Eco-Friendly Living: Root Cellaring—Minus the Root Cellar

Sep 25, 2020 | My interests

Three long red radishes with leaf stems and long roots.

Some red winter radishes before they are trimmed for storage.

It started with the end-of-season bulk sales on root vegetables at the farmers market. There were high-quality, organic root vegetables at half the usual price. I wondered how many of them I could keep for the winter. It wasn’t just the price, either. Market vegetables taste better than store vegetables, and, facing the prospect of six months of boring vegetables, I thought I would try storing them.

While I would love to have a proper underground root cellar, city apartments and small suburban houses don’t usually come equipped with such a luxury. But that has not stopped me from storing root vegetables all winter. It takes some work to do it well, but I have always found that it is worth the effort.

I know of five different ways to store winter vegetables: in the refrigerator, in a basement space, in an unheated room, in your kitchen, and in coolers outdoors. I’ll treat each method separately. But first, there are some basics to think about.

First Things First

The first thing to know when storing root vegetables is what to store, even before where to store it. Larger vegetables store better than smaller ones, as they have a better ratio of surface area to volume. This is true across the board. Also, some vegetables—notably sweet potatoes and winter squash—should be properly cured if they are to last. Ask your farmer whether they cure their storage vegetables. If they can’t tell you, buy elsewhere.

The farmer is also a good source of information on what to buy for the long term. Near the end of the season, I find myself asking, “Does this store well?” or “Which one stores best?” Good farmers have the answers to these questions. They can make it easier to choose among types of potatoes or onions as you pick through the options.

Once you bring home your bumper crop, proper preparation makes a difference in how well the vegetables store. First, inspect what you bought. Any damaged veggies should be eaten first, as they will not keep as well. Try to store only intact vegetables.

Spend some time before you put your purchases in storage trimming root hairs and leaves. Root hairs can tend to grow mold in storage, and leaves growing from root veggies sap their nutrients and change their texture.  Trimming also means you need less space for your vegetable haul.  If you do as I do and buy 70 or 100 pounds of root storage crops on one day, it might take a few hours to trim them all, so plan accordingly.

Also, make sure your roots are not covered in dirt, as that also tends to promote mold growth (unless you have an actual root cellar). They don’t have to be scrubbed clean and they should be as dry as possible before storage, but they should not have a lot of visible dirt. If you want to be extremely thorough (or if you find mold growth later in the season), wash the vegetables in vinegar, then rinse and dry them before putting them in storage.

In the Refrigerator

Once you have chosen your storage crops, the easiest way to store them is in the fridge. Keep them in plastic bags that are not air-tight. A little air circulation keeps them fresher. I also discovered (the hard way) that some of the compostable plastic bags hold moisture too well. If you are using eco-plastic, put a few strategic air holes in the bag before storage.

One drawback to using the refrigerator is that if you stuff your fridge full of vegetables, you will reduce circulation, and that can lead to cold spots. I have found ice on my storage vegetables in the back of the bottom of the fridge. Once I found out where the cold spots were, I tried to keep only very hardy vegetables there. The rutabagas have never seemed to be harmed by a frost.

In the Basement

If you are fortunate enough to have an unheated basement space, you may have a good vegetables storage area. Ideal storage temperatures are between 33 and 40 degrees (F). Some vegetables, like onions and garlic, do fine in higher temperatures and low humidity. But most vegetables store best at high humidity (90-95%), so if you are running a dehumidifier, you may also be dehydrating your storage vegetables. Monitor the temperature and the humidity of whatever space you are using. Even if you can’t provide ideal conditions, you can still store vegetables, but they won’t last as long.

Last winter, I had forty pounds of onions and 50 heads of garlic stored on a shelf in the main part of the basement. It stays around 65 degrees and 40% humidity there all winter and they store fairly well.

In an Unheated Room

Friends of mine have a spare bedroom they don’t use much, so in the winter, they turn off the radiator in that room and close the door. The room stays about 50 degrees all winter, making it a handy place to store winter squashes and potatoes. If you have a room or a closet that can be cut off from heat sources, try using it for storage. It might be too warm for storing turnips, but it might work for other things. Potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions and winter squash do well at that temperature.  As with every other storage method, monitoring temperature and humidity will give you the best results.

