Don't store your cucumbers in the fridge (2012)
rootsimple.com
rootsimple.com
Edit because there seems to be some confusion about this: this is mainly constructed as a resource for farmers, grocers, etc, who are trying to bring produce to consumers in a state that it will arrive in their home at a good quality. Their requirements for length of time in storage/transport are very different from most consumers, and the resources they can devote to maintaining an optimal temperature, humidity, gas environment for a given type of produce are much more extensive. That said, there's plenty to learn from it as a consumer with the right eye, e.g. about how the tissue damage due to too cold storage may differ from too hot, or the ethylene interactions from storing various things together.
Lots of stuff that says 50-55 F which is unfortunate because most people don’t have any kind of storage at that temp.
They are, it's just long before they're put out on display. That's how they manage to have fresh New York state apples in February.
They also pull out the oxygen: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/11/26/668256349/th...
> The perfect combination of temperature and gases, which differs for each variety, allows apples to stay fresh for longer after harvest than if they were simply refrigerated. Commercially refrigerating apples only preserves the fruit for a few months before it gets soft and dehydrated. And just keeping them in your home refrigerator? They'll likely only stay fresh for a few weeks.
I would suppose the grocer's tradeoff is slightly different than yours. For them, it ought to be about trading shelf-life extension against refrigeration costs. For me, I'd rather extend the shelf-life of the apple even if it costs more to refrigerate it than it would to buy a new one, because I dislike throwing out food. I even freeze some produce that is about to go bad if I don't have an immediate plan for it.
Maybe this is for untreated apples? But still those values for apples looks surprisingly low.
Not sure why, but I feel happy that "Fancy Cucumber" is a formal definition.
E.g. salad cucumbers[1] are long enough that it's not uncommon to use a half at a time.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cucumber#/media/File:Organic_G...
I don't think it is a good idea to keep vegetables for days anyway. I usually buy my vegetables the day I start eating them.
Back in the days, people would store vegetables in a cold basement for up to 1 year. Potatoes are stored dry and dark, carrots and cabbage are pulled straight out of the ground, not cleaned or divided roots/leaves, and are kept moist and dark (the old folks would stack up layers of wet moss and veggies), while garlic and onions are kept dry and dark and separate from the rest.
Was referenced but unavailable at the original link.
For instance bread stored in the fridge will go stale; bread in the freezer will not.
I do like putting other bread in the oven for 5 minutes to breathe some life back into them though.
Unless it's in an airtight container.
Freezing stops the process; cooling quickens it.
From practical experience, it really does. To a huge extent.
It's why most major supermarkets (unless forbidden by law) will wrap their home brand breads in packaging with holes in it. Higher sales because the bread is always hard as a rock 2 days later unless placed in an airtight container.
That's in southern and middle (east) Australia's climate anyway. :)
Store bought bread follows its own rules though. Given the sheer quantity of additives they have.
Where I have lived, if you put traditionally made bread (just water, salt, flour and yeast) in an airtight container at room temperature it’ll be covered in mold within a day or two.
Wow, sounds like a super active biosphere in your part of the world.
In East Coast Australia I've not had things go like that. Mold is pretty rare on bread unless something weird is going on.
Shop bought bread takes a lot longer to stale and to mold, because it has plenty of additives designed to do just that.
Um, isn't it just the US whose bread is full of additives?
Other countries I've been to don't, and Australia doesn't commonly either.
Why would there be condensation?
So there's more to it than just temperature being the problem.
http://www.savefoodfromthefridge.com/p/humidity-of-fruit-veg...
http://www.savefoodfromthefridge.com/p/verticality-of-root-v...
Truly next level stuff.
I don't have central A/C, I use split-wall units because I think it is way less wasteful to only cool the places that are actually being used.
Because of that, I always wondered if one those wine cooler refrigerators, which work around 13C would be a good compromise in terms of optimal storage of fresh vegetables and roots X power efficiency.
Has anyone tested this? I'd eventually buy one and try it, but if someone else is doing this, I would love to hear about their experience.
Tomatoes, cucumbers, oranges – you'll find them all unrefrigerated
The supermarket is also simultaneously optimizing for other considerations like "do our consumers like bringing a sweater in the middle of summer to visit the produce section"?
But an important point is that the temperature on those reefer units will be more similar to the one in a data center, than the one in a fridge. Lower temperatures will make harder to keep the optimal humidity level and the veggies will start dehydrating.
The idea of freshness in vegetables is basically keeping those thing's cells alive for as much as possible. Too hot, metabolism increases, too cold and they will dehydrate.
Selected veggies & fruits, all dairy, meat and so on - very cold places to be, even when ignoring freezer sections. And the cold seeps to other aisles and reaches quite far. But maybe French or Swiss people where I live have different acceptance criteria for this compared to say US, although my impression from US in the past was AC everywhere.
In the UK the whole supermarket might be temperature controlled (cooled) where the domestic environment isn't.
Seems like it's probably pretty complex to work out
There's probably a mean indoor temperature above which refrigeration makes sense, for example.
My typical schedule sees me working until 5:30pm, playing with the baby while the wife cooks until 6pm, eating dinner together until 6:30pm, bathing the baby getting it to bed around 7:30pm, then doing various housework, family admin tasks, or evening activities until 9pm before unwinding for an hour and going to bed to "sleep". The schedule is actually more pressured on days where I go to the office and don't get back until later.
My wife does have the opportunity to go to the shop in the morning or afternoon, but it is very contingent on energy levels (sleep is rarely good), baby nap times (variable but better off being respected), baby activity classes etc... . Going to the shop itself can take longer as you may need to suddenly deal with a nappy change or tantrum. It's not reasonable to expect it to happen multiple times a week.
https://www.seriouseats.com/why-you-should-refrigerate-tomat...