with that. Salmonella is the #1 killer in the US, so make sure to cook poultry _to a safe temperature_ and wash vegetables well (water only, no soap, towel down.) Norovirus doesn't care if you refrigerate your food or not. Of the big killers, the one that slightly unnerves me is Listeria - 255 deaths per year in the US and a high hospitalization+death rate. Just reviewing the news shows in the last week alone it was found in taco dips, various cheeses and turkey sandwiches. If anyone is curious about the exact numbers and risks per pathogen, that's here [2] and a decent summary of how to be safe is here [3]. Keep in mind with the PDF that they give numbers for "total" and "domestically acquired foodborne" - for example 99.995% of Sapovirus cases don't come from food (they come from daycares, mostly) and that's why you see two very different numbers for "foodborne" vs "total".

Reading online guides for food crack me up. Googling "lettuce outside fridge" gives the amusing first result that it "can be safely left out at room temperature for about two hours, one hour [if it's hot]"... Where, exactly, do you think lettuce grows... In a refrigerator? (Side note - cabbage keeps much better and has a more interesting flavor.) My grandparents, and I'd imagine most people's grandparents, grew up without refrigeration and did just fine - I can assure you they had plenty of veggies, milk, butter, etc.

One note is that my time doing this was in Europe. In the US I believe eggs do not last more than a day or two unrefrigerated. Not sure if there are other differences to keep in mind.

[0] https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2011/07/when-odors-sound-a-wa...

[1] https://scottscompostpile.com/2019/02/11/my-year-of-eating-e...

[2] https://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/pdfs/scallan-estimated-h...

[3] https://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/foods-linked-illness.html

WRT eggs - not sure about industrial, possibly washed/sterilized, but as far as the backyard variety goes:

You need to be very wary of condensation. Natural eggs seem to keep fine at reasonable temperatures, as long as you avoid it (and the occasional poo). When I stored refrigerated eggs at room temperature, they would normally last maybe a week. Then I started wrapping them in 3-4 layers of towels for 1-2 days to slowly heat up, and they would keep for 2 months with <5% spoilage.

Most countries I know either require eggs be kept cold at all times, or never (depending on country).

Temperature can change the starch/sugar balance in the potatoes as well.

In fact, it's recommended to refrigerate potatoes the day before you want to fry them since that triggers a conversion of the starch to sugar.

In the US people are super paranoid about food as compared to most of the EU (and probably other places as well). Americans keep eggs, fruit, cured meats and jam in the fridge as well.

In the US eggs sold retail are required to be pressure washed. This removes the waxy coating that makes the egg airtight. So in the US eggs absolutely do need to go in the fridge, unless you have your own chickens or such. At room temp they'll spoil within about 2 days.

It depends on the fruit but many of them will last longer in the fridge. Same goes for cured meat and jams. Especially with jam you may not eat it often enough to stop it from molding at room temps.

I get making fun of stupid American habits is an EU pastime, but this is some pretty dumb stereotyping. There's rational reasons behind what most people are doing, even if it's a little different from the habits where you live.

>but this is some pretty dumb stereotyping

It's hardly stereotyping. By your own admission, its representative of the norm. But your explanation is well-taken.

Nevertheless, it speaks to the greater point: people (especially in the US) have become disconnected from their foods. Much of this appears to be structural, as you have pointed out.

It's easy to overgeneralize. If you want to believe that everyone is disconnected from food, you'll find confirmation of that. If instead you point to the farm to table movement, and the huge popularity of authentic/artisanal foods among anyone in the US with disposable income, and you'd come to the opposite conclusion. Both are painting with too broad a brush.

> In the US eggs sold retail are required to be pressure washed.

That's interesting. In France it is actually illegal to sell washed eggs. As a result they can be kept easily a month without refrigeration. I wonder why there is such a different practice.

