All nice and fresh? Fruit and vegetables, meat and fish, dried goods like pasta and rice – different foods have different storage requirements. Maintain the optimum storage temperature and keep products in the ideal place and you can enjoy lasting freshness, but that’s not all. Proper storage in the refrigerator and larder also prevents waste, protects the environment and saves you money. How do you do that? Which foods must you keep in the refrigerator and which outside of it? We reveal some clever food storage tips.
You’ve done the weekly shop and now you need to put everything away. Many foods have special requirements in terms of storage temperatures or light. Some need to be put in the refrigerator as soon as possible so as not to break the cold chain, whilst others prefer it warm. Here are the basics for storing food safely:
Tip: ideally, you should transport sensitive foods like fresh meat in a special insulated bag to keep the cold chain intact. Alternatively, you can place one or two freezer blocks in your shopping bag.
The use-by date tells you when you should eat the food by. This information must be provided on perishable goods like fresh meat. It should be observed, otherwise there is a risk to health. With the best-before date, on the other hand, the manufacturer guarantees specific product characteristics like flavour, aroma and consistency. It does not mean that the food is no longer edible after this date. Many products can still be enjoyed without hesitation. Here, it is a case of relying on your own senses and doing a smell and taste test.
Not least, temperature plays an important role in optimum food storage. Classic refrigerators with static cooling have different temperature zones. The bottom is cooler than the top and the door compartments. Modern models are often equipped with convection cooling systems, also known as dynamic cooling. Where this is the case, a fan evenly distributes the air all around the interior. Significant temperature differences are no longer so evident, with the exception of the door area and the vegetable drawer. Tip: read more about the shelf life of food in the refrigerator.
However, refrigerators with convection cooling systems also provide different temperature zones. Depending on the model, they may have zero-degree zones and the desired temperature can often be adjusted in the main compartment.
This poses the question as to what temperature is ideal for storing food in the refrigerator. For appliances with dynamic cooling, experts recommend an interior temperature of around 5–8 °C. In refrigerators with static cooling, you use different zones to optimise food storage:
The zero-degree zone is usually in a separate compartment at the bottom. You can store fish, meat and sausages there at an optimum temperature.
On the bottom shelf, directly above the vegetable or zero-degree compartment, the temperature is usually 2–5 °C – perfect for perishable goods. This area is also ideal for gently defrosting frozen goods. If your refrigerator does not have a zero-degree zone, store sausages and meat there.
On the middle shelf at 5–6 °C, the conditions are ideal for milk products like cheese, yoghurt and quark.
Right at the top of the refrigerator, the temperature is around 8–10 °C. This makes it the best place for sauces, preserves and the short-term storage of prepped meals.
In the refrigerator door, it is comparably mild. At temperatures ranging from 10 to 15 °C, these compartments are designed for spreadable butter, eggs, jam and tubes of mustard or mayonnaise.
A full larder is very handy: you always have food in to make delicious meals. So that your stocks remain fresh until you need them, we’ve got something for you: these tips will make storing food a cinch.
Keep certain fruit and vegetable varieties separate. Apples, pears, nectarines, peaches and apricots, among others, release the gas ethylene, which has a ripening effect. This accelerates the ripening process of other varieties.
Put new products at the back. This makes it easier to use older products first.
Freeze food (raw or cooked). This generally extends the shelf life of meat, sausages, fish, cheese, vegetables and most cooked meals by many months.
Did you know? The higher a food’s fat content, the less time it stays fresh in the freezer. Lean beef, for instance, can be stored for around ten to twelve months, but you should not store fatty minced meat in the freezer for more than four weeks.
Cool and dry: these conditions are ideal for most foods. The exceptions are fruit and vegetables, which stay crisp at a higher humidity. Meat and fish must always be refrigerated.
Food can be stored in the fridge and freezer, as well as the kitchen cupboard or larder. It is best to chill fresh goods and the freezer will enable you to keep them for longer. Everything that needs a dry, cool, dark environment is best kept in a cupboard or the larder.
A glance at the packaging will normally tell you how to correctly store the product. ‘Keep refrigerated’ refers to storage in the refrigerator at 0–8 °C, whereas ‘store in a cool place’ refers to a place outside the refrigerator at a maximum of 18 °C.
Perishable foods like fresh meat and fish are best kept right at the bottom of the refrigerator. That is where the lowest temperatures are.
In the vegetable drawer or on the shelf just above it.
Sausages and cheese are best kept at the bottom of the refrigerator.
The humidity is higher in the vegetable drawer and it is very cool. This keeps fresh goods like lettuce crisp for longer.
