Putting food in fridge ...

[dumpling123]

When you're putting food into the fridge, do you leave it to cool on countertop first or stick it into fridge while still warm to cool?

Leave out (though in microwave as cats would go for whatever it is). Once properly cold, refrigerate.

Depends how hot it is. Wouldn't put it in if it was still very hot

If you put it in warm then it heats the fridge up and compromises the rest of the food in there.

You should allow to cool first, otherwise you affect the temperature in the fridge..

If I want to refrigerate soon, I put ice packs from the freezer underneath to speed up cooling

It's fine with modern fridges to put stuff in that's still warm, just make sure it's away from other stuff so that air can circulate around the warm thing.

I usually put it into a container on countertop, let it cool to room temperature and then bung in the fridge. Was reading about refrigerating leftovers within two hours on another thread and wondered what others did

If I’m cooking it for the freezer I cool it quickly (on a cold surface/plunging pit into cold water and stirring to release heat/ etc).

If it’s leftovers, it would usually be cool by the time we’ve all eaten, and we’ll within 2 hours.

I definitely wouldn’t put hot food in the fridge.