I refrigerate just about everything except for fruit and bread. Doritos are even more awesome after a stay in the freezer.
As Buck Turgidson said, govt food regs error on the safe side. Anyone who watches Alton Brown make fun of them, should know that. Hell, their regs tell you to make dry, lousy turkeys for thxgiving. No restaurant makes a turkey that way. Butter is a fat/oil. It's fine at room temp, just like bacon grease is. It takes several days for bacon grease to go rancid. I don't keep bacon grease, though; I think it's gross and useless. I have fresh salt pork if I want some bacon grease. I do freeze suet and schmaltze that I collect from making stocks, though, but that's because I might store that for months. The freezer and refrigerators act as dehydrators, crude humidors in short periods. In a pinch, you can cure your weed in the freezer in a can with holes in the lid and dry ice (to increase the dehydrating effect) in the can with the pot. At least I've been told. For tobacco, if you don't smoke much, and you don't have a cigar Humidor, the argument is Houston is too humid to leave them out. But freezers and frig's are too dry, as well. Then again, smokes have little bugs in them, so if you don't smoke much, you might benefit from freezing those suckers. haha. Plus, it's a good way to remember where your smokes are. as for coffee. That's a myth. Don't freeze your coffee. Sealed container in a cool pantry is best. You dont' want to dehydrate coffee. As for me, I put sugar and flour in the freezer to prevent clumping, when I lived in Houston. None of the above applies to Colorado.
I don't refrigerate butter. I use a french butter dish though. Hard butter sucks. http://itotd.com/articles/215/french-butter-dishes/ The idea behind French butter dishes is pure, ingenious simplicity. Butter at room temperature quickly turns rancid when exposed to oxygen, so the usual means of preserving it is to store it in the refrigerator. But all that’s really needed is to keep air away from the butter. A French butter dish does this by using water to form a seal between the butter and the air. There are two parts to the dish: a smaller, bell- or cone-shaped piece that sits on a wide base, and a second, larger container. You fill the bell up with butter, put water in the larger container, and invert the bell into the water. Because butter is basically an oil, it won’t mix with the water, and as long as it’s not too hot, it will remain sticky enough to stay inside the bell. You can keep this on your kitchen table so that butter is always available without having to soften it.
Your muscle cuts (steaks, roasts, etc...) are basically fine; most quality groceries break down whole carcasses themselves, and grind their own beef on premises too, so that's usually ok. I just avoid the 3rd party pre-packaged ground beef. Basically, talk to your butcher & stick to the stuff they process on-site.
You could talk to someone who has taken organic chemistry lab. Or, leave your own butter out and see how long it takes to go bad in a normal kitchen. It'll be a while.
Yup. I sometimes grind my own beef from trimmed briscuit cuts, just to be sure. The hardest meat to find un-nastified is chicken.
Agreed. I used to just use a normal butter dish with a lid, and we never had it go bad. That said, we like butter and go through it pretty quickly.
Fatty. Why must you compare everything to fast food? Just because someone chooses not to eat the .39 cent taco mean, doesn't mean they have to resort to another fast food place. How about going to the grocery store, or whole foods and getting some good quality lean mean and cooking it at home? Not everyone eats fast food regularly. At least I hope not. I do it when I'm in a pinch, but it is garbage. You are what you eat, Fatty.
This is correct. Butter has been around long before refrigeration. If my 3rd grade teacher taught me anything it was that settlers churned butter in some wooden contraption and placed them in small mason jars.
Unless you don't leave your AC on during the day in the summer. In that case it will only take weeks.
Girl Scout Thin Mints are freakin' AWESOME when they're frozen... I've never even heard of people freezing chips before this thread.
