Good question roxanna7. I don't believe you 'have' to refridgerate them but it would probably preserve the taste longer and definately extend the optimal shelf life? I also think we are too overly concerned (do I dare say that) with germs and cleanliness and having all the 'stuff' hidden to keep our counters all slick & modern looking. We also seemed to do alot more 'waste not, want not', and ate it every day. I grew up without electricity, which was never missed, until I was in my teens so refrigeration wasn't an option ... we had a cold room/pantry 😊.

> Salad dressings are mainly vinegar and oil, neither of which need to be refrigerated,

Nowadays salad dressings are mainly high-fructose corn syrup and artificial flavorings.

I've been buying more organic foods and find that they all say to" refrgerate upon opening". Why? Basicallly they are the same but made the old fashioned way, and things like katsup and mustard and peanut butter never got refrigerated.

I think the directive to refrigerate is more a C-Y-A for the manufacturers. If someone who doesn't keep stuff in the fridge gets sick, they can point to the label and say it's not their fault that person didn't follow directions. I do refrigerate jams/jellies, pickles, salad dressings but not catsup, mustard, BBQ sauces. My fridge barely has enough room for real food some days!

I think ediej is correct. Just like all the "allergen" warnings on every.single.food. It's a CYA and liability issue for the food industry.

Well....Jams and jellys can grow mold...I keep mine un refrigerated and am here to tell you...jelly can get moldy!
My mother never refrigerated ketchup.. and I remember one time opening the bottle and it squirted out...it had fermented and built up pressure...

Most restaurants don't refrigerate the mustard, ketchup, BBQ sauce etc. I do...because that's just where I keep it, like the garlic powder is on the left, first shelf in the cupboard...it's just where I keep it!
The barrels of pickles that sat out in the old days were fermented not pickled with vinegar and sugar and salt...they just kept getting better. Pickled pickles will get uncrisp.

We use a few salad dressings and none have HFCS. That may be true when buying a low grade brand. You can avoid HFCS by reading the label.

We refrigerate Kroger peanut butter to keep it firm, not to preserve it. We also keep a jar of Jif on hand (grandchild preference & keep it GF) and the labels says, no refrigeration required.

I never use mustard or ketchup stored on restaurant tables. That's been handled by too many people and probably refilled many times. If I really want it, I request fresh, unopened condiments.

For most perishables, it makes sense to refrigerate than regret.

I refrigerate all of the above. If it is warm and moist, bad stuff is growing in there. I also buy smaller bottles and jars so it doesn't get too old in the fridge.

I also don't use ketchup or mustard in a restaurant and peanut butter is refrigerated too.

Oils can go rancid, some quicker than others such as walnut oil and refrigerating them helps prevent them from doing so. Especially once the bottle is opened and they're exposed to air. Also sometimes the combination of ingredients can change the acidity level making it more bacteria friendly and thus better to refrigerate.

My house doesn't have ketchup, mayo, mustard, bbq sauce etc... I went more natural, no packaged and very little canned food.

It's nice, when one has more time, to cook real food.

You could find everything in my fridge easy... never much in it. I buy fresh.

I am only about 1/4 mile from a sprouts store, and walk there for my groceries.. unless I need more, and then I drive to a Winco or Buy4Less. I also have a Natural Grocers and an Akins in walking distance. I am very lucky that way.

Moni

I have never refrigerated ketchup, cooking oils, vinegars, BBQ sauce, hot sauces, PB or jams and jellies. And that is just a holdover from how I was raised - my mom never did so I don't. But I have made it to my 70's and have never gotten sick from any of these items - nor do they have an 'off' taste or separate or grow mold or whatever - so I will continue to carry on in the same manner.

I remember after a blackout I read an article in the newspaper about what foods were no longer safe without refrigeration. They said that soft cheese should be thrown out if it has been without refrigeration for a few hours and hard cheese slightly longer. I purposely take cheeses out of the fridge a few hours before eating, and sometimes it's on the counter all day if I feel like nibbling. That's when I stopped believing those warnings.

Although, when I was in college, I decided to bake a cake for my parents' anniversary and ship it to them across the country. It had a custard filling. Fortunately, my mom knew to throw it out :-) Ooops!

I agree about restaurant bottles of catsup & mustard. Gives me the willies. But mine at home are kept wiped off and if DH wants to continue his happy life he knows better than to touch the inside-of-the-cap dispenser tops with his fingers, if it overflows, wipe it with a clean napkin. OCD strikes again. And I happen to be one of those weird people who loves catsup & mustard so we go through it quickly enough that I don't worry about it going rancid. If one doesn't use it much I could see where that could be an issue though. My AC, balsalmic and pomegranate vinegars also are not refrigerated. I think they taste better at room temp. I got sick as a child once from moldy jam so it is never ever left out, as soon as we are finished back into the fridge it goes, especially if it's my homemade. I know I BWB it properly when I make it, but still...