In Your Kitchen

It’s not an ideal location, but you can store some quantities of certain vegetables in your kitchen. Onions and garlic keep fairly well at room temperature, as do potatoes and sweet potatoes. All of these will tend to sprout at room temperature, but you can keep them for a few months.  I have also kept squash on the dining room table all winter.  The sturdier squashes (the ones with thick, inedible skins) can hold up for many months.  They taste better when they are newer, but they are still edible later!

In Outdoor Coolers

My preferred method of root storage is in large coolers on the back porch. This may be the most labor-intensive method, but it has also been the most successful. Once the outdoor temperature has fallen below 50 degrees, I stack three or four large coolers near the back door and fill them with winter radishes, turnips, rutabagas, carrots, parsnips, sunchokes, and whatever else I can get at a good price at the end of the season. One large cooler will hold around 50 pounds of vegetables.  I have acquired a number of the inexpensive shoulder bags that various organizations give away, the ones made of a non-woven synthetic material  I put each vegetable in its own bag.  Plastic grocery bags will also work, but they don’t breathe as well.

The biggest drawback to back porch root storage is cold temperatures. You don’t want to freeze your precious vegetables. If ice is forming inside the top of your cooler, it’s time to bring it in and let it warm up. We have an indoor-outdoor weather station and in the winter we put the outdoor probe into one of the coolers so we can keep an eye on the temperature from indoors. When the temperatures dip substantially below freezing at night, I bring in the coolers before bedtime and my husband puts them out first thing in the morning. When the days get really cold (below 20 degrees), I also bring them in for a few hours in the afternoon so they don’t freeze. This method probably works best for people who are home much of the day (which is a lot of us these days). If you’re gone 10 or 12 hours every day, it might not work for you.

Ongoing Maintenance

For every storage method, there is a certain amount of maintenance needed all winter long. Every two weeks or so, I check all my storage vegetables to be sure they are holding up. I refill the fridge with the smallest available roots (because the larger ones keep longer) and check over the ones that are going back in storage. If there are root hairs or leaves growing, I trim them. If there is mold, I try to remove it. I also try to give everything a good airing. You do want high humidity in your storage area, but not so high that the water condenses on your vegetables. Too much of that is a recipe for rot.

As the winter goes along, your storage chores become easier. The more vegetables you eat, the fewer need to be hauled in from the porch, checked, trimmed, and re-stored. December and January can be a certain amount of work, but after that, it is not as hard. Also, there will be some failures and you’ll find yourself putting a few things in compost. If you have a lot of rotting roots, do what you can to adjust temperature and humidity, but a few are always going to be losses.

If you can see that something won’t hold up, you can also cook it and put it in the freezer.  See my earlier post on freezing produce.  I’ve even stored cooked mashed potatoes when a bunch of potatoes started to go bad in the middle of the winter!

How Much to Store

I wish there were hard and fast rules about how many root vegetables to store, but it all depends on your eating habits. I kept track for a few years and discovered that if we are eating mostly storage vegetables (including what I put in the freezer), we can go through about five pounds of root vegetables in a week. Multiplying that by the number of weeks between the last farmers’ market of the season and the first market of the next season gives me a good idea of how many vegetables to buy. It took me a few years, but I’ve finally figured out what works for us.  Now, for two people, I generally get about 250 pounds of vegetables by the end of November.  (We eat a lot of vegetables!)  If you want to buy enough to last the winter, it may take some experimentation. Fortunately, if you don’t calculate correctly, you can still buy food in the winter!

Finally

Just because you live in an apartment or townhouse doesn’t mean you can’t have winter root storage. You may not have ideal conditions, but there are plenty of options. If you’re creative, you might even come up with methods I haven’t tried.

I’ll be doing a Zoom workshop on food preservation for Wild Onion Market, my local food co-op start-up, on Tuesday, September 29 at 7:00 pm CDT.  You’re invited to join in: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89593190791.

Eco-Friendly Living: Drying and Dehydrating Food

Sep 17, 2020 | My interests

A broiling pan with dried blueberries.

A broiling pan with dried blueberries.

Have you ever thought about drying your own fruits and vegetables but been put off by the need to acquire a dehydrator?  Well, it turns out that you don’t need any fancy equipment to dry food.  You probably have what you need in your kitchen already.  It takes some time and attention, but the results can be quite good.

