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Each Variety In Its Own Way: Soring Fruit

Banana, apple, blueberry – each type of fruit has its own requirements for optimal storage. If you store your fruit according to its needs, you will achieve a longer shelf life and a higher vitamin content in the fruit.

Basic rules for storing fruit

The golden rule for storing fruit is that fruit is best stored in the conditions in which it was grown. Tropical and citrus fruits are therefore more sensitive to cold than local varieties from regional cultivation – this also applies to storage after harvesting.
Good neighborliness is also important when storing fruit: some varieties give off the ripening gas ethylene (especially apples and bananas). This ensures that fruit ripens and therefore spoils faster. Therefore, it is important to store ethylene-secreting fruits separately from other fruits.

Ideal for most fruits: pantry or cellar compartment

If you have a cool storage cellar or a similarly tempered cellar compartment in your refrigerator, you have a clear advantage: most fruits keep much longer at temperatures around 10 °C than at room temperature. In addition, it is not as cold as in the usual vegetable compartment, so that fruit types that do not tolerate cold can also be stored in the pantry or cellar compartment.
While there is enough space in the storage cellar to store the different types of fruit separately so that they do not influence each other through ethylene, there is a space problem in the cellar compartment of the refrigerator: the fruit has to be stored in a very small space, which is why ideally you should not store any ethylene-producing types in the fridge should be stored in the basement.

Which fruit belongs in the fridge?

For some types of fruit that are not sensitive to cold, the refrigerator is a suitable storage location. Please note, however, that the air cannot circulate well there, which is why you should regularly check your fruit stored in the refrigerator for mold growth. Here, too, you should make sure that ethylene-releasing and ethylene-sensitive varieties are not stored together.

You can store the following types of fruit in the refrigerator:

  • apples
  • apricots
  • pears
  • blueberries
  • persimmons
  • Peaches and Nectarines
  • plums and prunes
  • rhubarb
  • gooseberries
  • Grapes

With the two exceptions of blueberries and gooseberries, you should not store berries at all but eat them immediately. Citrus fruits keep longer in the refrigerator than at room temperature, but they lose their aroma. With kiwis, you have a choice: if you want them to last as long as possible, you can put them in the fridge; Before eating, they should be left in the fruit bowl at room temperature for a few days to allow them to ripen.

Which fruit goes in the fruit bowl?

Fruits from warmer growing areas remain more aromatic at room temperature than in the refrigerator. Some types of fruit, such as bananas, also suffer cold damage when stored in the refrigerator. Therefore, a fruit bowl in a shady corner of the kitchen is the right storage place for tropical fruits.

The fruit bowl includes:

  • pineapple
  • bananas
  • pomegranates
  • grapefruits
  • tangerines and clementines
  • mangoes
  • passion fruit
  • melons
  • oranges
  • Physalis
  • Lemons
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Written by John Myers

Professional Chef with 25 years of industry experience at the highest levels. Restaurant owner. Beverage Director with experience creating world-class nationally recognized cocktail programs. Food writer with a distinctive Chef-driven voice and point of view.

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