The biggest difference between US and EU chicken production is use, or not use of, vaccines and antibiotics to control salmonella. The US approach is, for better or worse, to use regulation of the slaughterhouse to control such pathogens, vs inoculation. The situation with eggs is similar. The French approach results in cleaner but more expensive eggs. I'd prefer that personally, but there is a logic behind the US regulatory approach that shouldn't just be dismissed without thought.

Americans keep eggs in the fridge because American farming regulations result in eggs covered in poo, which need to be washed. The washing process destroys the protective layer of the egg, which means that it will spoilt outside of the fridge.

In Europe our regulations mean that the chickens are kept in much cleaner conditions; our eggs don't need to be cleaned so keep their protective layer and can be kept outside of the fridge.

The important difference is that European chickens are mostly vaccinated against salmonella. Eggs and poop ultimately travel though the same orifice, so if the chicken has salmonella the egg is likely to be contaminated even if there isn't visible poop on it.

This is not quite true. While eggs and poop come out of the same orifice, while laying the egg the uterus extends a bit out of the body, so there's no chance the egg would come into contact with poop.

You have obviously never owned chickens. Chickens make a sport of pooping where they should not. Eggs, food, and drinking water are all fair game.

If you were thinking like a chicken, you’d see that it’s inevitable: at some point in time, the egg is under the butt. One of the most important rules of being a chicken is to make sure that any clean thing under the butt is immediately pooped on.

The only known exception to this rule is other chickens. I’ve never seen a chicken poop on another chicken.

I think you're somewhat misinformed.

Unlike in Europe, American chickens eggs are washed and need to be refrigerated in order to not go bad (it's more common for American chickens to have salmonella, which is also why you shouldn't eat raw eggs in America).

Some fruits (such as apples or pineapples) simply taste better cold, and some fruits do last longer if refrigerated. That's important if you go grocery shopping every two weeks, which is quite normal in America.

Canned jam is never refrigerated, but once opened it always is, and I'm sure that's the case everywhere.

Cured meats, like jerky? No one refrigerates that.

I usually put jam in the fridge, now, but we never used to when I was a kid. We go through jam fast enough that it's probably unnecessary now, but why risk it... Then again I have like twice as much fridge space as we used to back then.

One correction, enviromentally salmonella is just as common in the EU as the US. Chickens in the US are not immunized for salmonella like they are everywhere else that regulates the egg industry. Foreign chicken immunization requirements and US egg washing requirements started around the same time in response to salmonella outbreaks. Both are effective mitigations. However, immunizing and not washing has an added benefit of incentivizing producers to keep eggs clean.

That's what I mean, European chickens don't have salmonella because they're vaccinated.

Not washing the eggs has the additional advantage that they don't need to be refrigerated.

I agree. I would like to see the USDA add vaccination as an allowed salmonella mitigation. Then farmers would at least have a choice.

> Canned jam is never refrigerated, but once opened it always is, and I'm sure that's the case everywhere.

Not in Ireland. Jam lasts a very long time unrefrigetated. All that sugar is a preservative. Works the same way as salting a ham. Anything that tries to grow on it gets dried out and dies.

I thought making jams was itself a preservation technique, just as pickling is. You don't need to keep either inside.

Canning is a preservation technique that is a part of making jam. But once you break the seal on the jar, the food in the jar is exposed to the air and won't last as long.

Regarding jam, I think it probably depends on the kind of jam. I usually get the stuff with whole strawberries that I spread with a spoon. I'm sure the typical American jelly will last a long time unrefrigerated, but that seems to be less common in my part of Canada.

> I've noticed that when you put a bag of potatoes in the fridge, they will still keep far shorter than if you had them in a dedicated potato cellar.

That's because fridges are entirely the wrong place to store potatoes, potatoes react to light, you're better off keeping them at ambient temperature in the dark (and regularly trimming the sprouts) than you are keeping them in a fridge which gets lit up 15 times a day.