It’s a little late in the season now (in September) for sun drying things, but that is one easy way.  I like to dry cherries in July, blueberries in July and August, and various other small fruits sometimes.  July and August are the very best times for sun drying because the sun is at its most powerful, and there are usually a lot of hot, sunny days in Chicago.  In September, there is still enough sun to dry herbs, and I like spring and fall best for that because it’s harder to burn the delicate leaves.

I’ve learned (the hard way!) that if you are drying fruit or anything that might be tasty to insects and birds outdoors, it has to be covered.  Otherwise, you’re just setting out a feast for the critters.  (It’s also good to cover herbs to keep them from blowing away.)  I use a couple of old broiling pans–the kind that probably came with your oven–and put my berries or fruit in the bottom of the pan.  The top has vents to let air in and out, and the pans are usually a dark color, which heats up the air inside it.  Juicy fruits set out in the sun all day usually dry in about three days.

It’s important to bring in your dehydrating at night.  Otherwise, it is likely to collect condensation, which is really counterproductive.  So, at night (and on cloudy days), I bring in the pans, put them in the oven, and turn the oven light on.  That heats up the oven to a nice, warm temperature.  It isn’t hot enough to cook the food, but it’s just warm enough to dry it slowly.

In fact, if drying food outdoors isn’t an option for you, you can just put it in the oven (covered or on flat pans or trays) and turn the oven light on.  It does take longer than sun drying, but it is about as effective.  If you want a little more heat and want to spend a little money on the project, you can buy a lamp cord with a socket at the hardware store and put an incandescent bulb in it (another oven bulb, if you can’t find another kind) and put that in the oven.  That will probably be too hot some of the time, so it’s important to monitor the temperature and turn off the second bulb if it gets over 140F or if it looks like the fruit is cooking.  (Note:  Fluorescent light bulbs and LED bulbs do not generate enough heat for this purpose.  You need to use an old-fashioned incandescent, which gives off a lot of heat.  These are only available now as specialty bulbs, such as oven bulbs.)

Here are a few caveats and technicalities:  Ideal drying temperature for fruit is 140F.  Hotter than that cooks the food, which isn’t the effect you’re after.  It won’t really hurt it, but it changes the texture.  A standard kitchen thermometer or oven thermometer is helpful for monitoring the temperature, but you can also just keep an eye on it to see how it is doing.  If it starts looking cooked, reduce the temperature.  Fruit will dry at lower temperatures, but more slowly.  Below 100F it will usually mold before it dries, so aim for the higher temperatures.

It’s important to cut large, juicy fruits into smaller pieces.  Pit cherries, slice strawberries, cut cherry tomatoes in half and remove the seeds.  Place them juicy side up on the tray for the first day to give them the best possibility of drying.

It’s also important to have some higher heat for the first half-day to day of drying.  If fruit doesn’t get a bit of a crust on it the first day, it is more apt to mold.  But if the surface dries in the beginning of the process, then it will turn out edible.  You can accomplish this by making sure your first day of sun drying is hot and sunny or by heating up the oven to the lowest temperature before you put the fruit in and then letting it cool to about 140F before you put your trays in the oven.

After a day or so, stir or turn whatever you are drying so that the surfaces that were touching the pan are exposed to the air.  That will cause the drying to be more even.  Also, the smaller pieces will dry first.  You can remove them to a sealed container once they are dry.

So, how do you know when they are done?  Think of the texture of a raisin.  It isn’t rocky hard, but it doesn’t have much free moisture in it.  It’s that indefinable, chewy in-between stage between wet and dry, sometimes called “leathery.”   When your fruit reaches that consistency, it is ready to be stored.  Put it in an air-tight container and store on a shelf.  Dried fruits will last at least a year, sometimes longer.

Herbs are dried at lower temperatures.  80-90F is best for those.  You can, of course, also hang up bunches of herbs for drying.  I do find, however, that they dry more evenly when spread out on a tray.  Watch them carefully to be sure they don’t burn.  Then store them in an air-tight container.  Herbs lose much of their savor after a year.

From some quick research, I believe it may be necessary to blanch some or all vegetables before drying them, but I haven’t really looked into it and haven’t tried any of them, myself.  You might want to do some reading before going down that road.

