You know, for kitchens!

June 18, 2008 6:59 PM

For a long while I've thought about developing a domestic climate-controlled larder, for food which doesn't really belong in the fridge (bread, eggs, cheese, tomatoes and so on) but doesn't want to be left out on the counter. Would you buy one and if so what features would be most useful to you?
posted by unSane to food & drink (16 comments total)

Must, must, must be easy to clean, and moving parts should be replaceable.

Should not be made mostly of plastic - it doesn't hold up well and looks bad after a year or two.

Should use a minimum of energy - I can see this being a good way to use a smaller refrigerator, maybe.

And please include some kind of description of why someone with air conditioning running all the time would need the climate control feature.
posted by amtho at 7:20 PM on June 18

When I was living in Iowa and too poor to afford to run the AC all the time, I would be interested in such a thing - if I could have afforded it.

Where I'm living now (Vancouver BC), perhaps a small apartment-sized one would be a good idea, but it'd probably take up the place of the washer/dryer. But then again it never gets really hot enough for long enough to really warrant a climate-controlled larder.

Homeowners usually have a basement or some other cooler dark place so I couldn't see something like that as being an addendum to a chest freezer.

One thing that I'd be interested in is humidity control - variable humidity control - in addition to temperature. Perhaps have separate compartments in the thing each with their own humidity control. It could double as a cigar (and other things) humidor.
posted by porpoise at 7:24 PM on June 18

Well, the climate control is because different foods want to be stored in different humidities and different temperatures. Think about a wine cooler. It stores white wine at 41 degrees or so, red wine at 50 degrees or so. Room temp in an air conditioned house is 68-72 degrees F. Plus many foods will dry out quickly in an air-conditioned home.
posted by unSane at 7:26 PM on June 18

For smaller kitchens I was thinking something the size of a microwave. For bigger kitchens, it could be the size of a fridge.
posted by unSane at 7:27 PM on June 18

I wouldn't buy it. But i'm very anti-excessive-gadgets. On the other hand, I've done really extensive research into what people want in their kitchens (this question was just one part of that research.) The type of product you're talking about actually dovetails really nicely with the current trend towards organic and local produce, especially since the 'foodie' component driving these trends is focused on eating food when it's at it's most delicious peak. I think your kind of product would work well if you could somehow prevent it from being a counter-space hog (could it be mounted under cabinets?) or 'installed' inside of an existing cupboard or pantry. As people entertain more in their homes, and as the kitchen becomes more and more of a lifestyle center (ie cooking/eating, but also work,homework, computers, family time, televisions, etc are all in the kitchen) the desire for more decluttering and easier organisation and cleaning goes up.
posted by Kololo at 7:34 PM on June 18

I'd be curious about this type of thing. Recently I bought a 15-pound bag of potatoes but did not have room for them in my fridge, my usual storage place. I put them in my pantry, and within a couple weeks they started to get soft and mushy. Most houses here in SE Texas have no basement. The pantry is a walk-in closet just off the kitchen, but it probably runs slightly above 78 degrees. My thermostat is at 78, lnot 72, and the pantry has no a/c vent.

Being energy efficient (e.g., EnergyStar rated) is a must. I'd want to know that it didn't add too much to my electric bill. If it was expensive to operate it wouldn't offset the cost spoiled food or shopping more frequently.
posted by Robert Angelo at 7:39 PM on June 18

Would you buy one and if so what features would be most useful to you?

No, I would not buy one. It might be a great idea, but it's not needed in my kitchen.

Bread goes on the counter (if it will be eaten soon), in the breadbox (to be eaten in the next day or so), or in the freezer (kept for later, or old stale bread that will be turned into croutons). I've never had a problem keeping cheese in the fridge; stinky cheese goes into its own ziplock baggie to keep from smelling up the rest of the food in there. Tomatoes I mostly buy in cans because the grocery store ones are so depressing; when I get nice ones at the farmers' market I use them within a day or two, so storage isn't a problem, or I buy them greenish and ripen them on the counter.

The one thing I would like to have is a "root cellar in a drawer" for the summer months. Potatoes and other root vegies like the cool and damp of an old-fashioned root cellar much more than they like a drawer in a hot kitchen. I'd prefer a drawer retrofit kit rather than digging a root cellar, but honestly that's pretty low on my priority list.

So what I'm really saying is that your proposed device is proposing a need which I am not feeling in my life. But then, I'm surviving adequately without a wine cooler, a special warming oven, or any of a million other gadgets -- I may not be your target demographic.
posted by Forktine at 7:40 PM on June 18

OOOH, I just thought of what I'd really like: a way to grow fresh lettuce and spinach in the summer in North Carolina. Temperature/Humidity control PLUS either a grow-light or (I'd feel way less guilty about this) a window so that I could expose it to natural light. Not sure how much light I'd need.