For other veggies, it might be that they're e.g. ethylene-reactive, a fridge is a sealed environment so any gas is going to stay around. Humidity is also a factor.

Interesting points. Didn't know some of them. My 2c: in India, I don't think anyone stores potatoes in the fridge, even though we have quite hot weather in many parts of the country.

Does trimming the sprouts prevent them from rotting?

I don't think it prevents rotting, but it temporarily stops and slows the sprouting process, which is actively converting potato to sprouts and ultimately a plant (so the potato gets all shriveled, and you've got greening spread from the sprouting site which is full of bitter and somewhat toxic compounds).

Got it now, thanks. Yes, I've heard that the greenish parts of the potato tuber are toxic and should be discarded. Contain some alkaloids, likely. The potato is a plant in the Solanaceae family, which includes common edible plants like potato, tomato, eggplant, chillies, bell peppers, etc., as well as some poisonous ones like datura. In fact, I was surprised to see how huge and diverse the family is:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solanaceae

Yeah, the green parts of the potato are rich in chlorophyll due to light exposure, and the presence of high levels of chlorophyll implies the presence of toxic levels of nasty alkaloids like solanine

Patatos are stored in cold storage.

That's pretty interesting. Where and how do you store taters in India? And what kind of potatoes do you produce? Anyway, didn't know my silly comment would spawn such an avid potato-debate xD

In an open bag in the corner of a kitchen. You usually only buy for a few days, so storage isn't a huge issue.

Cannot answer for everyone in India, of course, even broadly, because I have never checked this out before. But for home use, based on my own approach and that of relatives and friends, I can say: just in a place in the kitchen away from direct sunlight, and in a slightly cooler place, if possible. Open, not covered, so air can circulate. Also, my guess is that many households buy only a small amount at a time, and use it up before it has a chance to go bad. For restaurants and other bigger users, don't know how they do it. Interesting point, I will see if I can find out.

In homes, they do spoil, sometimes, if you don't use them soon.

This made me think of another point: I wonder if there is any home-based small-scale way of preserving potatoes for a long period? You can do that in multiple ways for many vegetables (fermenting, pickling, drying, etc.).

>And what kind of potatoes do you produce?

If you mean varieties, like I've read about in the US, such as Yukon Gold, russet potatoes, etc., I don't know the answer, sorry. My guess is that most of us here may not be aware of potato varieties, or there could be only one or a few mainstream ones, possibly due to India's green revolution having the side-effect of knocking out many earlier-existing varieties. But that may be more true of natively Indian plant species, not so much for the potato, which only came to India, I guess, a few hundred years ago, via the Portuguese, probably.

> fridge which gets lit up 15 times a day.

Then a simple solution would be to keep the potatoes in a non-transparent bag in the fridge, no? That would be better than a bag outside the fridge I would think, if light is the problem. No?

I'm gonna try that thanks for the tip

Best solution for potatoes is to put plastic tote or wooden box in the garage or basement, fill halfway with sand and put the potatoes in, covered lightly with sand. Keep a lid on top. If that’s too much, use a paper bag and put it somewhere cool that won’t freeze.

My family does this every winter — I buy 100 lbs of potatoes from a farm for $15-25.

It works for carrots too.

That's awesome, thanks for sharing. I wonder how this would work in warm climates. Where I live, winter rarely drops below 18C, and summer rarely below 23C.

My guess is pretty well. Basically humidity and light are the biggest enemies.

During the peak pandemic craziness we’d buy more fresh produce than normal and keep in a dark corner, even stuff like lettuce lasted for a week without any loss of flavor and no apparent ill effects.

There’s no benefit to keeping them refrigerated. You’re just using up fridge space. Cupboard in a bag is fine.

This is highly dependent on the climate. As far as I've tested (enclosed in dark bag), they definitively keep longer in the fridge, but the longest in a cold room / cellar. I've also lived in southern climates, and it keeps for much shorter there, even within a cupboard or pantry. And the carrots would last only a few days there outside a fridge.

