It may seem obvious to keep your potatoes on the countertop or fridge, but this can actually make them spoil and sprout at a faster rate.
Potatoes should be a long-lasting vegetable if kept away from the cold and humid environment in the fridge as it can cause them to go soft or even mouldy at a faster rate.
They also need to be kept away from sunlight as it can cause potatoes to grow green spots and begin sprouting. This will not make the potato rot, but change the flavour and will make it taste extremely bitter.
Nikole Goncalves, a food storage expert and founder of Healthnut Nutrition, explained: “Stop storing your potatoes like this. As a bestselling cookbook author and recipe developer for almost 10 years now, testing out different methods on how to get my food to last the longest is part of my job.
“If you’re still storing your potatoes in the plastic bags they come from or putting them on the counter or in the fridge, you wanna be doing this instead.”
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However, Nikole has also warned you to be careful of what vegetables you are storing alongside your potatoes certain foods can also cause spoilage.
She said: “I’ve been victim to this but you do not want to be storing your onions in with your potatoes because they actually let out a gas which is gonna make your potatoes sprout and go bad faster.”
Onions, as well as garlic, shallots, sweet potatoes and other vegetables, emit ethylene gas, a growth hormone that helps vegetables grow but also causes them to ripen.
When many ethylene-producing or ethylene-sensitive foods are stored together, they will begin ripening at a much faster rate and will quickly spoil within only a few days.
Make sure to keep potatoes and onions far away from each other and store them separately in the kitchen. If these food storage tips are followed properly, potatoes should last between two to six months.
Nikole said: “When you store your produce properly, it will last so much longer which means you’re going to save money and prevent a lot of food waste in your kitchen.”
