COVID-19 Series / Tips for the Preservation of Fruits and Vegetables to Reduce Food Waste and Improve Shelf-Life

Fruits and vegetables (F&V) are rich in vitamins, minerals and fibre, and are important constituents of healthy diets. Fruits and vegetables are, however, seasonal, highly perishable and have a limited shelf-life. This means that they will spoil relatively rapidly, even when stored in the refrigerator.

With physical distancing and reduced shopping trips to supermarkets, buying large quantities of fresh fruits and vegetables becomes difficult, with the risk of them going to waste, during this COVID-19 pandemic. There are, however, simple ways in which fruits and vegetables can be preserved at home to reduce waste. Many vegetables, can be blanched by dipping in boiling water for approximately 5 minutes and then pickled and fermented. Fruits can be preserved by blanching and freezing, juicing, drying, frying, or preserved with sugar into jams and fruit preserves.
Root crops and bananas can be fried to produce chips.

Why Dry food?

Dried foods are more concentrated than any other preserved form of foodstuff. Dried food requires minimal storage space reduces household food waste and increases the shelf-life of the food. Foods can be readily dried in the over, or in the sum.

Why Fry food?

Frying is used for cooking and preserving snack food such as potato chips, banana chips and taro chips by drying. In order to produce a uniformly dried product, with a good surface color and flavour, chips must be uniform in thickness and fried at low temperature. Chips that are properly fried have a shelf-life of one to six months at ambient temperatures, if properly packaged in air-tight containers and stored in a cool dry place away from sunlight.

Why Pickle vegetables?

Pickling, also known as brining or corning is the process of preserving food by fermentation in brine (a solution of salt in water) in a sealed container (low oxygen conditions), to produce lactic acid, or by marinating and storing the food in an acid solution, usually vinegar (acetic acid). The resulting food is referred to as a pickle. 

Pickling is generally used for the preservation of vegetables such as cucumbers, small onions, carrots and peppers.  Pickled foods are generally salty or sour to the taste. Pickling extends the shelf-life of fresh vegetables from days, to months. Pickled vegetables require relatively little heat treatment before being placed in containers. Acid is the major preservative in pickled products.

Why Jellies, Jams, Marmalades

Jellies, jams, and marmalades are products prepared from the pulp or juice extracted from fruit and/or plants. Sugar is generally added in the processing of jams, jellies and sweets. During the production of jam, the fruit juice must be boiled, after which the sugar is added in variable amounts, depending upon the kind of fruit and the product being prepared. The mixture must then continue to boil until it reaches such a level of soluble solids, which allows for its preservation.

Some fruits do not contain sufficient amounts of pectin to allow for proper gel formation. In such cases, pectin must be added to the product formulation. 

More details on how to preserve and process F&V click HERE.

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Photo: ©FAO/Giuseppe Bizzarri