Food tip - Refrigerate or not refrigetrate... (diners, avocado, tomatoes)

[elnina]

A lot of what dictates your fridge-stored food is just what you grew up with, which can differ a lot from person to person. Sometimes that's just personal preference...
Here is a short list of food that does not needs to be refrigerated:
Potatoes - starch will turn to sugar
Tomatoes - get mushy and gross
Honey - gets really thick and hard
Onions - get soft in the fridge. Store outside, but away from potatoes.

Food you can refrigerate, but you don't need to:
Peanut butter - no reason
Bread and baked goods - get hard, taste old and stale
Bananas - turn black
Oil ( except peanut oil ) - no need, gets cloudy
Apples - they are fine on the counter, if you want cold, keep in the fridge

Food you need to refrigerate:
Meat
Milk
Eggs
Cheese - but take out an hour before eating, to improve the taste and texture
Butter - well, I always leave a small portion outside to get it soft and easy to spread. No fear - butter is made from pasteurized milk, it's less likely to grow bacteria.
Basically anything that says "refrigerate after opening" on the bottle.

Fruit and veggies - the list is long so check it here:
How to Keep Fruits and Veggies Fresh
Good tip about Ethylene producers (keep away from other fruits and vegetables)

As you can see the rules can pretty easily be bent for a lot of foods—so it's up to you how you store them—but this should at least keep you informed of the pros and cons of doing so for each food.

[SATX56]

Great list and info! Thanks Elnina!

[Mattie]

I always get tripped up by condiments. My mother never refrigerated catsup or mayo, and we never got sick. Sometimes I wonder about the warnings on the jars.

[TabulaRasa]

Once sliced, onions should go in the fridge. Tomatoes, too, but if I slice a tomato, I tend to use it all on the spot. Not so with sliced or diced onions, necessarily.

[TabulaRasa]

Originally Posted by Mattie

I always get tripped up by condiments. My mother never refrigerated catsup or mayo, and we never got sick. Sometimes I wonder about the warnings on the jars.

Ketchup and mustard were always left out on the tables in the greasy spoon diners and dives of my youth, and still are when I go back home. Mayo, I don't mess with since it involves eggs, which are super perishable. If it's real mayo, as opposed to some sort of sandwich spread with no eggs, I'd def. go the refrigeration route. Rancid eggs are not something I wanna mess with.

[SATX56]

Ketchup and vinegar both probably have enough vinegar in them to preserve them.

[mrs.cool]

When we got married, we discovered that while my family always kept the jelly in the fridge and the peanut butter in the cupboard, his kept the jelly in the cupboard and the peanut butter in the fridge! Different stokes for different folks I guess.

[elnina]

Did you guys saw the part about "ethylene can build up in the fridge"?
The Apples
Bananas
Tomatoes
Apricots
Cantaloupe
Avocados
Nectarines
Peaches
Pears
and
Plums ?
When ethylene-producing foods are kept in close proximity with ethylene-sensitive foods, especially in a confined space (like a bag or drawer), the gas will speed up the ripening process of the other produce. Use this to your advantage if you want to speed up the ripening process of an unripe fruit, for example, by putting an apple in a bag with an unripe avocado.

[SATX56]

Originally Posted by SATX56

Ketchup and vinegar both probably have enough vinegar in them to preserve them.

Meant to say ketchup and Mustard both, likely have enough vinegar to preserve them.

[Debsi]

All nut oils should be refrigerated, as they tend to go rancid quickly.

Also, I haven't tried it myself, as I hate bananas, but I read in Cook's Illustrated that refrigerating bananas is a great idea. Yes, the skin turns black quickly, but their experiments showed that the fruit actually stayed good much longer in the fridge than on the counter.