Store your food properly in the fridge: storage, storage time,

A meat kept a little too long in the fridge, a cream opened and forgotten in a corner… and it’s a disaster! THE food poisoning due to poorly preserved food are unfortunately commonplace. However, a few preventive actions are enough to avoid the development of germs and bacteria, and to keep your food longer.

Apart from fresh foods placed immediately in the fridge, dry products, pasta, flour, semolina, rice, rusks, and other biscuits are sometimes the most forgotten safety items. As they are dry and do not need to be stored cold, we tend to be less careful about their storage conditions.

Yet, avoid leaving them in their original packaging. Real nests for bacteria and other micro-organisms after having been transported, handled… they can carry many germs and offer shelter to frankly undesirable guests.

Indeed, yeasts and flour mites (Acarus siro) love these products, often kept in their opened packets or sachets, where they are so easy to penetrate. To avoid these “squatters” generatingallergies, it is safer to store dry products in airtight containers.

The principle of the refrigerator is to generate cold to slow the development of microorganisms present in food, and therefore keep them longer. The fridge will therefore slow down these micro-organisms, but it will not stop them.

The temperature is not the same in all compartments of the refrigerator, because not all foods are kept at the same temperature. To begin, to ensure that the air circulates well, pay attention to do not overload the fridge : on average, the volume stored for one person is 100 to 150 liters. If there are three of you, for example, a 300 liter fridge will be necessary.

Next, get to know the different zones of the fridge and their corresponding temperatures. “In a refrigerator, the temperature is rarely uniform between high and low : the coldest zone is depending on the model, located either at the top or at the bottom,” notes the website of the Ministry of Agriculture (source 2). Generally, the coldest area of the refrigerator is located in the upper zone for refrigerators with one door, and in the lower zone for refrigerators with two doors. If you have any doubt, consult the instructions.

“The refrigerator is an important link in the cold chain. You must equip it with a thermometer which allows you to identify the cold area, which must be at 4°C maximum. It is in this area that thehighly perishable products », Recalls the ministry.

Once you know the structure of your fridge, and you know where each category offoodsyou can start tidying up. Here is FASFC recommendations (Federal Agency for the Safety of the Food Chain) in its article “How to store food in the fridge (refrigerator)? » (source 1).

If your refrigerator only has a dial or dimmer to adjust the temperature, it is advisable to purchase a memory thermometer to regularly check the temperature of the device, especially during seasonal changes.

Cold doesn’t kill germs, it just puts them to sleep. A simple power outage, and here they proliferate. To preserve the health quality of the products contained in your refrigerator, consider:

You can recognize a risky food, you just need to be vigilant for certain warning signs: mold, odors, damaged packaging, bulging lids… And of course, expiry date passed!

Refrigerator storage time is essential to keep food healthy.

Here are some indications of shelf life.

Little tip: note the opening dates on opened products (canned goods, sauces, soup cartons, etc.) and on milk bottles. If you have any hesitation, don’t hesitate to feel them: a smell abnormal is a sign that the food is no longer good.

Do not let a cooked dish cool for too long at room temperature before refrigerating it, as certain cooked foods contain spores capable of proliferating very quickly and causing poisoning. Place leftovers in clean containers which have not been used for cooking or serving and cover them before storing them in the refrigerator.

Vacuum devices represent a small revolution for food preservation. They allow extend safe storage periodswhile preserving flavor and appearance products, whether raw or cooked. Instead, judge for yourself.

Otherwise, if you wish to consume foods well beyond the recommended shelf life, the freezing is all indicated.

If your fridge breaks down, first of all don’t open the door to keep all the cold inside.

Most foods can be stored in an unlit fridge between 4 and 6 hours. After 6 hours, you should start throwing away certain foods, which are more fragile than others.

Here are the foods that should be thrown away:

Here are the foods you can keep if they show no signs of spoilage:

If you have not opened the door, the food will remain cold for approximately 4 to 6 hours after the cut. For the freezer, you can leave the products for 48 hours if it is full.

It is advisable to clean the fridge and freezer before plugging them in and refilling them. This will get rid of any bacteria that may have grown during the cut.