How to Store Fried Food Properly

Storing food for the next day is part of every life in the kitchen. You know you need to follow certain tips so that your food is safe to consume again and avoid food poisoning, especially if it's rice.

However, are you storing your fried food properly? It's easy to store soups and stews. Transfer to a dry container and place in the refrigerator. Storing fried food, however, is trickier. This is because fried food will become soggy, soft, and otherwise unappetizing if you take a bite out of it. It loses its signature crunchy, crispy exterior. 

To store fried food, it's best to follow a different set of rules for storing it. Here's what you should do:

1. Drain off the oil well.

Oil in your fried food means it not only will be oily and soggy but it will also mean it will taste greasy, too. Prevent this by ensuring that your food is well-drained before storing. When you cook fried food at the right temperature, it shouldn't absorb oil so it's after it comes out of that hot oil that can be the problem. You can do this in three ways:

• Place on a rack straight from the hot oil. Avoid paper towels.
• Place food on a rack in a preheated oven or toaster oven.
• Heat up in the air fryer.

All three methods will ensure that oil won't seep into your food. In fact, the oven and the air fryer trick are two ways to actually encourage the oil to seep out of your fried food and onto the drip pan or bucket underneath it.

Photo by Shutterstock

2. Cool it down.

As with all food storage, your food is best stored when it's cool. This not only makes the job of your refrigerator easier, but it will also ensure that your food is not going to cause condensation.

Condensation is when heat makes the water molecules in the air turn back into a liquid. This is the opposite of evaporation and this can happen when your hot food is trapped in a container. The steam from your freshly fried food encourages condensation and thus, your container will develop water. This water is what will make your fried food soggier than before it was stored. Avoid it by cooling down the food before placing it in a container.

3. Place a paper towel underneath as a precaution.

Unsure if your food is as drained of oil as possible or as cool as needed to prevent condensation while in storage? Place a paper towel on the bottom of the container underneath the food so it can soak up any excess oil and some of the water resulting from condensation will be absorbed by the paper, not the food. 

There are few ways to make sure that you have delicious fried food that stays crisp on the outside and still juicy and tender on the inside. You actually have three options when it comes to reheating fried food again so your fried chicken are crispy again. You can reheat it again in oil, in the oven or the oven toaster, or inÂthe air fryer. Just make sure that you don't do any of these reheating fried food mistakes:

• You reheat it in the microwave.
• You don't heat it enough.

Knowing how to store your food and how to reheat it so it's as perfectly crisp as it was the day before is the road to being a better home cook.

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This story originally appeared on Yummy.ph.

* Minor edits have been made by the Realliving.com.ph editors.