Wearing pantyhose is something that has more or less gone by the wayside with the traditional 9 to 5 – but you shouldn’t toss your favorite pair of worn-out stockings just yet.
Did you know that you can easily preserve a large assortment of foods in a pair of pantyhose?
There are several benefits to doing so, and it’s a great way to extend the life of your garden’s harvest without having to invest in a ton of fancy equipment. Although you shouldn’t sneak a pair fresh out of the laundry basket, using a clean or new pair of light-colored pantyhose should do the trick quite nicely.
Here are 20 foods you can preserve in pantyhose – and tips on how to do it safely.
Onions
Onions are some of the easiest foods to preserve in pantyhose. Doing so will give your onions plenty of room to breathe and will also allow you to store your onions separately from other produce – you can simply pull them out as they are needed.
To store an onion in pantyhose, simply feed it through the leg of the hose until it reaches the foot. Tie it off around the ankle to keep it separated.
You can fill the entire leg with onions to maximize freshness but tie off just before each bulb to keep each one fresh – when stored this way, your onions should last around six months.
Cucumbers
Feel free to drop a few cukes into an old pair of pantyhose – but don’t put them in the refrigerator. Believe it or not, cucumbers hate being cold, and anything colder than 50 degrees will cause them to spoil much faster. They’re sensitive to ethylene gas, too, so after you’ve stashed them in the hose, keep them far away from melons, tomatoes, and bananas.
Herbs
You can preserve any kind of herb in pantyhose. In fact, it helps you make a beautiful bouquet garni. All you have to do is wrap the herbs in the cloth, tie it off, and you’re ready to go. Just tie the top with butcher’s twine. You can also use these herb clusters to make your own teabags.
Shallots
As with onions and garlic, shallots can also be stashed in pantyhose. They are quite tiny, so you may have better luck using smaller pantyhose (or those designed for children).
Apples
Apples are best stored in pantyhose when you’re trying to protect them from fruit flies.
Again, as with onions, your best bet will be to stash each apple separately, then tie the hose off just before the stem.
Related: All-Natural Fruit Tree Bait for Insects: It Works!
Oranges
Just like apples, oranges can also be stashed in a pair of tights. Don’t feel the need to stash them in your refrigerator – right on the counter is fine and dandy.
Cheese
Rather than wrapping your fresh cheese in cheesecloth, consider using a pair of pantyhose. It’s far more economical and will work just as well.
Melons
Melons can be stored in pantyhose after they’ve been plucked from the vine. Believe it or not, most kinds of melons do not need to be refrigerated, and stashing them in pantyhose can help extend their shelf life ever so slightly.
Another way you can use pantyhose with melons is to tie pantyhose around them when they’re still on the vine. Melons are heavy, and tying a pair of pantyhose around the fruit can help prevent the stem from breaking.
Peaches
Peaches, pears, and other kinds of stone fruits should be stored at room temperature. You can stash them in a pair of old pantyhose as long as you put them with the stem-end down.
This is a great alternative to storing these fruits in plastic bags, which can cause them to over ripen.
Potatoes
Like onions and garlic, potatoes are pantry staples that are easy to store in pantyhose. Insert each one separately and then hang the set of pantyhose to promote good air circulation. This should help prevent your potatoes from rotting, too. Leave the dirt on them for best results – don’t wash first.
Yogurt
You can’t preserve yogurt in pantyhose, perse, but to make your own yogurt, you’re going to need some cheesecloth – or some pantyhose! You can easily strain the dairy for your yogurt with a piece of pantyhose instead of cheesecloth.
Celery
Celery does need to be refrigerated if you plan on storing it this way for the long term, but a good way to keep it crisp is to put the stalks in a glass of water with the top tightly covered with a piece of pantyhose. It’s as easy as that!
Winter Squash
Winter squash is already known for its incredible longevity throughout the dead of winter, but you can help it last even longer by stashing your fruits in a pair of pantyhose.
This hack works best with squashes that are more or less symmetrical – you may have a harder time fitting an oblong butternut squash inside a set of pantyhose than a spaghetti squash, for example!
Again, the key to preserving winter squash in pantyhose is to take the time to cure it first.
Carrots
Carrots are root vegetables that continue putting energy into their leaf development long after they’ve reached your kitchen shelves. You can encourage your carrots to become sweeter by chopping the tops off and then storing them in a pair of pantyhose. This will lock in nutrients – but as with potatoes, you should avoid washing them before you store them.
Bananas
Only have a few pieces of pantyhose to sacrifice? If so, bananas can be preserved for a short period of time with the bits and pieces. Simple wrap each stem in a bit of plastic wrap, which will reduce the rate at which ethylene gas is released. Your bananas will ripen more slowly as a result.
Meat
Just about any kind of meat can be temporarily preserved in pantyhose.
This isn’t something you would want to do for the long haul and it’s not going to prevent your meat from spoiling when exposed to inopportune temperatures.
