Ever wonder what was in the refrigerator of some of the country’s top chefs? The New York Times asked 11 top chefs in New York City, and their answers might surprise you.  Peek inside their fridges and you’ll see that many of them probably don’t look all that different than your own – yogurt, half-empty bottles of pickles, inexpensive beer and the occasional leftover.

They also provide tips on everything from utilizing space in a small refrigerator to their policy on leftovers and what foods they always keep around.  Some of them explain their idiosyncrasies when it comes to food and refrigerators.

Einat Admony, a chef at Balaboosta, explains why she has no leftovers: “We don’t want anything in there getting moldy and forgotten. My husband comes from a French family, but they also lived in Africa for seven years, so he’s very aware of waste. And I grew up with an Iranian mom in Israel who wouldn’t throw anything in the garbage — anything. When she would break an egg, she used to take her thumb and scrape out all of the egg white. I remember when I came to New York and I started to do that at a restaurant, the chef looked at me like, Wow, that’s interesting.??

Bryan Schuman, a chef at Betony in Midtown, explains why his refrigerator is taped shut. “That’s because I have a cat named Bud. There’s roast beef in the fridge, so I have to tape the door shut. We went out of town once, and I was dry-aging a duck in there. When we came back, the place was permeated with the smell of death. The fridge is open, the duck is on the ground, half ripped apart, and the cat is looking really nonchalant. ‘What? I got the duck, so what?’??

Read the full article here.  This might sound comical, but some of today’s refrigerator features, like built-in air purification systems to keep food fresher longer, and door alarms might help these two chefs.