This might be the year to try dehydrating.  You can get creative and try all kinds of fruits and vegetables.  I’d be curious to know what works for you.  You can find more information on drying food at the National Center for Home Food Preservation.

I’ll be doing a Zoom workshop on food preservation for Wild Onion Market, my local food co-op start-up, on Tuesday, September 29 at 7:00 pm CDT.  You’re invited to join in: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89593190791.

Eco-Friendly Living: Make Your Own Vinegar

Sep 11, 2020 | My interests

A glass jar full of yellow apple cider vinegar.

Home-made apple cider vinegar. If you look closely, you can see the mother of vinegar (so called) in the bottom.

Time for a little more about fermentation.  This is something I tell people about all the time.  It’s easy to make your own vinegar, and so much more interesting than buying it from a store.  I am entirely indebted to Sandor Katz’ work on fermentation for this knowledge, although I have adapted it to my own uses.

Vinegar is what happens when wine is exposed to the air and goes “bad.”  Or, as I prefer to look at it, wine is an unfortunate by-product on the way to excellent vinegar.  But vinegar is also just the result of a sweet fruit fermentation.  All you need is fruit, water, and air.  I also like to add sugar sometimes.

The easiest vinegar to make is apple cider vinegar.  If you can acquire apple cider that is freshly made and contains no preservatives, you can make vinegar out of it.  Organic is best, as it doesn’t have any chemicals that could slow or stop the fermentation process.  Put the cider in a container that has an open top, cover it to keep flies out, and leave it on your counter.  It helps to stir it for a minute once a day to make sure it is evenly exposed to the air.  A few weeks later, it will be vinegar.  (On the way to vinegar, it will also briefly be apple jack.  If you like that sort of thing, now you know.)

I find that it usually takes four to five weeks to turn into a lovely vinegar, depending on how much fruit sugar is in the original cider.  The more fruit there is, the longer it takes to ferment all the sugar into alcohol, and all the alcohol into vinegar.  Once it is fully fermented into vinegar, put it into a jar with a tight lid and store it in your pantry.

I haven’t tried it myself, but I also understand that any fresh fruit juice can be made into vinegar, so if you own a juicer, you might want to experiment.  The only drawback of fruit juice vinegar is that it requires a lot of fruit.  That’s why I make other kinds of vinegar from the fruit, itself.

Small fruits–such as blueberries, grapes, strawberries, raspberries, and so on–also make wonderful vinegar.  I’ve also used peaches and pears.  All you need is about 1 pint of fruit, a quart of non-chlorinated water, 1/4 cup sugar, and an open container.  The fruit is actually best for vinegar if it is starting to go a little soft and over-ripe.  Both fresh and frozen fruit work well for this.

Put the fruit, either whole or cut into pieces, into the container.  I use a half-gallon Mason jar.  Dissolve the sugar in the water and add it to the fruit.  Cover the container to keep flies out.  If fruit flies get in (and they do love vinegar, despite what the proverb says), they will keep the fruit from fermenting properly, so be sure to cover your vinegar securely.  My method is to put a piece of cheesecloth or a tea towel over the top of the jar and secure it with a rubber band.

Once a day, check the vinegar, stir it for a minute, and re-cover it.  After a week, strain out the spent fruit, mashing it to get all the juice from it.  Put the vinegar back in the container and keep it covered.  Stir it once a day for about another two weeks.  You might want to taste it along the way to see how it is.  After a total of about three weeks of fermentation, it will start to get sour.  Once it tastes like vinegar, it is done, and ready to be stored in a tight container in your pantry.

When you are making vinegar, you want to expose as much of it as possible to the air.  When you are storing it, you want to keep it from the air as much as possible so that it lasts longer.  I like to transfer it to smaller containers as I use it up so there is less air in the jar.  But most vinegars will last 6 months to a year on the shelf.  If they started out with a lot of sugar, they will last almost forever.  The ones with less sugar (either fruit sugar or added sugar) might lose their savor after a few months.

Ready to give it a try?  It’s easy and fun, and you’ll never find anything like it in a store.

I’ll be doing a Zoom workshop on this subject for Wild Onion Market, my local food co-op start-up, on Tuesday, September 29 at 7:00 pm CDT.  You’re invited to join in: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89593190791.

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