You can't just grow delicate greens on the windowsill; it's too dry. And it's way too hot outside.

How big are you thinking of making this thing?

If it could be sold as a unit that I could mount on my own self-built wooden box, that might make it more cost effective. Plans for building the box would be nice.
posted by amtho at 7:58 PM on June 18

I'm with Kololo on space use. I would use this sort of thing but I don't have any (I mean any) extra room for another thing in my small kitchen, and no pantry to speak of. I actually use my under-cabinet mount microwave as a food storage area for food like bread. If I didn't have so much excess kitchen junk, I could even clear out a cabinet for an appliance like yours.

It would have to be easy to clean. It would also have to run pretty quietly.
posted by brain cloud at 8:11 PM on June 18

Yes, I might buy it, but I've had a root cellar before. I think your biggest problem will be convincing people that they need it, because most people have never had a root cellar and have no idea how great it is.

I think your best chance of success would be if you could find a way to retrofit it into a standard kitchen cabinet. It's only going to be useful if it's fairly large, like the size of a smallish fridge at least, and who has room for that?
posted by HotToddy at 8:13 PM on June 18

It seems like it would be a problem that the ideal climate for all the things you mention is different, whereas for a wine storage unit, the contents are uniform. Bread is really tricky, since too dry will accelerate staling and to humid will accelerate molding & soften the crust. A bread box is supposed to strike a balance (see this article for more), and you would really have to microcontrol the environment to mimic the behavior of a real bread box. I know that some people/cultures like to leave cheese out on the counter, but what I understand from someone who really knows about cheese is that this isn't ideal -- what you don't want to do is let the temperature of the cheese change drastically too many times. Cheese will keep longer in the fridge (in a warm-ish part) as long as you don't warm the whole block up for extended periods of time. Some quick googling suggests that 35-40F is best, and humidity is good. For tomatoes, I'm not sure why exactly a climate-controlled environment would make much difference, except in a non-AC'd place that gets really warm in the summer, but you'd probably want something warmer than for cheese, and less humid than for both bread and cheese.

Perhaps the best way to go would be to focus on one of these items? I.e. develop a climate-controlled cheese storage unit. This sounds viable since a fridge isn't exactly right. Or a bread-box that adjusted the humidity/temperature to perfection -- the tricky thing here would be that you would be competing with a very effective low-tech alternative.
posted by advil at 8:21 PM on June 18

I'm thinking separate compartments that leverage the technology to produce microclimates for different kinds of food. I'd even be open to including CO2 or N2 atmostpheres for the super high end model (eg my buddy has an apple storage facility which is refrigerated and has an N2 atmosphere... the apples will keep basically forever).
posted by unSane at 9:18 PM on June 18

And please include some kind of description of why someone with air conditioning running all the time would need the climate control feature.

A lot of us apartment dwellers don't have AC running all the time, and in fact try to be somewhat environmentally conscious by tolerating a broader temperature range. Thus, while I like my butter and eggs to be room temperature when cooking, if I leave them out during an August NYC night, it will be separated when I get up to make my eggs.
posted by Brian James at 9:24 PM on June 18

Let me throw out the "Brisker" -- "A food storage appliance that is great for humid environments, especially shore kitchens," for an example, at least, of a climate-controlled larder.
posted by kmennie at 10:52 PM on June 18

I would not. I have a small kitchen where pretty much every inch is accounted for already, and I live in Texas—so if the AC isn't on, a larder would get too hot; if it is on, a larder probably won't help.

As I understand it, a pantry (in the traditional British sense) would be designed into the house and use passive convection to keep it cool. That's great, especially where the temperature rarely tops 80°. It's too bad that practice seems to have died out. Even where I live, it seems like it should be possible to take advantage of the cool air in the crawl space under the house.
posted by adamrice at 7:07 AM on June 19

I'm with the rest of the potato-crowd. I buy things (like potatoes) that are supposed to be stored in a "cool dry place", and I don't have one. I'm in Texas, and the house is going to be about 72 - 78 degrees year round, with the kitchen 5 - 10 degrees warmer (or worse if the oven is on). No basement or cellar (or crawl space for that matter - poured concrete slab foundation). As a result, I either buy only the amount I can use in the next few days, or throw spoiled food away -- or spend the gas for yet another trip to the store.

I'd love to have an inexpensive (and inexpensive to operate) solution for that. Extra points if it's cleverly designed to take a minimum amount of room, since not only is my kitchen hot, a minimum amount of room is about all it's got.
posted by nonliteral at 8:36 AM on June 19