Why You Should Always Store Apples in the Fridge

Trust us, they'll last a lot longer.

Woman's hand taking beautiful, fresh, colorful apple from fridge shelf in the kitchen. Healthy sweet food concept. New start for healthy nutrition, body slimming, weight loss. Cares about body.FotoDuets/Shutterstock

Keeping apples in a basket in your kitchen is a good visual reminder to get your doctor-recommended one a day.

As it turns out, though, storing apples on your countertop could cause them to go bad weeks sooner than if you put them in the fridge, the Daily Meal reports. At room temperature, apples last about a week. But if you refrigerate them, they can stay fresh for one to two months. That’s essential for reducing food waste, which is why sellers in the United Kingdom are now required to add a refrigerator icon to the packaging of foods like apples that should be kept cold.

How cold? Apples should be kept as chilly as possible without freezing them, Food & Wine reports. Ideally, you should store them at temperatures that range from 31 to 35 degrees Fahrenheit. Apples start to freeze at about 29 degrees.

So what’s the best place to store your bushel? The crisper drawer of your refrigerator. Keep in mind, though, that you shouldn’t store your apples along with other produce. Apples emit ethylene, which can cause other fruits and vegetables to spoil. Find out 10 other foods you might be storing wrong.

If you’re not planning on eating all your apples within a few weeks, you might want to consider the variety you buy.

“The smaller the apple, and the thicker the skin, generally the longer it will store,” Norm Schultz, farm manager at Linvalla Orchards in Media, Pennsylvania, told Food & Wine. “Also, for some reason, the tarter apples store longer than the sweeter apples.”

So Granny Smiths should last longer than Golden Delicious, for example, he says. Bonus? They also make a delicious apple pie.

Jen McCaffery
Jen McCaffery covers money, tech, products, health and safety for Reader's Digest and other publications and websites. When she’s not writing or editing, she’s growing veggies or trying to figure out the way home from assorted trails.