Not oils but most other things mentioned are in our fridge.

Food items last longer when refrigerated and some spoil quickly when not. It isn't something that needs a lot of thought in my mind, follow label directions and for other things for which there's no guidance, do as you see fit. We see fit to keep many such things in the fridge, no reason not to.

A question about mayonnaise -- I can't stand the stuff, and know nothing about it. My husband likes it and insists that it doesn't go bad if it's kept in the fridge. Needless to say, a jar of that glop lasts for months (or until I secretly throw it out thinking it's gone bad.) Is it true that it doesn't go bad? I know it kills people when it's left out too long at picnics.

If you don't like store-bought mayonnaise, you can always learn how to make it from scratch. That way, you know exactly what's in there.

I don't trust my homemade mayonnaise for more than about a week, even when refrigerated. But then, maybe I am overly careful. On the other hand, I often mix my own mayonnaise with Greek yoghurt to make it less greasy. And by doing so, I remove some of the properties that make it keep for a long time.

For store-bought mayonnaise, I agree it does last for a really long time. There is so much fat in it, it's really hard for any microorganisms to grow in this medium.

If you are put off by the look of a jar of mayonnaise, I found that Japanese Kewpie mayonnaise is a good option. It comes in a squeeze bottle and never gets that yucky goopy texture.

Mayo will go rancid over a period of time even in the fridge. I purchase the smallest jar as possible so much that it still stays fresh weeks later. If I make my own mayo, we use it up in a couple of days.

I do store most condiments in the fridge, simply because we don't use them much. Even though the labels of mustard and catsup do not specify refrigeration, I wouldn't think of using something that has been sitting in the pantry for months, yuk. Vinegars and oils stay in the pantry but I still buy small amounts. Even plain bottled vegetable oil will go rancid once opened, if not used relatively quickly. It may not be toxic but the flavor is seriously off.

I question the premise.

In the 'old days' I believe lots more people became ill from spoiled food, and science has greatly advanced our knowledge about food safety in the intervening years.

If you live where you can have a pantry & kitchen with ambient temperatures that are cool enough to prevent or slow bacterial growth, then sure, why not leave stuff out?

I live where ambient inside temp.s can often be between 75-82 degrees - and that's with air conditioning - definitely not conducive to food storage safety. And people run the heat in winter, don't they?

I don't buy ketchup or ever use it, and I buy mustard in squeeze bottles and I leave it out, just for convenience. I thought it was supposed to be refrigerated, but I did not check the bottle.

What I did find strange was that soy sauce says it must be refrigerated after opening, but I never do that. However, I do keep the seasoned soy sauce soup base in the refrigerator, as it has more ingredients than just soy sauce. I felt that the salt in soy sauce would preserve it. I keep hot sauce in the fridge as well because I consider it too valuable to risk.

...To protect people from themselves. Many do not know the difference from pasteurization or fermentation. Or any preservation processes. No idea what organic means or what reading labels mean.

On my gardening forum a grandfather taking care of his grandchildren while parents are at work...is proud to be feeding the kids ramen. Lunch and dinner. (it is fried and dehydrated) He refuses to recognize it is the exact food value as a bag of potato chips.

Not that long ago, someone posted some odd questions about the FoodSaver system. We were confused a bit. Then we realized they thought they could foodSaver meats and veg for the pantry shelf, room temp, like canning, lol.

Hey, thats cool, we are always learning.

Back in the day, 'the good old days', preservation was passed on via the grands, parents....

I have had sealed, new bottles of ketchup and mayonnaise go off in the pantry.

I did have a fairly new jar of Dijon mustard go off a few months ago. Ticked me off!

Hubby spent some time in Scotland growing up in the late 50s. Their "fridge" was a marble shelf that projected out from a kitchen window!

The next round was in the 60s and they had "real" refigeration.

They got really "cool" ...

... before it was the latest thing/ *really* "cool", did they, nancy jane ... (with dirt on her hands)?

ole joyful ... gardener who, with disappointing recent results, at 91 is sort of wondering about this year ...

I do put most of those items in the fridge, but they were also items when I had an extended 8 day power outage back earlier in the 2010's - that I never threw out when the power came back on. They really aren't critical.

