BonesOfTheMoonWhat did your parents refrigerate? Mine refrigerated bread.
That sounds like a great way to make stale bread…
Things we refrigerated that I’ve seen others not refrigerate:
- jelly(US)
- ketchup
- mustard
Things we didn’t refrigerate that I’ve seen others do:
- peanut butter
- honey
- oil
- soy sauce
- oyster sauce
Omigod honey.
Ours always crystallized and needed to be microwaved or soaked in hot water anyway so it’s kind of a 6 of one; 1/2 dozen of the other situation in my experience.
Some soy sauce recommends refrigeration on the bottle. Some don’t. I don’t know why.
Probably based how much salt is actually in the sauce. High enough salinity will basically kill any potential nasties.
I would wager it has more to do with preserving the flavor.
That too is a strong possibility but if the container airtight it probably shouldn’t see a ton of loss of flavor mover time. And a lot your major soy sauce is predominantly just salty and savory without much of other complex flavors going on.
mad_asshatterIt’s actually based on food science, which they’re highly skilled at.
I’m with you, but the first three only after they’ve been opened.
The unrefrigerated jelly is the only one that bugs me.
I actually switched my peanut butter stance as an adult, but only because I switched to real peanut butter and it separates slower in the fridge.
If it’s in a sealed plastic bag it doesn’t go stale until long after it would have molded on the counter. I refrigerate mine because I buy Costco sized sliced bread and it takes me 2 months to go through it. If you toast your bread, the staleness is unnoticeable
A lot of these things only need to be refrigerated to preserve flavor, not to stop spoilage. If you go through a bottle of ketchup in 3 months there is little benefit to refrigerating it, if it takes 3 years for you to finish it, it should probably stay in the fridge.
Some peanut butter brands require refrigeration to prevent mould. Others recommend it because it stops the oils from separating. Brands like Kraft don’t require any refrigeration at all
Refrigerating oil will stop it from going rancid, but I’ve only ever needed to do this with used deep frier oil
Honey is just a hell no in the fridge
The Costco bagels are notorious for molding before you even get home…
joneskindIf I put oil in the fridge it gets solid
Same for honey, as cold accelerate the crystallization process.
Peanut butter is basically oil already, but putting it in the fridge might help keeping it less oily. I eat organic 100% peanut butter and it is often oily when I open it. I think that’s why some have palm oil in it.
Soy sauce should be salty enough to store out the fridge but I prefer to keep it in the fridge for some reason.
Oyster sauce contains sea food, so straight in the fridge!
Oyster sauce contains sea food, so straight in the fridge!
You’ll be horrified to learn where the ปลาร้า(fermented fish)lives in my own house as an adult 😂
Don’t worry, I’ll keep my eyes shut
If be remiss if I didn’t post this every time someone mentions palm oil.
Tammie Brown's "Orangutan" (Visualizer)
palm oil.
Oh my sweet internet. Now I know what I’ll put on display next time I’ll get drunk with my friends. Thank you very much sir!
SatyrSackI used to buy a lot of “”““natural””“” peanut butter. The kind in glass jars that separates after a while, so you have to stir the jar every time you use it. After a while, I started keeping it in the refrigerator because that stopped it from separating at all. Just stir once when opening the jar for the first time, then into the refrigerator it goes, and it never needs stirring again.
poVoqHoney depends on the quality. Real honey will basically never turn bad (they found containers with thousand year old still edible honey), but the cheap stuff is sometimes mixed with sugar syrup etc. and then it needs refrigeration.
snooggumsSugar is also a preservative though.
The refrigeration is either to extend flavor or to prevent spoilage in hot and humid locations where mold can build on the parts of the container that dry out if it isn’t used often.
My soy and fish/oyster all say to refrigerate right on the label.
Since they already made the shit I’m ingesting, I’m taking their word for it.
High salt/vinegar content condiments are perfectly fine at room temp for a weeks to months in dry to mostly dry moderate temp climates. That is why air conditioned restaurants which have consistent temps and low humidity leave them out on the tables.
The label is there so someone in Florida doesn’t have it go bad in a couple months on their counter. Plus refrigeration extends the time it can go without spoiling, which is great for condiments that are rarely used.
I like my ketchup refrigerated, not because it has to be, but because I like the contrast between cold ketchup and hot food.
…the reason jelly/jam/preserves are canned is because they are not shelf stable otherwise. I just threw out a jar because it molded in the fridge…
Peanut butter is shelf stable, but we usually get the stuff that’s just peanuts and salt, so it separates at room temp.
Mustard, ketchup, & soy/fish sauce… sometimes it’s just convenient to keep most of my bottles and jars together in the fridge door.
I’m hypersensitive to rancid oil. Also the healthy parts of olive oil & fish oil degrade with time, heat, sun and oxygen exposure. The fridge slows this down. That said, I keep my cooking oil under the counter.
peanut butter
This one absolutely turns on what kind of peanut butter you have. Jif/Skippy etc. shouldn’t go into the fridge. It was engineered, for better or worse, to be shelf stable and turns into silly putty if it’s cold. Most “Real” peanut butter separates like a mofo if it’s in the pantry, requiring frequent stirring, and many recipes will never quite be solid enough to spread well. In the fridge, they are much easier to deal with, though my latchkey Xennial ass still prefers the wondrous combination of peanut-like substance and mid-century food science.
grasshopper_mouseI live in a humid climate (especially in the summer), and if we don’t refrigerate our bread and tortillas, or any baked goods, they get moldy in like 4 days.