However, when you place your meat in pantyhose before putting it in the refrigerator (ideally inside an additional plastic bag), this can help prevent air from entering the package and leading to a loss of color, flavor, and texture.
Avocadoes
Storing avocados in an old pair of pantyhose is a great way to keep them gathered together – plus, it will prevent them from becoming overripe, which can happen if you stash them in your crisper.
Mushrooms
While you can only store mushrooms indefinitely, stashing them in a pair of light-colored pantyhose (rather than in the refrigerator) is the best way to keep them fresh.
Sweet Potatoes
Just like regular old white potatoes, sweet potatoes can also be preserved in pantyhose. You should take the time to cure your sweet potatoes before doing this, as it will help the tubers develop their characteristic sweet taste.
Store them at 80 degrees with 90% humidity for ten days, then transfer them to pantyhose. Once inside the hose, you should store them in a cool, dark location (55-60 degrees is ideal) for up to six months.
Garlic
Just like onions, garlic can also be stored in pantyhose. You’ll stash the bulbs in the hose in the exact same way.
Since they are much smaller than onions, this is a great use to recycle old children’s pantyhose, too.
Related: How do You Keep Your Pantry Dry to Prevent Your Food from Spoiling?
There are lots of good reasons to consider preserving your produce, meats, and cheese in pantyhose.
Not only will it reduce the amount of food that goes to waste because you have no other materials to store it in, but it can also give you a creative way to reuse old clothing that you were going to throw out anyway.
For best results, use a light-colored pair of pantyhose that is new or gently used – and always clean, of course. You’ll be amazed at the results!
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I love reading and trying all the ideas. Is nice to know what really does not the fridge. Thank you so much!
Great article! Always admired the bountiful look of hanging bundles of hot peppers, beautiful braided onions, and a fat hard salami! Hmmmm? What color hose goes best with Yukon gold potatoes?
How does putting meat inside a pantyhose and then an additional bag and putting it in the refrigerator increase longevity of the meat?
Good question, Spike.
Just about any meat you buy at the grocery store will have water added to the packaging, this is done to increase profit, like the old time butcher resting his thumb on the scale. It is a fact that 2 days before you prepare meat you should remove it from all packaging and return it to the fridge uncovered to dry out. Getting rid of the added water before cooking allows for crispier skin and naturally moist meat with chicken, and better charring and flavor with beef and pork because, not having to boil away extra water, you don’t overcook them. Thinking of hanging a whole unpackaged chicken in pantyhose in the fridge for a few days before I cook it.
Well, Spike, I see that two days later we still don’t have an answer as to how stuffing meat into your wife’s pantyhose extends its refrigerated life. Could it be one of those unsubstantiated urban legends that we hear about being passed around the internet? Inquiring minds would like to know.
Think of pantyhose like a bag of sorts that you leave out to air dry.
Much like some cultures do to dry meat.
I think jerky was sun dried in the air and possibly in mesh bags.
Hams, sausages, and other preserved meats were wrapped in linen or cheesecloth for preservation but that wasn’t to keep air from the meat so much as it was to keep insects from munching on your stored-away meat. It’s much like wrapping the deer carcass in a game bag. Doesn’t do anything to preserve meat unless you consider bugs not munching on it and laying eggs for their larvae to munch as preserving.
Sticking meat in a plastic bag and stowing it in the reefer should keep nasty critters from egg laying and munching as well as your lady’s pantyhose. If you want to preserve meat, stick it in the freezer after vacuum sealing it.
Lacking electricity for the freezer you need to salt it or smoke it and hang it in a cool smoke house in the winter months to be devoured before it turns too rancid to be edible.
Although with the humidity predicted to be below 10% during the coming week in SoCal even though the temps are predicted to be in the low triple digits, with such low humidity, smoked meat hung in a smoke house probably wouldn’t do anything but dry out more.
The climate here is terrible for preserving food, I read about cold smoking up north, drying fruits and vegetables in the Southwest, and the crazy number of years they hang hams w/o refrigeration in Italy, seeing little fishing villages in the Caribbean with their catch packed in salt hanging from rope lines like my Mom’s wash. Love reading this site.
Spain and Portugal also hang hams for long periods of time. Smithfield hams are also aged. They are very dry when they arrive and need to be soaked for some long period of time. It has been more than 30 years since I bought a Smithfield ham. While I am sure that Smithfield fans will violently disagree with me, I thought the whole process was more trouble than it was worth.
Having said that, I would have been very happy to soak it in the bathtub and everything else I had to do with it to prepare it for eating were it the only food I had on hand as in an end of the world situation. Depending upon how long it had been since I had anything to eat, I might have even skipped the soaking routing and went straight to the munch part of the program.
Even sadder, when you bought that high dollar ham Smithfield was a premium brand supplying high quality meats. Now they just sell crap to Wal Mart.
Plus China now owns smithfield