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One counterintuitive food storage tip is never put hot food directly in your fridge or freezer. Instead, leave it uncovered in your kitchen until it cools to ro
by cush 4y ago
One counterintuitive food storage tip is never put hot food directly in your fridge or freezer. Instead, leave it uncovered in your kitchen until it cools to room temp, then move it to your fridge.
The food will cool much faster in a well-ventilated room. A refrigerator is mostly an incubator and doesn't actually have much cooling capacity and is more designed to keep things cool, not make them cool. This will extend the shelf life of the food, prevent condensation, and also prevent other items in your fridge or freezer from warming up.
- JulianK 4y agoDo you know where the "don't put hot food in the fridge" idea came from? My thought has always been that if my fridge warms up the compressor will fire up and cool it down again. The fda seems to err very heavily on the "cool immediately" side of things: https://www.fda.gov/food/people-risk-foodborne-illness/tips-chill-food-food-safety-moms-be https://www.fda.gov/food/people-risk-foodborne-illness/tips-...
- cush 4y agoIt's an idea you can easily test and entirely depends on the thermal mass of the item. A well ventilated room can move heat away from food much faster than a fridge can simply because the fridge is heavily insulated and is comparatively poor at circulating air. A quick experiment you can do is take a big pot of boiling water and put it in your fridge. Wait 5 minutes. The internal temp of fridge will now be hotter than room temp. At this point it's as if every item in your fridge is now sitting out in the sun. Every item is in the danger zone until the fridge cools that entire pot, which can take a few hours.