We've lost our 'frigucation' - the knowledge of what's best chilled and what's best kept at room temperature, says Xanthe Clay.
Potatoes, tomatoes, cheese and sauce – where do you keep yours? Here’s the ultimate guide on what to chill and not to chill, according to chef and food writer Xanthe Clay.
I’m a bit sensitive on the subject of fridges. They are a very personal space. When a well-meaning visitor moves to open the door on mine – to helpfully fetch their own milk, perhaps – I feel myself tense. Perhaps they’ll judge me for the squeezy bottle of mayonnaise (calls herself a food writer!), or the sticky jar of some Asian condiment that’s been gently crystallising there since Ottolenghi’s second cookbook.
These days, we keep everything in the fridge – but my mother would have thought it pretty odd to chuck the cheese and the chocolate in there, next to the leftovers of yesterday’s roast and the bottles of silver-top. She’d be right, too: cheese prefers to breathe at a somewhat warmer temperature, around 10C, and chocolate becomes greasy and tasteless when chilled.
So, which other foods should avoid the big chill?
Fridges spell disaster for potatoes, as the cold turns the starches to sugars, making for soggy, dark roasties and cloying, gloopy mash. Store them instead in a dark, well-ventilated, cool spot. 8-10C is ideal, but at least make sure they aren’t next to the radiator.
Fridge temperatures can turn onions soft, so store them the same way as potatoes – but in a separate cloth bag.
Never refrigerate bananas, as it’ll turn the skin a putrid-looking black. Better to freeze them in their skins and use in a bake.
Never keep coffee in the fridge: it’s too damp, and may result in off flavours. The freezer can extend the life of whole beans, though.
Keeping bread in the fridge makes the starch molecules crystallise, so the bread toughens and dries out – OK for toast at a pinch, lousy for sandwiches. If you don’t eat much bread, you’re better off keeping your sliced loaf in the freezer and toasting from there.
Who wants cold sauce on their sausages? Keep it in the cupboard.
Basil hates the cold, but other herbs stay perkiest wrapped in dry kitchen paper or in a jar of water and stored in a plastic bag in the fridge.
If it’s not in the fridge, it’s almost certainly rancid. That goes for toasted sesame too, stir-fry fans.
A controversial one: dried food definitely doesn’t need to be in the fridge, but open tins (properly covered) will last longer and smell less if kept cold.
Unroasted nuts keep perfectly well in the cupboard, but once they’ve been toasted they are prone to rancidity, so store them in the fridge. Long term? Any nuts will last for a year or more in the freezer.
Keep eggs in the fridge to extend their life, from around two weeks to two months. But beware: cold eggs are useless for baking (they’ll curdle a cake batter) and chilling breaks down the natural seal on the shell, so once they’ve been in the fridge you can’t change your mind and leave them out instead.
Traditional jam keeps in the cupboard perfectly well, provided you use a clean spoon to dollop it on your plate – toast crumbs from your knife are prone to turning mouldy. That said, modern preserves with lower sugar contents will need to be kept in the fridge, unless you are planning to finish the jar within three or four days.
Perfectly safe kept out of the fridge, but spice levels will fall, so if you like it hot, chill it.
Never put firm tomatoes in the fridge, as it stops the flavour developing and gives them a mealy texture. However, when they go squishy, the fridge will stop them going mouldy and give you another day or two to eat them up.
We’ve lost our “frigucation”: a knowledge of what is best in and out of the fridge, opting instead for a rather prissy “just in case” attitude promoted by food manufacturers, who invariably suggest their products are refrigerated. As if anyone wants ice-cold sauce on their sausages.
To meet this new need, fridge sizes have been rising steadily over the past couple of decades, and we’ve become obsessed with wardrobe-like American-style coolers. These slick-looking kitchen behemoths with price tags to match promise us entry not to Narnia, but some glossy Stateside fantasy of sleek, clean efficiency; a place where Carrie Bradshaw keeps her coffee in the freezer – although she also stores her Manolos in the oven, so she’s no Delia.
As our fridges have got bigger, our houses have got warmer. While in 1970, the average room temperature in winter was 12C, nowadays your living areas are likely to be above 18C. Central heating means warmth reaches into every corner of the house, and old-fashioned cold, well-ventilated larders were ditched long ago in favour of indoor loos and utility rooms. So when the instructions are to keep food “in a cool place”, we don’t feel we have much choice. The only place may be the fridge.
Maybe we just need to buy food and eat it, rather than ram our fridges and cupboards with bags of salad and half-eaten jars. I’m off to have some bread and butter – neither of which has been in the fridge.
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