Well, yes…but 4 day old bread from the fridge is basically inedible as well because of the bad taste.
I’ve never had my bread get stale from being in the fridge for 4 days. You have to leave it in a bag or airtight container.
Then you probably only ever had bad bread to begin with.
Edit: I suspect all the down-votes are from the US/UK who sadly never tasted good bread fresh from the oven it seems.
Good (fresh) bread only lasts a day or two around my house, because it’s amazing and delicious and everyone just eats it.
Average commercial everyday bread is going to sit around longer because it’s waiting on someone to feel like making a sandwich, or feel like having toast. It’s basically a pantry staple hanging out, waiting to get used. The fridge is fine for that.
Regular white bread without additives lasts about 24h before going stale. Wonderbread goes longer. Refrigerating any bread ruins it in short order.
Downvoters are brain dead. Science aligns with the taste buds on this one. Freeze your bread, you degenerates! Doesn’t take terribly long to thaw, doesn’t become dry and stale af like fridge bread.
Hi, it’s you from the future, older and wiser, take your fucking bread out of the fridge!
why are you comparing 4-day-old bread to bread fresh from the oven? wow yeah it really doesn’t compare, what genius observation. what kind of storage makes it as good as fresh bread from the oven, pray tell?
Buy less and only eat fresh 😎
Stale bread, no thanks. Even no bread at all is better than that.
But freezing it and reheating it afterwards also works OK for some types of bread.
Buy less and only eat fresh 😎
But don’t you get it? Here in the US, we can’t do that because we’ve got to drive an hour to the grocery store once a week (or less)! Uphill, both ways, fording rivers and traversing icy mountain passes! Waaah!
Obligatory NotJustBikes on how there is a better way
Why Grocery Shopping is Better in Amsterdam
I bake frequently, sometimes bread, sometimes bagels, sometimes sweets. If I leave any homemade goods out on the counter in the summer, they would get moldy even quicker than store-bought.
It just goes into the toaster. Works better than frozen bread with crystals.
Keep it in the bag and then warm it up in a toaster oven. Imagine eating sad room temperature bagels…
My fridge bread tastes exactly the same for weeks?
That’s not bread, but some bread looking cardboard then.
It’s freshly baked daily at my local market, not the kind that sits on a shelf for months. If your bread can’t last a few days in the fridge then it’s also probably not bread…
Please don’t ruin freshly baked bread in the fridge! Do you have no taste at all?
Once again it stays tasting exactly the same after a quick warm up in the toaster oven. Maybe you should clean your fridge.
henfredemarsLikewise. I enjoy my bread lasting more than four days.
Have you tried freezing it?
Refrigerating baked goods accelerates staleness, but most baked goods freeze well.
Frozen bread or bust. No one’s wants that cardboard you kept in the fridge.
BlackmistFreeze it every time.
If you’re anything less than a family of four, leaving bread at room temperature is just eating half a loaf of bread and then throwing away half a loaf of mouldy bread.
Most supermarket bread has indeed already been frozen before you get it.
I even freeze all the cakes from Costco, since they only seem to come in packs of about a thousand.
In my area it’s common to buy bread daily
I’ve had bread in the freezer for months, I throw it straight in the toaster and it comes out like, well… normal ass toast.
Good to know, I recently started getting bread from a local bakery but it doesn’t last, I’ll have to try freezing it next time
Make sure you cut it first if it’s not sliced, it’s a lot easier to deal with before you freeze it
Oh my god, yes. Otherwise you have a blunt force trauma weapon
Like a poor man’s dwarf bread. If only we knew the real recipe.
Yes, we freeze some as well
This is the way. It’s all I do.
If I’m going to use the bread in the next couple days? I’ll keep it out. Otherwise, I put all my baked goods/bread in the freezer, and extra freezer I bought. Keeps for months. 6+ months if you’re lucky and willing to deal with it being overly dry.
people are downvoting a scientifically verifiable statment.
owning the bread chillers
Only exception for me is tortillas. I mean they technically freeze well, but they will also stick together which would make quite a thick burrito.
My parents always freeze them and I always forget until I’m there trying to make a burrito and it tears in half.
yup. tortillas go in the fridge so you can get individual ones easily. Staleness never really bothered me, but i do warm them up on the stove to improve malleability. And i like to get my burritos a little crispy on the outside to help seal the final fold. Now i want burritos…
I freeze tortillas, one trick to using them after they thaw is rolling the whole package a couple of times both ways.
Still have to be careful separating them, but it’s no worse than a package of tortilla that has sat underneath too much weight for too long.
This trick also works with tortillas that sat underneath too much weight for too long
x4740NChuck them in the microwave or better yet put baking paper (which if o recall correctly you usians call wax paper or parchment paper) in between each tortilla before you freeze it to keep them seperate