My experience is that potatoes do not keep as well outside the fridge, unless they're in a chilled pantry or a dedicated potato cellar. The latter are usually not accessible in the city, though. Also the further south you go, the shorter the out-of-fridge potatoe lifespan, and it's even worse for carrots. Otherwise I always keep the lil spuds away from light as best I can. ^^

What do carrots have to do with potatoes? I read that refrigerating potatoes isn't recommended because some starch converts to sugar, which affects taste and can be bad for frying if that's the way they'll be cooked.

> What do carrots have to do with potatoes?

Nothing more than that carrots and taters are staple foods where I come from. It comes with nearly all dinner recipes here in Scandinavia, so it's very common to buy them together.

> I read that refrigerating potatoes isn't recommended because some starch converts to sugar

It's only a problem if the potatoe freezes or is subjected to frost damage. Then the potato will go mushy and bad. If it's then subjected even to lukewarm temperatures, it may start to ferment or become infected with fungi. And for that reason it's very popular with moonshiners. ;)

I also noticed that vegetables don't keep long in our fridge. I think one reason is they get stacked on top of each other and through the pressure they get damaged. And that's how they get moldy quickly.

My old (90s) GE fridge didn't keep vegetables very long, but my new GE does. The model I got doesn't have a fancy dual coil either.

I remember when I was there locals telling me Afghanistan had a fantastic variety of grape local to the area. They were once regularly farmed. The Taliban attempted to burn most of them down as grapes can be used to make wine which is not Halal. Nonetheless grapevines remained a beloved curiosity in Kabul largely for their aesthetics and low maintenance.

Or Opimium is more profitable than grapes

You can also keep bunches of grapes fresh for months in an attic by plunging the stems in a bottle of water. That's a method that has been used for centuries in Europe.

See https://jardinage.lemonde.fr/dossier-2305-conserver-raisin-n...

This is pretty interesting. For those familiar with winemaking, there is a technique called carbonic maceration where grapes will self-ferment intracellularly in an anaerobic environment. Typically even if you don't artificially create an anaerobic environment (by pumping in CO2), if you put enough grapes in a sealed chamber the ones on the bottom will get crushed by the weight of the grapes above and the yeast living on the skins will kickstart carbonic maceration for the rest of the grapes (by producing CO2).

That may be one reason why the containers they make to store the grapes are relatively shallow; a larger vessel such as a pot may inadvertently crush some grapes and lead to making wine instead of storing your grapes!

Somewhat related - pots made out of the earth/clay are very good at keeping the temperature cool. I wish we see more of them being used in western countries.

I remember my family in Myanmar storing water in big pots made out of clay like this one [https://images.app.goo.gl/hG4bDGtn34QhmdxP8]. The water that is stored there is super cold and very refreshing for summer use. People use similar, but smaller pots for storing drinking water in parts of the streets so that anyone can take a sip if they are thirsty: https://images.app.goo.gl/hG4bDGtn34QhmdxP8

I wonder if my country, which is now undergoing a brutal military coup, still makes such pots these days....

In Spain we have the famous "botijo" that's used for keeping water cold, and also, for drinking.

Thing is, this only works in dry climate. A friend with several Spanish restaurants in Japan brought some botijos with him, and being Tokyo very humid in summer, they didn't work at all and kept "sweating" water.

I'm curious how this works.

My first theory is that clay pots will actually let water evaporate. Kind of like you need to water plants in terra cotta planters more often in summer. Evaporation having a cooling effect - like humans sweating.

The botijo has the property that once filled, it cools the water that it contains, acting as an evaporative cooler..

Not sure if they make them still today, but I saw those pots for sale by the hundreds at a market in Bagan about 10 years ago.

It looks like they disappeared a few years ago:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/10/world/asia/myanmar-buddhi...

