While we all have good intentions after cooking a meal, we often rush to put away our leftovers and end up doing it improperly. This includes using the wrong food storage containers and taking meals from the table to the refrigerator too quickly. Another factor to consider when it comes to food storage safety is shelf placement. After a long trip to the supermarket, we try to put our perishables into the refrigerator before they spoil, placing items on shelves without much thought. This mistake seems minor, but it can actually make us sick. While checking expiration dates is common knowledge, we rarely check what we should and should not be storing in the refrigerator. If you notice your fruits and vegetables going from ripe to rotten too quickly, it could be because you’re keeping them in the wrong part of the refrigerator. This doesn’t simply waste money, but discovering your produce is spoiled when you’re about to cook a meal is very frustrating. Here are some of the most common food storage mistakes and how to easily fix them. One example is storing raw ground beef above a lettuce salad. “The juices from the beef could drip down and contaminate the salad,” Heil says. “If you eat the contaminated salad, you’ll likely get food poisoning. There’s an easy way to prevent this—store the meat below the salad!” Heil suggests organizing your food storage, so the foods that require less or no cooking are at the top. “Foods that require more cooking should be at the bottom. That way, even if juices do drip down, they’ll be killed during the cooking process. For example, ground beef has to be cooked to an internal temperature of 155 F, so it should be stored above chicken, which must be cooked to 165 F.” “This may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s easy to forget when you’re in a hurry,” she says. “In addition to protecting it from contamination, storing food in covered containers also helps it last longer.” If you’re really in a rush (or just tired), at the very least, you should cover plates and bowls with plastic wrap or aluminum foil. However, taking the extra time to put food in containers is best. The worst place to store food is in those takeout containers that many of us end up hoarding away in our cabinets. They’re fine for transporting or storing your leftover dinner for lunch the next day, but they aren’t designed to be reused multiple times. The same rule applies to yogurt cups and any sort of plastic tub that you buy food in. This is the only time it’s OK to store food in the refrigerator uncovered. “However, after the food has cooled sufficiently, you should move it to a covered container for long-term storage,” she says. Luckily, there’s an easy fix! After you go grocery shopping, put the new food items you just bought behind older items of the same type. Commercial kitchens use this method to help reduce food waste, and it can help you too. When you get into this habit, you’ll always eat the oldest food first, before it goes to waste." The same rule applies to food storage bags, plastic wrap, and aluminum foil. Seal everything as tightly as possible! However, fruits such as nectarines, peaches, pears, and avocados should be refrigerated when they are ripe to prevent over-ripening. Another common produce storage mistake occurs with apples. Most of us leave them out, but they should actually be kept in the fridge.
