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Is your lettuce sad? Is your kale wilting? Are your apples bruised? Are your berries moldy? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then these five suggestions on how to store your raw foods are for you! Read on and educate yourself on how to properly store your raw foods, so when you want to eat some grapes, they aren’t covered with mold.
1. Use stabilized oxygen water purification drops
Aerobic 07, as it’s called, is a concentrated, non-toxic solution of stabilized electrolytes containing oxygen in molecular form. As a diluted substance, Aerobic 07 can kill bacteria in water, making it suitable for traveling and essential for natural disaster preparedness, but it also can keep vegetables, fruit, and juice (non-acidic based) fresher for longer periods of time. Using 10 to 15 drops per quart of water, produce can be soaked in the dilute solution to maintain freshness. However, because the solution is so concentrated, it must be diluted prior to treatment of water or produce or any other liquid, and it is a skin and eye irritant.
2. Don’t wash fruit all at the same time
Do not wash fruit before storage. “Instead, wash them when you are ready to use them. If the produce is very dirty, rinse it, and then dry it well before storing it,” states the Tri-State Fruit and Vegetable Safety Consortium. By doing so, the fruit won’t go bad as fast, especially with grapes and fruits that are often stored in a tightly packed space.
3. Soak your berries in a vinegar solution
Vinegar washes work best with berries to ensure that they don’t mold prematurely. To do this, take one gallon of cold water and mix it with one cup of white or apple cider vinegar, and then add in two pints of strawberries or any other berry. Soak the berries for two to 10 minutes, and drain the liquid by putting them in a colander. Place the berries on a paper towel-lined baking sheet and allow them to dry. Then, place them in a bowl in the refrigerator. For lighter berries, like raspberries, use less vinegar in a sixteen-part water to one-part vinegar solution.
4. Bag greens with a spritz of water
As Kristina Carrillo-Bucaram from the YouTube channel, Fully Raw Kristina, says, “You can spritz [greens] with water and put [them] in a Ziploc bag. That’ll keep [them] fresh for twice as a long.” So, take your kale, spinach, lettuce, chard, and whatever green you have, and stick them in separate bags. Put a spritz of water on top of them, and seal the bags. Place the bags in the refrigerator, and they will stay fresh for longer.
5. Put most fruit on the counter and most vegetables in the fridge
This tip is almost universal as far as produce is concerned, Carrillo-Bucaram says that berries and cucumbers are the exception, “I always put berries on top of the fridge because that’s where it ventilates the most; it keeps the berries from getting moldy. Cucumbers go in the fridge.” And, don’t forget that tomatoes are a fruit: they lose flavor when they are in the refrigerator, so keep them out with the bananas!
With these five tips, you are well on your way to storing your raw foods for optimum lasting power! You’ll save money and have food longer if you store your food right.
