If you love veggies but you don’t want to go grocery shopping any more often than you absolutely have to, you might find it annoying that veggies, herbs, lettuce and leafy greens tend to go bad pretty fast.
Let’s look at the reasons why this happens and how you can avoid them. They are:
- Dirt and bacteria
- Moisture
- Condensation
- Trapped gasses
- Too much air
Dirt and bacteria
Dirt and bacteria will cause veggies to decay more quickly. This is easy to avoid; you just need to wash them. But you might have heard that you’re better off not washing veggies before storage. Confused? The reason for the “don’t wash” recommendation is that if the veggies remain wet after washing, you run into problem #2, which is moisture. However, the best bet is to wash AND dry your veggies (dry them really, really thoroughly). More on that below.
To wash your veggies, submerge them fully in cold water. Agitate the water, drain, and then submerge again in fresh cold water to rinse.
Moisture
Moisture on veggies will cause them to rot. It’s very common for people to store wet veggies, either because they’ve washed them and not dried them thoroughly, or because the produce was sprayed with water at the supermarket to make it look fresh.
What a lot of people don’t know is that if you make sure your veggies are bone-dry before you store them, they will last a lot longer. The difference is huge.
If you're dealing with smooth veggies like a cucumber or capsicum, it's easy. You can just wipe them dry.
Unfortunately, getting lettuce, herbs and leafy greens bone-dry is not as easy. If you’re short on time, give those leaves a really good spin in a salad spinner, then pat them dry gently with a tea-towel. But if you want to be thorough, you should also spread out the leaves on a tea towel and leave them to air-dry for an hour or two. Yes, it’s counter-intuitive to leave them out of the fridge for that long. But trust me, they’ll last so much longer if you do.
Condensation
This is where it gets tricky. If veggies are sealed in an air-tight environment, like a plastic container, a glass container, or a sealed plastic bag, then condensation starts to form. It sits on the veggies and causes them to rot. And there’s not a lot you can do about it.
I used to think that if I lifted my veggies off the bottom of the container (for example by storing them in a salad spinner) then the condensation would collect at the bottom of the container, and the veggies would be safe above. Unfortunately, that’s not what happens. The beads of condensation don’t fall down because they’re too small, and the veggies get slimy, fast.
A tea towel or paper towel inside the container can help. But unfortunately the condensation doesn't only collect in the towel. It collects everywhere else as well. The game-changer is storing your veggies in a container that doesn’t trap condensation.
This is one of the reasons why the Produce Pod works so well. Condensation is able to escape. Problem. Solved.
Trapped gasses
All vegetables respirate. They need to breathe. This is the second problem with storing your veggies in an air-tight environment. You are essentially suffocating them. They release gasses which build up in that sealed container and this causes them to deteriorate faster.
Fortunately, the Produce Pod is breathable. So gasses don’t build up and your veggies can breathe like nature intended.
Too much air
You might think that if keeping veggies in a sealed environment is so problematic, you’d be better off leaving them open to the air. Unless you’ve tried it. In which case you’d know that they wilt really, really quickly. Balance is key. Too much air is usually even worse for veggies than keeping them sealed.
In summary
You need to protect your veggies from the drying fridge air, without suffocating them and trapping condensation. This is hard to do. Fortunately, if you have a Produce Pod, these problems are solved and your veggies will last much longer.
However, if you don’t have a Produce Pod, make sure to wash your veggies before you store them and then focus on moisture and condensation. Just by drying your veggies really thoroughly, and wiping away condensation when you see it, you will be surprised how much longer your veggies stay fresh.