:-(

25 years ago I travelled in the Taklamakan Basin which lies to the east of Afghanistan in Xinjiang, NW China. The local Uyghur people and their forebears had perfected over millennia various techniques related to growing and preserving grapes. It's a sub-sea level depression, one of the driest and hottest spots in Central Asia - so hot that local people warned me not to park my bicycle in the sun or the tires might burst. For thousands of years the people there have maintained underground irrigation channels which bring water from the mountains hundreds of km to the north to irrigate grapes and other crops. The covered channels go right through the towns and even in the early summer were filled with rushing water. Grape trellises were growing over many of the sidewalks throughout the city of Turpan (with stern signs in Arabic script and Chinese not to eat them, ignored by local kids) providing shade as well as grapes. The countryside nearby had these brick buildings with gaps between the bricks used for rapid drying of grapes to be made into the best raisins I've ever had.

Quite interesting! Also what was the reason for the warning against eating?

Probably because that they are owned.

My guess is so that they arent over harvested causing the leaves to die eliminating the shade quality?

Example of the vines in case anyone is also curious https://www.google.com/maps/@42.9532058,89.1822778,3a,75y,24...

That got me "exploring" virtually in the area, and I came across this scene of people apparently... "picking" rocks? Or something? https://www.google.com/maps/@37.1544659,79.9629378,3a,90y,8....

You seem to know that part of the world. Do you have an explanation of what's going on there?

The underground canals sound like qanats, an ancient irrigation technology that originated in Persia and then spread to China and elsewhere:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qanat

Beat me to saying the same thing, by an hour:) I've always thought qanats were a cool idea.

The also sound like the Puquios used in South America.

I always thought digging a qanat must have been miserable work, but the fact is that the human body’s peak endurance comes at a temperature that is pretty close to ground temperature.

Runners and cyclists and gardeners know that a nice 55° day you can just go forever without stopping because your body isn’t wasting any energy on perspiration. And in fact if you do stop for long you just get cold.

Temperatures in the Taklamakan can reach 50°, but that's Celsius, not Fahrenheit.

I have the same wonderful memory of Turpan in 2000. Clay structures for making raisins were scattered around the villages. Hottest place I have been in my life. Great food.

The Taklamakan is a basin (so lower than everything around it) and used to be an inland sea. But it isn't below sea level, everything is above 1000 meters.

One of those obscure corners of the Earth I have always wanted to visit...

I've been wondering about a taxonomy of food preservation techniques.

* Sealing (this technique seems to be a type of sealing)

* Fermentation

* Cooling

* Dehydration

* Removing specific elements like sugar etc

I guess it all boils down to preventing germs from thriving (although I suppose there are other things that can happen too--food going dry or stale)

Yeah the general theme is depriving microorganisms of something they need to thrive in the food environment. Like dehydration lowers water activity, refrigeration keeps it outside their ideal temperature range etc.

Fermentation doesn't really fit with the rest under that model though. In that case you're creating a good environment for some (halotolerant lactobacillus usually) because _their_ byproducts will make it too acidic for other things to thrive. So that's fundamentally different from just trying to make it universally hostile to microorganisms.

Even within a simple technique like "sealing" here it really depends on the food itself and probably local factors like seasonal humidity and temp swings. A lot of fresh foods if sealed in an airtight container can make botulism. I'm pretty informed on this subject but I don't know why that doesn't happen with the grapes here. Must just not be present on them in large amounts, or the natural yeast competes with it, or something who knows.

We think of these technologies as simple because they are beyond ancient and the actions you take to use them are basic. But there is a lot going on biologically and it seems at least somewhat understudied so far.

Fermentation usually goes along with sealing too, to give the good guys a head start and avoid contamination.

I've been making kefir lately and it sure feels weird putting a jar of milk in the cupboard at room temperature for a day or two.

A few techniques which involve adding something to the food:

* Salt

* Vinegar

* Alcohol

I believe salt counts as dehydrating, although there are other forms of curing that don’t achieve the same water removal as salted meat.