I never put soy sauce or hot sauce in the fridge to begin with. Some maple syrup ends up there, most does not. Mustard and peanut butter do go in the fridge. I don't ever buy ketchup so personally the best place (for me) to store that condiment is in a landfill. Open jams do go in the fridge because it will take me a couple years to consume the contents.

I do know folk who never put the butter in the fridge. I ditched that habit about 20 plus years ago when I left it out in the butter holder on the dining room table. Came home from work, and one of the cats had knocked off the cover and had licked it back and forth... yup, what remained of that stick went out in the trash!

Hubby spent some time in Scotland growing up in the late 50s. Their "fridge" was a marble shelf that projected out from a kitchen window!

When I was in college, the winter window sill was our refrigeration for things we didn't get in the cafeteria. One of my friends lived in a dorm room right next to a tree. She lost her food to an acrobatic squirrel! Who chewed through the screen.

Eggs: I raise my own and so I don't wash them until I am going to use them. Right now at this time of year the eggs are super cold when I go to collect them, so they go into the fridge. Thing is, they will develop watery condensation on them when brought back to room temp. Also, if the temps outdoors are in the 90s in certain periods of summer - yes, into the fridge rather than letting them sit out on the counter (I do not have A/C here.)

Otherwise, I leave them on my kitchen counter unwashed until I need / want to use them. They're fine unless the natural bloom is washed off (which both washing and condensation will do to them) - and the reason really warm eggs go into the fridge is that I have roosters, and I really don't want to run into unexpected "balut" in there. Chick development requires temps in the 90s, and if mama chick isn't providing that, hot weather can be a problem.

(Cracked eggs always go into the fridge to be eaten as hard cooked omelets within a day or two, and dirty cracked eggs end up in compost.)

Artemis, your hens lay in the winter? Lucky you! We leave our butter out, (covered,) as it's too hard to use when it's refrigerated.

My family never refrigerated ketchup or mustard, jelly, jam, pickles, etc. And we lived in Florida with no a/c. Now I do because DIL had a fit over it when she found out. We do buy the big sized containers so it's probably for the best.

Tell your DIL that she is very confused. Several of the items that you listed are made the way that they are, because that's what people did for hundreds of years to preserve stuff. Pickling and making jams is literally a process to preserve ingredients and make them save to be stored at room temperature. Yes, in rare occasions things can go wrong and it still spoils. But I have had that happen for refrigerated items, too.

"Pickling and making jams is literally a process to preserve ingredients and make them save to be stored at room temperature."

Don't get carried away with your thought on this. Jam/jelly is stable at room temperature when it's been properly "processed" - raised to a high temperature and air-sealed in a sterile container. Once open, it's open, and should be refrigerated to delay spoiling. No magic is involved.

I make my own jams and jellies and they are always refrigerated. So are the condiments, maple syrup and mayo. I don't refrigerate soy sauce, olive/sesame oil, honey or peanut butter. I don't know what they put in Hellman's mayo for preservative but I don't think I've every had it expire, even well past the best before date.

sjerin: Artemis, your hens lay in the winter? Lucky you! We leave our butter out, (covered,) as it's too hard to use when it's refrigerated.

Yeah they lay. I get a couple eggs or so a week in winter... Not the quantity I'd want! Fortunately right now there' s more light out there, so now several more eggs than that.

In sufficiently high concentrations (and assuming it's homogenously distributed), sugar is actually a pretty decent preservative.

This isn't quite ideal with some jams. But for all practical purposes, it comes close. In decades of storing jams in my cupboard, I don't see it go bad more frequently than once about every other year. That's about on par with the spoilage that I see with comparable products that I do keep in the fridge.

And now that I think of it, I keep ketchup, hot sauces (Tabasco, Sriracha, sambal, ...), soy sauce, fish sauce, Worcestershire sauce, honey, nut butters, ... outside of the fridge, and not once in the last couple of decades do I recall any of them going bad.

Yes, there absolutely are items that must be refrigerated. But cool storage is not the only option for preserving foods

My husband is on a low sodium diet, so many of the products I purchase are lower in salt content than their regular counterparts. Without the preserving attributes of salt, these products can go bad faster. And I try to buy products that don’t contain a lot of preservatives and stabilizers. So, I refrigerate pickles, jams, ketchup, mayonnaise, mustard, salad dressing, soy sauce, etc. Possibly the same principle applies to some gluten free, egg free, and dairy free products. And I’m sure it applies to low sugar products.

Artemis, do you put a light in your henhouse? When we had chickens, in the winter we had just a regular small single-bulb shop light that was on a timer to come on about 6:00 am and off about 7:00 pm. While we did have reduced egg production, we still got enough every week for at least baking and a couple of breakfasts.