How far ahead can I prep these items??

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mseaglecook

mseaglecook

Senior Cook
Joined
Feb 21, 2024
Messages
259
Location
Mississippi
How far ahead can I prep these items?

Onions
Lettuce
Peppers
Garlic
Celery
Carrots

I hope you all see where I am going with this. I am worried about food safety.
 
I make salads and we eat them for 2-4 days. If we both eat salads we eat them on day 1 and 2, or it can spread out to day 4. However, prechopping vegetables do have more endotoxins, more the longer they are stored.
For things like precut/sliced mushrooms I cook them right away.
If I was feeding others, I'd make it that day or the day before.
 
What do you want to make & why do you want to prep far in advance?

I think if I wanted to make something with onions and garlic, I would cook/fry them and keep like that in a tupperware in the fridge.
But in practice I prep and cook the full dish.
Onions tend to go off, get sulfuric, once cut.
 
For me, it would depend on what I’m going to use them for.

I keep carrot and celery sticks in a plastic container filled with cold water for up to a week. At the beginning of the week I eat them raw as a snack and at the end of the week the leftovers end up in some sort of soup or stew

I have good results keeping an onion or bell pepper in a small glass jar for up to a week but I don’t cut it up until I need a chunk. I sometimes cut up the leftovers and freeze them in a plastic bag for use in various cooked dishes.

Lettuce, mushrooms, and garlic are cleaned and prepped as needed.

I try to salvage as many odds and ends as possible with a clean out the fridge soup, stir fry, or sheet pan dinner.
 
Last edited:
blissful said:
I make salads and we eat them for 2-4 days. If we both eat salads we eat them on day 1 and 2, or it can spread out to day 4. However, prechopping vegetables do have more endotoxins, more the longer they are stored.
For things like precut/sliced mushrooms I cook them right away.
If I was feeding others, I'd make it that day or the day before.
Click to expand...
That's not true. There needs to be existing bacteria and more specifically a lipopolysaccharides (LPS) for example, which is part of the gram-negative bacteria group before just processing makes them contain endotoxins.

Personally I don't precut vegetables and even in the restaurant we don't do that either. If it's convenient for you then I don't see a problem but I would make sure you seal them properly and use them within a few days.
 
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Best guess is 2-3 days for raw presentation, 5 days for cooked products. Both at a cost to quality. More or less, depending on starting state of freshness, handling and storage temp.

Nothing on your list is a PHF (Potentially Hazardous Food) capable of supporting rapid bacterial or toxin growth. Safety is just not a high risk with Veg.

Biggest problem is quality. Once you cut any of those items you have exposed greater surface area and that leads to accelerated dehydration of that product. Rinsing with water or spritzing from spray bottle can only help a little and I recommend rinsing or spritzing daily, till use.

Freezing any of the items on the list, except the lettuce, in a single layer on a sheet pan, then stored in freezer container, can extend product life and can cut cooking time in half for use in a hot food dish. Long term storage results in frost and freezer burn.
 
If your cut onions start to get a little bitter, just put them in a strainer/colander and give them a good rinse. I've kept them in a ziplock bag for 2-3 days.

Lettuce will wilt once separated from the head. But all the other stuff will be fine for a couple of days.

CD
 
Ya'll are giving me great information. When I began this post I should have been a little more specific on the time frame. I mean how many hours ahead can you cut up the vegetables. I like to do my prep in the mornings and cook my dishes in the evening at around 6:00 to 7:00 pm-ish. That would be about a 10 hour time frame. I am mostly worried about the garlic and raw onions and the safety issue with cutting them up ahead of time. This is an issue only with stir fries and casseroles.

What I have learned from you all today so far..

Peppers - can be cut up and stored in water ahead of time
Celery - can be cut up and stored in water ahead of time
Carrots - can be cut up and stored in water ahead of time

Garlic - right before use
Onions - right before use
 
mseaglecook said:
Ya'll are giving me great information. When I began this post I should have been a little more specific on the time frame. I mean how many hours ahead can you cut up the vegetables. I like to do my prep in the mornings and cook my dishes in the evening at around 6:00 to 7:00 pm-ish. That would be about a 10 hour time frame. I am mostly worried about the garlic and raw onions and the safety issue with cutting them up ahead of time. This is an issue only with stir fries and casseroles.

