"refrigerator" news and stories

While I am typically not particularly picky when it comes to food or drink. However, when coffee is concerned, I am pretty darn selective (my coffee addiction has been well-documented here, here and here). I love coffee, and don't have a whole lot of tolerance for weak, burnt or stale coffee. However, even I sometimes get tangled in the "how to store you coffee bean" debate. For years I fell firmly in the camp that believed that coffee should live in the freezer. But then I read somewhere that it was best to keep it at room temperature and so I begrudgingly switched. These days I keep my coffee out on the counter, in large part because I go through it fast enough that I don't worry about the oils in the beans going bad.

Over at the Unclutterer, Erin has put together a helpful guide with tips on how best to store coffee. According to her research, my storage technique seems to be okay (room temperature is acceptable, as is the freezer for beans that you want to keep for the long term). She does stress that coffee beans should not be stored in the fridge, as it is far too moist in there.

How do you guys store your coffee beans? Fridge, freezer, room temperature or some combination?

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The refrigerator in my apartment is a very bare-boned model. The shelves are bare wire racks, which means that if something leaks on the top shelf, it very quickly saturates the entire fridge. There isn't a cheese drawer (I have an old clear plastic shoe box on the bottom shelf that corrals the cold cuts and cheeses) and the space on the door is slim. The one thing I do have is two crisper drawers and I use them as much as possible, often stuffing them beyond a comfortable capacity. This does sometimes mean that I lose a green pepper or a head of broccoli, only to find it again when it is soft and brown.

Over at the Unclutterer, Erin has a similar problem with her crisper drawers and began to wonder if the crisper drawer was the best place to store her fruits and veggies. She has put together a list of produce and the storage recommendations for each item. It's a helpful resource and one that may save you a lot of money and pain, as it will teach you how to keep your apples crisp (keep in bags punched with holes on the shelf for good air circulation) and your corn fresh (keep in husk if you're going to use it immediately, otherwise remove the husk and silk, vacuum seal and freeze). She also says that bananas can go in the fridge to slow down their ripening, that onions should go someplace cool, dry and ventilated (not the refrigerator) and that potatoes can be stored in the crisper drawers, but should be given a day to warm up to room temperature before you use them.

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Where I live it is (finally!) starting to feel like Spring, so my refrigerator is getting stocked full of fresh fruits and vegetables just waiting to be sliced and diced for some summer salads. Some of them are more difficult to handle than others though, and I'm often asked what the best way is to handle a particular fruit or veggie.

I ran across this blog entry by Rachel at Coconut & Lime, which provides complete, detailed, step-by-step instructions (including pictures) on how to cut up a mango with minimal waste. This may seem a bit elementary for seasoned cooks - but for those who are just learning their way around the produce aisle it is an excellent guide. Once you have them all cut up, Rachel also follows up with a recipe for Mango Chicken which sounds absolutely delicious.

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Is you dream refrigerator a giant Subzero or a colorful, retro Big Chill? Designers are already thinking outside of the box when it comes to restyling refrigerators and, if they get their way, we might be looking at a totally different appliance in the future. This is the Tree House Fridge, a design concept from the team of Chuan Shi, Wenying Lu, Chuan Shi & Yu Li at Yanko Design. Its unique layout presents an interesting possibility of what fridges could be like in the not-too-distant future. Each of the branches will be specifically designed to store a certain type of food - cheese, produce, etc - and will have a slide-out compartment in the trunk for larger things and drinks. To take advantage of the tree shape, the branches will have holders on the doors where fruit can be stored and "picked" at will.

A tree, of course, seems a bit extreme, but it is not so far-fetched to imagine separated, specialized compartments that will keep food fresher than the salad drawers that many refrigerators are equipped with now.

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We're becoming more and more aware of food safety, even in our own homes, and though we will never forget to scrub everything that has come into contact with fresh poultry and now, to wash all our produce, we should also remember that the safest way to thaw frozen meat is quickly. In other words, don't take out a couple of frozen T-bones in the morning and leave them on the counter all day.

According to Engadget, this Sharp refrigerator has a warming drawer that allows you to quickly thaw your frozen foods. However, we can't tell for sure because the original site is in Japanese. A few of the commenters on the Engadget post have tried to help with the translation, but if there's any one of our Slashfood readers who knows Japanese, let us know what we're missing!

Of course, if our interpretation of the what the fridge actually does is off, at least we were reminded to always quick-thaw our frozen meats!