Vinegar and alcohol technically are fermentation, although it’s true that in some cases primary fermentation happens separately and the food is stored in the result. Pickling is sort of a grey area.

Salting is often combined with some amount of dehyrdrating of the entire food, but e.g. wet brining meat will actually add water.

Salt directly dehydrates the microbes themselves through osmotic pressure.

Apparently you can also add alcohol as a preservative:

https://preserveandpickle.com/preserving-fruit-alcohol/

I see a difference between drying something out and salting it (or sugaring it) even though both remove moisture, and a difference between fermenting something into vinegar and/or alcohol, and using those substances to preserve something directly, even though, yes, you won't have alcohol nor vinegar without fermentation.

Similarities as well! This taxonomy wouldn't be a well-formed tree.

Actually salt also counts as fermentation.

Most people I gather know that Sauerkraut is fermented but maybe not how that works. It's basically just cabbage, cut up and stored in salt brine. The salt in the brine makes the initial environment favourable to the bacteria that create the lactic acid and all of this together crowds out all the bad bacteria and fungi. You can actually have mold swimming on top of the Sauerkraut sometimes (though some that looks like it isn't actually mold) but the mold spores can't penetrate down into the Sauerkraut, so you can actually just get rid of it and best a bit of the top of the Sauerkraut that was very close to the surface, just in case. But the rest of the Kraut will be completely fine.

Also sugar. For example, fruit preserves.

There are also some methods that are a little more chemistry based. Unless I'm mistaken nitrite qualifies in that it kills bacteria (mainly targeting botulinum) in a more chemically active way by inhibiting certain processes specifically.

I wonder how the Korean newspaper in the second photo ended up in this Afghan village.

Could be due to Korean construction firms.

maybe it comes from foreign soldiers

I think it's the Korea Times. Look closely at the top right corner to the left of the page number A31.

https://www.google.com/maps/@42.0674003,-87.8502797,3a,75y,2...

It probably came from American soldiers

It's actually Chosun Ilbo - I searched for the phrases I can read, and found the matching article (2019 Oct 14). (See the article's title ending with "...아니다".)

https://www.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2019/10/14/2019101...

So, almost certainly not from American soldiers.

Nice detective work :)

This reminds me of century eggs, which are also preserved in mud that makes an airtight seal. That takes care of everything except fermentation of the fruit itself, and for century eggs I think they use ash/lime:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_egg

Sausages are also cured by killing the the bacteria inside with salts and smoking, and then putting them into a casing (the intestines) that defends against air from outside.

I can't get past the cookie banner. Can someone explain the ancient method for me please? Thank you :)

Put grapes in a mud and straw bowl and seal over. Crack it open months later and grapes are still good. Nobody has studied it to be sure of the specifics.

Thanks!

mud tupperware

The article mentions it works best with thick skinned grapes. Muscadine grapes may be well suited for this technique.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/09/26/551835327/mu...

Also, the article mentioned that the grapes were harvested late in the season. This would mean they had a higher sugar content. The sugar would act as a preservative.

It's probably a technique that has been slowly refined and perfected over the centuries. Selectively breeding grapes that preserve well, finding the correct mud and how much water to mix, working out that saucer shape and how many you can do at once. There are many years of gradual improvements baked into those grapes.

I need to do more research and experimentation with moisture control for things I seal air tight.

Another preservation technique I've seen is burying the fruit in ash.

In Bulgaria, people used to preserve apples by digging a hole in the ground and wrapping the apples in a thick layer of fern leaves and you have apples through the winter.

What's preventing the grapes from fermenting?

Probably not enough free moisture. The bowl is dried so a lot of free moisture from the mud cap or on the grapes would wick away into the structure. The grapes have moisture but a lot would be trapped in cellular structures, they are not mashed as is done for wine, or exposed to the elements or still 'active' like they would be on the vine or in the sun.

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