What I have learned from you all today so far..

Peppers - can be cut up and stored in water ahead of time
Celery - can be cut up and stored in water ahead of time
Carrots - can be cut up and stored in water ahead of time

Garlic - right before use
Onions - right before use
Click to expand...
Celery, carrots and onions do not have to be stored in water for a single day, so you can cut them in the morning. Onions and garlic can be cut in advance, too, but they will get more pungent as time goes on, because of the chemicals released when they are cut.
 
GotGarlic said:
Celery, carrots and onions do not have to be stored in water for a single day, so you can cut them in the morning. Onions and garlic can be cut in advance, too, but they will get more pungent as time goes on, because of the chemicals released when they are cut.
Click to expand...
Thanks GG for that info.
 
I agree with GG. I also do a lot (or I try) of prepping early as I just can't stand long enough to prep and cook an entire meal at one time. Even if there is a lot of prepping to do, I sometimes done it the day before and there, in-so-far as I'm concerned, has never been any problem.

Carrots and celery I often do when I get home from shopping (or the net day). Plastic zip bag, damp paper towel).

Even other vegies are often done soon after shopping. Mainly because by supper time I just don't have the umph to peel and chop. So that goes for green beans, brussels, etc. Not spinach or lettuce, not any of the soft leafy types.

But I've done garlic and onion the day before... no problem!
 
mseaglecook said:
Garlic - right before use
Onions - right before use
Click to expand...

Nope. I advance dice my onions all the time. I think you are a bit paranoid on the food safety thing. I usually use California jarlic, because fresh garlic in the grocery store is mostly from China around here. That lasts a long time in the jar.

I like to do my mise en place well in advance, so I can dive right into cooking when I get hungry.

CD
 
The main items is to use these fresh and only benefit from them! I personally don’t like garlic, I don’t even like it in salads!
 
However, prechopping vegetables do have more endotoxins, more the longer they are stored.
pictonguy said:
That's not true. There needs to be existing bacteria and more specifically a lipopolysaccharides (LPS) for example, which is part of the gram-negative bacteria group before just processing makes them contain endotoxins.
...
Click to expand...
Endotoxins are found in animals and the noses of humans and in soil and the general environment. Onions for example don't have endotoxins in them but since they come out of soil they may have on the peel. The more chopping we do the more exposed flesh there is with moisture to grow any endotoxin.
Examples: E. coli, Salmonella, Shigella, Vibrio cholerae, and Neisseria meningitidis
Do you know if the cutting board was clean or washed after peeling the onion? Was the onion washed after peeling? Or did the knife slice through the peel into the flesh leaving some bacteria on the flesh?
The Gill's chopped onions (and celery) salmonella outbreak happened just last fall with 80 people in 23 states. https://www.cdc.gov/salmonella/thompson-10-23/details.html
 
If you're prechoppinng the onion, be sure to seal it well when storing in the fridge, for no other reason that if its exposed , everything in the fridge will pick up some of the onion smell and taste.
For just a day, if properly stored, they all should be fine except possibly the lettuce. Could wilt or get soggy over time ( not always, but sometimes ).
 
kevinsstelly said:
The main items is to use these fresh and only benefit from them! I personally don’t like garlic, I don’t even like it in salads!
Click to expand...
Kevin, Kevin, Kevin ... not like garlic, not like garlic... Thud... :ohmy:
That is me fainting...

By the time you finish hanging around this board you will probably love it..

Just kidding around with you.

Welcome to the board. :chef:
 
The only thing I've found with cutting carrot ahead of time (like matchsticks and storing them ahead of time, like 2 or 3 days in the fridge) is that they start to taste like baby carrots. Apparently there's an enzyme in carrots that's released when you cut them, and they get really sweet instead of just earthy and a tad sweet (I've found) after a few days due to this enzyme basically getting stronger inside the carrot. I think sauteing/blanching them gets rid of this enzyme though, but I haven't tried a side by side comparison with raw carrots after a few days personally.
 
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