As I wrote in my post on thermostats, most of our household energy budget goes to heating and cooling. So once we have invested our money, it pays to maintain the temperature of the air or food. With food we get an extra bonus: Keeping foods hot or cold prevents bacteria from growing and helps food last longer.
There are always exceptions to the guidelines below. We want to maximize energy conservation, convenience and safety, but we can’t always have all three. Here are ways to keep food at the correct temperature:
- Keep foods in the refrigerator or on the stove until you are ready to serve them.
- Avoid opening the refrigerator, freezer, oven or pots more than necessary. Doors and pot covers are designed to maintain the inside temperature. Opening them even briefly causes a dramatic change in temperature and can affect food quality.
- When cooking, use a timer to avoid frequent checking of food.
- After removing food from the pot, close the pot securely. Avoid leaving food uncovered for any length of time.
- Before opening the refrigerator, make a mental note to take out everything you need at once. Return items in the same way.
- Put away leftover food promptly, before other cleanup chores. Leftover soup should be reboiled and replaced in the refrigerator quite warm. The refrigerator will have to work harder to cool it. Soups are delicate and spoil quickly, especially if they contain meat, chicken, fish or dairy products.
- Keep hot food away from drafts.
- Don’t baste meat in the oven; opening the oven removes moisture faster than basting can replace it.
- Plan to finish cooking close to mealtime. Then you won’t have to refrigerate or reheat.
- Place a bowl of fresh fruit on the counter so family members won’t need to open the fridge. We freeze half-bottles of water, which can then be filled and refilled for a supply of ice water that lasts several hours. When travelling, put them into an old sock.
If you liked this post you might also enjoy:
I like the fresh fruit on the counter idea. I wonder if I can make this into a chore that my kids need to do?
It’s just too hot here for that this time of year and the fruit just wilts. Let me know if your kids have fun with it. Mine enjoyed making individual fruit plates as an appetizer the other day.
When thermos flasks came first came out, someone was very taken with the idea that they kept hot foods hot and cold foods cold. So taken, in fact, that he went to work the next day with a new thermos, containing… a cup of coffee and a choc-ice!
Mrs. B: So what happened? 🙂
Re fruit: in summer we have problems with fruit flies so we try not to leave fruit out.
Before I refrigerate soup, I put it in a basin full of cool water for about half an hour before putting it in the fridge. This cools it down to nearly room temperature, so it doesn’t spoil my milk or make my fridge run overtime to chill it.