Cold facts can keep food safe

Recently in France, I ate sandwiches filled with room temperature mayonnaise, stored in its already opened jar in the cupboard; sausages that had been hanging for months from a light fixture above the kitchen table; several varieties of unpasteurized cheeses, stored under glass in the cupboard next to the pickles and mayonnaise; and fried eggs that had been stored raw in their shells for several days in a basket on the counter, next to the stove.

I tried to find room in the dorm-sized refrigerator for some of these things, shoving them in next to the containers of fromage blanc and boxes of white wine, only to be told by Caroline, the woman of the house: “Never, never never put cheese in the frigo. It needs to mature!”

All this tepid food made me a little nervous at first, and I’m guessing that if you’re American, it makes you a little uncomfortable, too. But I was hungry, and encouraged that the French people who lived in the house and who had been eating these things for decades were indeed alive and healthy. I ate and lived to tell the tale.

Obviously, I did not know everything there was to know about refrigeration practices and food safety. So I did a little research. Turns out that Americans are particularly enthusiastic about their refrigerators, while the French are less so.

There are historical reasons for this, says Kyri Watson Claflin, a history professor at Boston University who has studied Les Halles, the old food market in Paris, extensively. Food in France has never been just another commodity and food markets were subject to strict regulation designed to make them “moral,” Claflin explains.

“Making Les Halles a moral marketplace required that all of the fresh food that came into the central Paris market in the morning was to be put out on display and sold on the same day between the opening and closing market bells.”

This way, the consumer could see everything and make his decision accordingly. The early morning customers, like chefs, got the best selection and paid the highest prices; customers later in the day got a smaller selection, and paid less. Refrigeration, when it was first available, was viewed as cheating – a way to conceal stock, hold it for the next morning and to manipulate food prices.

Also, French people tend to shop for their food often throughout the week.

“Parisians had fresh foods regularly and did not need to stock foods in their tiny apartments and kitchens,” Claflin said. Even today, every French person I’ve met owns a much smaller refrigerator than the average American. Maybe that’s the real reason French women don’t get fat.

Here are some refrigerator tips to help you use its limited space most efficiently.

First of all, the basics. Keep it set between 33 degrees and 40 degrees Fahrenheit – use a refrigerator thermometer to keep track. Keep dairy products and meats in the coldest areas and produce in the warmest areas, if your refrigerator has different temperature zones. Wrap everything that goes into the fridge tightly.

Keep your fridge organized and clean it out once a week. Eat leftovers within a day or two. If you find yourself throwing out leftovers after a couple of weeks because you lost track of them, your fridge is too chaotic and you’re not paying enough attention to it.

It’s okay to let hot foods cool down before putting them in the fridge but don’t wait longer than an hour at most. Two hours is the limit for holding food at room temperature.

A few words about bacteria. Some will make your food spoil but not make it dangerous; some are downright life-threatening; and some are helpful and delicious, such as the bacteria that turns milk into yogurt. Refrigeration will slow the growth of many bacterias but doesn’t kill them or reverse the spoilage process – so while the fridge is helpful, it’s not a miracle worker.

Some foods lose quality when stored at cold temperatures, due to alterations in their chemical structures. Unless you have some kind of insect infestation problem, don’t refrigerate tomatoes, potatoes, onions, unripe fruits, bananas, chocolate, nuts, baked goods (unless they are cream or custard filled), honey, or vegetable oils (except olive oil and nut oils).

Flour, cornmeal, wheat germ, fresh peanut butter and maple syrup are some foods that you might not normally think of storing in the fridge but will keep longer if you do.

Certain condiments are shelf stable and do not need to be kept in the fridge, although chilling will extend their life in most cases: molasses, soy sauce, mustard, vinegars, and jams.

“There is nothing in mustard – or at least in the common variety made with only dry mustard, vinegar, salt and preservatives – that can get seriously spoiled,” wrote food journalist Regina Schrambling in Salon.com magazine last year. “And as I learned while reporting on mayonnaise a few years ago, even Hellmann’s is shelf-stable – the label says ‘refrigerate after opening’ for taste and texture reasons, not because it is the salmon mousse of condiments. Make a ‘salad’ with salmonella-prone tuna or chicken or eggs, though, and it moves into the risk column.”

However, the USDA and Washington State University extension publications recommend refrigerating mayonnaise. It will keep for 10 to 12 weeks in the refrigerator after opening it. Mustard will keep for 6 to 8 months at room temperature after opening and ketchup will keep for about a month on the shelf once opened, according to WSU Extension.

When buying and storing fruit, it is best to buy small quantities, keep it out of the fridge, and eat it at room temperature when it’s perfectly ripe. You’ll find your fruit has a lot more flavor and better texture this way. If you do need to keep it in the fridge for a couple of days when it’s ripe, don’t wash it until you’re ready to eat it. Cut fruit should be refrigerated.

I never keep my butter in the fridge, as it makes it too hard to spread on my bread. There are special ceramic butter keepers available – from France, of course – that keep it airtight and fresh, yet spreadable.

And what about cheese? Well, when I’m in France, where so much cheese is unpasteurized and full of tasty bacteria and mold I’ll let it mature in the cupboard for the few days it takes to eat it all. But at home, it’ll all go straight into the fridge. I know from experience that the mold that grows on storebought American-made cheese is not meant to be eaten.