How to Store Radishes, Carrots, Beets, and Turnips
The decline of home cooking has become a trendy thing to complain about these days. If only more people would cook at home, the argument goes, we could begin to solve such national problems as obesity, diabetes, and the falling economy. But very little is being done to actually make that happen. Yes, Jamie Oliver taught 1,000 people how to cook in a week. But unless you happen to live in Huntington West Virginia, you are stuck with the commercials in between the shows. You know, the ones that claim Stouffer’s and Lean Cuisine and necessary to make healthy daily meals, because working with raw ingredients is too intimidating and best left to the professionals.
There is a huge gap in general knowledge not only in the basics of cooking, but in how to store raw ingredients. People seem to fall into two extremes when it comes to veggie storage. There is the Seal Everything Tightly In A Ziploc Bag So It Doesn’t Get Contaminated camp and then there is the Throw Everything In The Fridge Exactly How It Came From The Store And Hope For The Best camp. And it’s no wonder there is such confusion. Meat and dairy products are the only foods that come with explicit storage instructions - instructions that make it sound like if you look at the ground beef in your fridge and think “salmonella,” the cells with magically begin to spawn. Then we have the likes of Food Network fridges that are always cascading with fresh vegetables, wholly intact down to the carrot tops waving at the camera, nary a bag in sight.