Yes, this thread is every bit as exciting as the topic makes it out to be. I need to know where to store a delicious batch of extra-virgin olive oil & balsamic vinigar dressing (with a hint of champagne mustard) I made yesterday. I know that olive oil by itself can’t go in the fridge for it tends to coagulate. But can the aformentioned mixture safely be stored outside the fridge for a week or two?
A lot of good restaurants have bottles of sauces etc. setting out all day long. Most of them are plainly labeled “Refrigerate after opening.”
Maybe they put them in the fridge overnight. I’ll look next time I go by some after all the employees have hung it up for the night.
As to you specific mix I would tend to keep it refrigerated unless it is heavy of OO.
But I really don’t want the mix to coagulate, I mean its practically useless to me like that, unless I take it out of the fridge 3 hours before every time I feel like salad. Unless there is something I can mix in to stop it from doing that in the fridge? That would be a neat solution…any chemist dopers out there?
I store olive oil in my cupboard. I store balsamic vinegar in my cupboard. I keep my mustard in the fridge, but I don’t know why, it has a high acidic content, and probably is as stable at room temperature as the oil and vinegar.
Why would the three mixed together be any less stable or prone to spoiling? The vinegar alone is going to preserve the lot of it.
I like the vinegar theory!
Any moisture greatly increases the rate of rancidity in oils. A week or two is fine but if you want to keep it 6 months, the seperate storage and mixing when needed is much better than premix. Besides, it takes all of 1 minute to make up a dressing with an airtight glass jar. I don’t know why you would want to make it ahead of time.
Yeah it would only be for a week or two. Thanks for the helpful insights. As for why I insist on using pre-made dressing, its related to the frequency of my salad-eating. I’ll eat a large salad once a day lately, so finding/taking out the 3 ingredients, measuring the 3 ingredients, cleaning the measuring device, putting the 2 ingredients away, vigorously mixing the dressing all seem unnecessary when I can just make a bit extra in the first place.
What sauces are you thinking of? I work in a restaurant - we keep ketchup, mustard, A1 steak sauce, tabasco, hot sauce, malt vinegar, worcestershire, and soy sauce out. (also olive oil and vinegar) We never refrigerate them, ever.
Every single restaurant I ever worked in refrigerated the ketchup and other spoilable condiments at the end of the night. One of the closing duties was always to round up ketchups and pop 'em in the fridge.
As for vinegar-and-olive-oil, it should be fine left out. Just cap it well, or you’ll find fruit flies looooove vinegar.
About that ketchup - Heinz says out of the fridge is fine - between the acidity of the tomatos and the vinegar, the stuff’s not going to spoil if it’s used at a normal rate - ie: within a month or two.
Mustard would seem to be even more inhospitible to spoilage.
So, is there any health reason to refrigerate ketchup and mustard? Or is the direction to keep it refrigerated just intended to help maintain perceived quality?
I’m sure we don’t use Heinz, but at our restaurant we have to keep the ketchup in the fridge or little air bubbles start forming (is it fermenting?) and the ketchup tries to escape its plastic squeeze bottle. If the twisty-top is left open it will ooze out, if the twisty-top is closed the bottle will become mishapen and then explosively expel ketchup when it is eventually opened. Big mess either way.
It’s been explained to me that fermenting ketchup is a result of repeatedly re-filling the bottles - like a radioactive half-life, there’s going to be a certain amount of old ketchup that never gets out of the bottle, and this is what starts fermenting.
At the restuarant were this was explained to me, their procedure was to “marry” the bottles once. The newly empty bottle is tossed, and the re-filled bottle got a subtle mark and returned to service, so to speak. Once that bottle got near empty, it would be re-filled again, and get another mark. Once that was empty, it was tossed - this way, ketchup would be no more than a few days old and not get a chance to ferment sitting in the sunny windows.
I’m glad you described that – I’d always wondered how old the ketchup at the bottom of a constantly refilled bottle could be.
I’m almost 100% certain that there’s no “refrigerate after opening” verbage on bottles of Heinz ketchup, even though I keep them in the fridge m’self.