What do you do with your vege's? Do you take the time to prep them right away before putting them away? Do you put them away still in their plastic bag from the store or just dump them all into your refrigerator crisper?
Reason for asking this-- it seems several cooking shows talk about doing prep work first. To be honest I am not totally sure what they are meaning about this. We often put them away in the crisper still in the bag. But, they go bad quickly probably from the moisture in the bag. I guess we have always done this to keep cleaning the fridge easier.
Any veggies that I will be making with dinner stay in their bag until I'm ready to use them. I make a HUGE salad once per week and it lasts me all week for lunches. I make that as soon as I get home....cut the broccoli, peel and chop cucumbers, cut the peppers, wash everything, etc. It's just easier to get it over with! LOL Keep in mind, with some veggies, if you do cut them up days before you use them, they will brown and go bad more quickly.
I'm trying to eat a lot more fruits/veggies now, and find that it's much more convenient when they're all prepared and cut up - it makes it so easy to add a handful of veggies to a salad, for example, or toss together a single serving of fruit salad. I'm at a point now where I typically have washed and cut up carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, mushrooms, etc. on hand, and some other containers with sliced strawberries, pineapple, and orange or grapefruit segments. I wash and dry lettuce and spinach, and roll them in damp paper towels before putting them in the crisper as they usually stay fresher and last longer that way.
I figure that once I get home it takes about an hour to get things cleaned, prepared and put away. It definitely saves a lot of time during the week, though!
I'm with cemetarysiren; I generally leave everything in the bag until I am ready to use it. The only exceptions are things that don't really need to be peeled or cut up. For example, when I get home from the farmers market, I dump all my apricots and/or whatever fruit I bought into the strainer and rinse it off. Then I put it in clean bag and put in the fridge (unless it needs to ripen a bit). Same thing for cherry tomatoes. With berries, I wash the whole pint and put them in a clean tupperware container (they'll get dried out if you leave them in the pint container) the first time I serve myself any of them. I find I am more likely to eat the fruit if it is already washed and ready to go.
But I don't peel or cut anything, because that will make it go bad sooner. Even if it doesn't go bad, it will get dried out or mushy. I like my fruit and veggies as crisp as possible.
I will say, though, that we've had an abundance of lettuce from the garden the past couple weeks and I did end up separating all the leaves and washing them before putting them in the fridge. It definitely made salad prep a lot easier (all I had to do was tear the leaves into bit sized pieces and throw them in a bowl) and the leaves held up quite a bit better than I thought they would.
I will sometimes prep my meat, esp. chicken, as soon as I get it home. I buy chicken breasts six per pack. When I get home from the grocery store, I usually wash it, cut off the visible fat, weigh it and stick it in freezer bags (unless I'm going to use it right away). It doesn't affect the quality of the chicken and it makes meal prep during the week that much easier.
I always prep my meat when I get home - usually freeze in single servings. Fruits that get eaten "as is" like bananas, apples, grapes, or even oranges get put in a bowl on the counter to be washed when you eat one. Things like melons I take the time to cut up so there's no excuse not to eat them because you don't want to take the time to cut them up. Salad stuff - tomatoes don't get refrigerated, so usually in a bowl next to the fruit, same with avocados. Onions go in the cupboard. Mushrooms and cukes go in the crisper drawer. Lettuce I'm growing in my garden right now and I do wash it as soon as I pick it - esp if it's rained and it's muddy. Oh, carrots, zucchini and broccoli I just refrigerate - no prep. I don't care for most of them raw, so cutting them up isn't necessary ahead of time.
I usually buy the cut but fresh veggies (broccoli,cauliflower,carrots,spinach etc). I put them in the refigerator cripser when I get home but I always use them within a week (use half and freeze half). i do my groceries every two weeks. so the 2nd week, I usually use the frozen veggies.
I just planted tomato, green chili peppers and basil in my patio and cant wait for them to grow!
Pretty much everything Pat said is what I do too. Except the fruit. I don't usually put fruit out in a bowl unless guests are coming over because my family likes them crunchy and cold. Bananas in the fruit bowl the rest in the frig unwashed. I store apples and pears in their own tightly sealed compartments as they will make other things ripen too quickly.
Ah.. sometimes I plant my green onions straight from the grocery. I buy plenty, put some in the frig and stick the rest in potting soil. They take root and will last quite a while this way and be ready and fresh when I need them.
I've never had luck growing them from seed although my chives grow like crazy and now seed themselves.
I prep everything as soon as I get home. Veggies get washed and cut up and put into tupperware for in the fridge. Meat gets separated into cooking-sized packages (hamburger into one-pound portions, chicken breasts two to a baggie, and so on) and put in the freezer. Fruit goes straight into the fruit bowl in the middle of the table, where I can see and eat it. It makes it a lot easier and more convenient to cook when everything is set up like that, and it only takes an hour or so after shopping to do all the prep work. I had a system down for it after the first time I did it.
They say, though, that you shouldn't wash your fresh fruits and veggies until you're ready to use them. I prep some stuff, yes, like cutting up heads of cauliflower and broccoli, but I never actually wash them until I'm ready to cook them.
Just something I saw on the food network once. They said washing your veggies ahead of time and then storing them in the fridge for a few days before use makes them go 'bad' quicker
I just throw the veggies into the crisper until I need them. Most of the fruit also, with the exception of watermelon and cataloupe. I cut the watermelon in half and put half in the fridge covered for next week. The remaining half I cut up into bite sized pieces and keep in a big tupperware type container. Same with the cantaloupe. This way I always have some yummy watermelon or cantaloupe with my dinner.
Mushrooms last longer if you take them out of the plastic, gently wash and pat dry (or, if you're like me,leave them on a paper towel for an hour) and then store in a brown paper bag, in the fridge. I hang bananas on a -uhhh-banana hanging thingy, put oranges, lemons, limes, avacadoes and apples in the fruit bowl (to be washed by person eating it) except for hubby's apples. He likes those in the fridge. These things get eaten so fast they don't have a chance to go off but plums, nectarines, melon, peaches, those all g in the fridge as they come. I do prep grapes because my 2 year old loves them so I pick them off the stems, wash them and then store in an airtight bowl. I never used to until I realized when I asked someone to get some grapes for her, they didn't wash them. I've had to rethink the way I store fruits and veggies now that I'm buying so much of it fresh because I was running out of room and if you stack it, it goes bad faster. I now keep potatoes and onions in a wooden bin in the cupboard. I've also taken to buying double the amount of fresh green beans and broccoli because I keep what I'm using that week fresh and then blanch and freeze the other half.
When I buy meat in bulk, I prep it immediately. For chicken or chops, I separate it according to how much I need for a family meal and often, will add a marinade sauce and freeze it that way. Makes it much quicker during the week if you don't have to take time to marinate.
After Grocery Shopping....
