Hacker News Reader

Comment by kebman | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

> 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. ;)

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 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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com