Should onions and potatoes be stored together?

Alexander Chee, American fiction writer, poet, journalist and reviewer, sharing his lockdown moment, expressed his surprise on discovering that onions and potatoes should not be stored together. “Did everyone else know you weren’t supposed to store onions and potatoes together? I can’t believe I’ve never known this,” he tweeted.

Did everyone else know you weren’t supposed to store onions and potatoes together? I can’t believe I’ve never known this.

— Alexander Chee (@alexanderchee) May 28, 2020

As he tweeted this, people joined in the discussion, some of them were shocked and some shared additional information on which vegetable to store and how.

So, if you are attempting to hoard onions and potatoes during the lockdown, because it’s difficult to step out to pick up essentials owing to the coronavirus scare, do consider this piece of advice.

However, as most kitchens in urban and rural India lack the space to store grocery items separately, the result is stockpiling of the likes of onions and potatoes.

Here are things to know

* Contrary to the popular notion that onions emit ethylene gas when they ripen, it’s the moisture that both these vegetables put out which adversely affects them and also prevents them from staying dry.

* Only when they aren’t influenced by external factors do these vegetables become appropriate to be used as apt ingredients in dishes.

* Regardless of them being segregated, at times, potatoes shoot up curly strands.

* However, this is vestigial and could be chopped apart very conveniently.

* The dryness needs to remain intact to ensure that neither the onion nor the potato is decayed internally.

In all probability, a simple trick like this could further solve our troubles in the present situation.