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
Edit: Just to clarify this is what my parents did and doesn’t reflect my adult opinions.
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.
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
If 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 😂
I 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.
Honey 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.
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.
…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-inspired substances and mid-century food science.
I 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.
Have you tried freezing it?
Refrigerating baked goods accelerates staleness, but most baked goods freeze well.
Freeze 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.
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
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.
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…
Same. I don’t get why people act like putting bread in the fridge is world ending. Unless your eating a whole loaf of bread in 2 days in the fridge it goes.
That or you get a loaf of mold on the 4th day.
Or lightly toast it? You don’t have to get it crispy to warm it up. It’s better than moldy bread
I had 65% last weekend and since then constantly a bit above 50% in Switzerland. Usually around 30% unless it’s summer. How much is “humid” for you?
I had air conditioning growing up and my family tends to make desserts more in the winter.
The first summer living on my own, I made a beautiful blueberry pie, and the next morning I took it out of the microwave (to keep bugs away during the night- I have since learned this was also an idiosyncrasy from my parents. Most people just cover it) and it was already visibly moldy.
I’m glad I got a slice the first day, and I definitely learned a lesson but holy shit was it a surprise.
My parents didn’t just refrigerate bread. They stuck excess bread in the fucking freezer.
Edit: guess I’ve been sleeping on the freezer bread thing. Y’all seem pretty sold on the concept.
I used to live in the tropics.
This is standard. Half the bread goes in the freezer immediately.
When you finish the first half, move the frozen bread into the fridge.
Refrigerated bread is good once you get used to it.
Juuust skip that fridge step. Take slices out the freezer when you wake up. Slices thaw by the time your morning ritual is done and you’re ready for brekky. If toasting anyways, don’t even really need to wait for thaw. No stale fridge taste you need to get used to.
This thread kills me, so many people eating stale-ass bread. :c
My grandparents do that. I leave it on the counter, but always say I’m going to freeze it, especially if I get it at costco, which sells you 2 loafs at a time. The only problem is I never have enough room to shove an entire loaf of bread in there. Freezer for bread is fine. If you pull out a few slices, it basically defrosts in like 10 min or use microwave for 10 seconds, and if you wanted toast, just toast it.
I just threw out an entire loaf because it was on my counter for 5 days and saw mold… must be the type of bread as well since it normally lasts weeks just fine. Since I’m always buying what’s near the cheapest that’s on sale I am always buying different brands.
The freezer does keep bread fresher longer (as long as you aren’t storing it in a self defrosting freezer long enough to get freezer burn). It literally freezes the staling process. And fridging bread actually accelerates staling. Something to do with water molecules getting squeezed out of starch molecules or something; I don’t remember the details.
I’m kinda intimidated by this whole thread. I’m scared to mention that I really hate thawed bread (I tried room temp, microwave, oven and toaster). (I even tried different freezers.) If I buy bread, then it’s either the very smallest amount at the bakery when I really feel like good bread, or just a bun, or supermarket bread with preservatives. But mostly I just live a bread free life.
Mine refuse to refrigerate cheese (other than cream-cheese) and butter. Infuriates me as it gets super oily and rancid real fast.
We got a butter bell, which is the best of both worlds. Room temperature butter kept airtight. Lasts 10-14 days, I’d estimate.
I always thought it was OK to leave salted butter out. Been doing it for years never had a problem I can remember. I also don’t eat tons of butter so would guess I’ve left it out longer than two weeks
This is the first I’ve heard of a butter bell. I’ve been leaving salted butter out for years, but I bought a glass food storage container with a snap on lid that is basically the exact size of a stick of butter. I suppose it’s accomplishing almost the same thing, although a tiny amount of air does get inside especially as the stick is eaten.
One of my wife’s friends got persistently sick last year. She just could not get better. Sometimes she’d be fine for a week or two, but then she’d get sick again. Eventually it came down to her needing to document everything she did each day - and they discovered she was getting sick from warm butter.
Turns out her mom had come over at some point and saw that she refrigerated butter and said “you don’t need to do that, it’s so much easier to use when warm and it doesn’t go bad.” Yeah, that’s the case if you eat a stick of butter in a few short days. But you can’t leave it out for more than that or it starts getting filled with all sorts of germs.
Was it unsalted butter? Salted butter can be left out for a while, certainly more than a few days without concern, but unsalted needs to be refrigerated.
For the last few years, I’ve been using butter I leave out in a covered butter dish on the counter since I learned that’s fine. It’s always been a stick of salted butter which I typically finish within 2-3 weeks and that’s never caused any problems. I wonder if it being unsalted would really change things that much…
did she just leave it out uncovered? one of those ceramic dish things with a cover seems to keep it out fine.
I’ve been made fun of for thinking butter tastes/feels off after sitting out on the counter, but it absolutely does. If you want soft butter, take it out like an hour before or soften it with heat and whip it back into a homogeneous mixture. I usually cut a pad and melt it on top of whatever I’m making before spreading it. Anything but leaving it on the counter to go bad…
Cheese is a weird one though. Definitely refrigerate cheese.
They claim cheese needs to “breathe” and apparently that is indeed a thing for some French cheese, but not have it sit unrefrigerated for a few days 😒
Someone tried to convince me to get a heated butter knife. I think I’m seeing their point on it
My SO got a chuckle out of me because I instinctively put chocolate in the fridge. I grew up in a hot climate but I live in Canada now.
Wait, yeah I guess it does make sense that people living in cold climates wouldn’t put chocolate in the fridge. TIL
The reverse is also true sometimes. Coconut “oil” for example is always a solid where I grew up, and it caught me by surprise seeing it actually being sold as a liquid in normal oil bottles.
I really enjoy coconut oil as a rough weather gauge.
I cook with it a lot, but prefer it to be in liquid form for easy measure (which only happens in the warmer bits of summer here), so in winter, I keep a jar of it on top of a particularly warm heat vent.
I keep my place at 60f/15.6c in winter or it costs a fortune to heat. When it’s relatively warm out, the heat doesn’t kick on often enough to melt it, but when it’s real cold/windy the entire thing will be liquid.
Even when in canada, because cold chocolate below 20°C is cronchier and doesnt melt in your hand as fast.
It changes the taste, though. Like, it’s probably not noticeable for cheap chocolate, as that tastes flat to begin with, but proper chocolate should be kept at room temperature…
I put dark chocolate in the freezer, not for preservation or anything I just love the texture.
I know i’m not the only one prefering chocolate refrigerated (and some variants frozen). Not the creamy type for me.
Lindt with nuts is way crunchier in the freezer.
I keep Reese’s peanut butter cup minis in the freezer when family sends them (not for sale in Japan currently). My wife likes Alfort which are chocolate + biscuit cookies and turned me on to putting those in the freezer. Somehow, it’s much better that way; I didn’t expect the biscuit to be changed or, if so, certainly not better, but it is.