Potatoes, tomatoes, cheese and ketchup – where do you keep yours? Here’s the ultimate guide on what to chill and not to chill
The Foods You Should Never Store in the Fridge
By Xanthe Clay
These days, it feels like we play it safe and keep everything in the fridge.
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 crystallizing 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?
Foods to keep out of the fridge
Potatoes
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.
Onions
Fridge temperatures can turn onions soft, so store them as potatoes – but in a separate cloth bag.
Bananas
Never refrigerate bananas as it’ll turn the skin a putrid-looking black. It is better to freeze them in their skins and use in a bake.
Coffee
Never keep coffee in the fridge: it’s too damp, and may result in off flavors. The freezer can extend the life of whole beans, though.
Bread
Keeping bread in the fridge makes the starch molecules crystallize, 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.
Ketchup
Who wants cold sauce on their sausages? Keep it in the cupboard.
Foods to keep in the fridge
Herbs
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.
Nut oils
If it’s not in the fridge, it’s almost certainly rancid. That goes for toasted sesame too, stir-fry fans.
Pet food
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.
Foods to chill – in certain circumstances
Nuts
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.
Eggs
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.
Jam
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 moldy. That said, modern preserves with lower sugar contents will need keeping in the fridge, unless you are planning to finish the jar within three or four days.
Mustard
Perfectly safe kept out of the fridge, but spice levels will fall, so if you like it hot, chill it.
Tomatoes
Never put firm tomatoes in the fridge as it stops the flavor developing and gives them a mealy texture. However, when they go squishy, the fridge will stop them going moldy and give you another day or two to eat them up.
How we came to rely so heavily on the fridge
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 ketchup 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 by wardrobe-like American-style coolers. These slick-looking kitchen behemoths (with a price ticket of around £3,000) 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 favor 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.
(With 25 years of experience as a Telegraph columnist, chef and food writer Xanthe Clay provides guidance on everything from roasting a Christmas turkey to baking the perfect loaf of bread. Xanthe can regularly be found taste-tasting staple supermarket products to find the best value, as well as taking a deep-dive into everyday kitchen queries and topical issues such as ultra processed foods, ethical farming and sustainability. - The Telegraph)
