admin
Many of us store our food in certain parts of the kitchen out of pure old habit. Food storage can get especially confusing during the summer when everything seems to spoil in a matter of hours, especially fresh produce like fruit and vegetables.
While it’s tempting to keep everything out of the heat and in the fridge — especially if you don’t want to waste food or money —tomatoes should never be stored there. In an Instagram post advising Brits where to keep food during hot weather, the consumer experts warned that keeping tomatoes in the fridge changes the “temperature and taste” of tomatoes and effectively makes them tasteless.
Many shoppers simply assume that because tomatoes are often kept in the cooler isles of supermarkets, they should be kept in the fridge.
But this is simply done to extend their shelf life, and once you’re home from doing a food shop, you should find a cool and shady spot in your kitchen to keep your tomatoes in.
It comes down to a simple science around how flavour develops in tomatoes, and the New Scientist reported that in 2016, a team of researchers at the University of Florida studied over 25,000 genes in two varieties of tomatoes to study the effects of chilling them.
Originally found in South America, tomatoes are used to tropical climates, and the study found that chilling them reduces the activity of hundreds of genes, including the ones responsible for making them taste sweet and flavourful.
However, in an article for Serious Eats, Daniel Gritzer acknowledged that keeping tomatoes cool in the summer can be a difficult task.
Daniel said: “I can remember losing quite a few beautiful summer tomatoes over the years to rapid rot and decomposition, because they were sitting out in sweltering heat.”
With the UK experiencing unusually high temperatures this summer, Daniel provided some insight into how to get them to last longer during the heat.
After you’ve brought a punnet of fresh tomatoes, it’s best to keep these out of the fridge until they’ve ripened. Tomatoes are ripe when they’re slightly soft if squeezed, and easily detach from the vine.
Once ripe, you can then go ahead and place them in the fridge if you’re not planning to eat them immediately, as this will buy you some more time before they start to spoil.
If you’ve grown your own tomatoes, or stumbled across some seriously sweet ones in the supermarket and want to keep them for a treat during the colder months, you can also freeze them.
Simply remove the stems and place them in a container or bag, and when it comes to defrosting them, add them to a bowl of tepid water. It’s best to use frozen tomatoes for sauces or soups, instead of eating them, as the texture won’t be quite the same.
