I can’t take any credit for this idea; it was hubby who came up with this one. He says that when he was growing up, they regularly used the lids from their Tupperware tumblers to top opened canned goods. Apparently they were a pretty standard size.
We don’t have Tupperware tumblers with lids, but we do have several different types of sippy cups with lids and, sure enough, they fit on many of our cans. (Most notably, they fit on the cans of condensed goat milk we use for feeding the baby when fresh is unavailable. Since it has to be diluted to bring it back to regular, well, dilution, one can makes several bottles.)
So give it a try next time you need to keep a can in the fridge. See if a lid you already own will fit the can. It’s a bit less trouble and a lot more environmentally-friendly than all the Press-n-Seal I was using before!
This post is being shared at Works for Me Wednesday.
Is it safe to open a can and then leave the contents in it in the fridge? I was always told to not do this. Something about once air has hit the inside of the can something starts to happen and can harm the food (but only if it’s in the tin can it came in, not a bowl from your home) and also the bacteria that you are now introducing to your fridge from every place that can touched before it made it to the fridge (bugs and their poo and other animals in packing plants, trucks to deliver, etc), your can opener has juices from other cans you’ve opened are now in there and able to infect bacteria to other things in your fridge, etc etc… I’m not a scientist or anything but doesn’t seem safe. I was wondering if you’ve had any problems with this. Does the flavor change? Does it go bad quickly or last longer? I know bacteria grows so you aren’t supposed to eat out of the bottle and I’m wondering if something like that happens with the bacteria from the can.
I’ve heard that you shouldn’t, too, but I don’t know why. We’ve never had a problem with it. I don’t really see why food in an opened can would go bad any faster than food from an opened jar or bottle, and nobody says to throw those out. I mean, your jars of spaghetti sauce or salsa or salad dressing or pickles all traveled through packing plants, on trucks, etc. (I do regularly wash my can opener, though, if it looks like it might have come into contact with the contents of the can. Not all can opener styles consistently do; it depends on which direction they cut.) I don’t keep it long, either. I throw it out within about a week, like I would dinner leftovers. (The baby’s milk generally doesn’t last more than a day.) I think that people used to do this all the time before the government started panicking us.
Certainly, if you’re not comfortable, don’t do it! But it’s never made sense to me that the food would inherently be “dirtier” in the can they say we can eat it from freshly-opened than if I dumped it into another container. That just sounds like a lot more work!
Yeah, I don’t know either. I know in the 70’s the cans used to have seams in them that would rust quickly. I wonder if it started from there and then moms tell their daughters and it keeps going. It might not be valid anymore but I’m just not sure. That’s why I asked. Thanks for the response!
Aren’t there some foods unsafe for leaving in a can?