The trick to store onions and make them last longer without rotting
Onion is a food that you either love or hate, there is no middle ground. This vegetable, which we can find in different shapes, sizes and colors, has a very peculiar flavor and, although most of the time they make you cry when you are cutting them, it is an ingredient that is never lacking in our kitchen .
And think about it: what would your salads or your stir-fries be without adding onion? They would have half the flavor . For this reason, as we use them in all our recipes when cooking them every other day, it is very important to know how we should store this food so that it does not rot or go bad. If you are interested in learning more about this topic, keep reading to learn more about how to prevent onions from going bad .
How to prevent onions from going bad
As we have mentioned in previous lines, the onion is an essential ingredient in any kitchen and, although we use it very frequently and use it up quickly, there is a great inconvenience that surrounds it and that is that it is very difficult to buy a loose onion, but instead, As a general rule, you have to buy them in bundles or packages with many units. And what does this mean? Well, no matter how much onion we eat, there is always one that ends up rotting or spoiling.
To avoid this waste of unnecessary food and that you waste your money buying too many onions, we have compiled, in the following list, the best ways that exist to store onions and prevent them from spoiling:
Store whole onions in a cool, dry, dark, well-ventilated place
When you arrive from the supermarket to buy your onions , don’t even think about putting them in the fridge , it is a space where the air hardly flows and there is a lot of humidity. Therefore, you should find a place in the house that is dry, dark and has good ventilation, such as a closet, pantry or in the basement . In this way, the onions, whole and uncut, will last you in good condition for at least four weeks . Also, you should avoid keeping them inside a plastic bag, it is best to put them in a mesh bag or an open basket so that the air flows well.
Once cut, the onion must be stored in the refrigerator
Unlike the whole onion that you should never, ever put in the fridge, once you have it cut, it is crucial that you keep it in the fridge yes or yes . If you keep it in the cold cut in half , it will last from 10 to 14 days and if you store it cut into pieces or dice, it will be in good condition for 7 to 10 days. Of course, in both cases you must store them in an airtight container or bag . An important point so that the cut onion does not spoil if you store it in this way is that you make sure that, when you are cutting it, both the cutting board and your hands must be clean.
Cooked onions should also be kept in the fridge
If, for example, you have fried or poached a few pieces of onion and you have leftovers, do not throw them away because, if you keep them in good condition in the refrigerator, you can reuse them for other recipes . To do this, you must store them in the same way as the cut raw onion, that is, in an airtight bag or container , but do not put them in immediately after cooking them, you must wait a bit for them to cool down. If you do it right, they can last you from 3 to 5 days . If you are not going to have time to consume the cooked onion in the next 5 days, you can also store it in the freezer , where you can keep it frozen for up to 3 months.
If you start to introduce these new habits to prevent your onions from spoiling , you will see that very soon you will learn to differentiate when an onion is rotten or in poor condition to consume. To give you some clues, the color change is the most obvious way to know if an onion is already bad, so if you see that it has gray, brown or white spots , it means that it cannot be eaten.
