Unlock the Secret: The Best Spot to Keep Cherries Fresh Longer!

In two days, you’re hosting a lunch. With the hot weather, you’ve planned a light menu. A mixed salad for starters, grilled dishes as the main course, and a beautiful red fruit salad to end on a sweet note. At the market, you pick up some sausages and bacon before heading to your local farmer’s stand. You carefully select the sweetest cherries, strawberries, and raspberries. Considering the price per kilogram of these fresh fruits, you can’t afford to make a mistake: buying slightly damaged fruits at top dollar is not an option. You carefully place these precious goods at the top of your shopping cart to avoid jostling them on the way home.

Back at home, you put the strawberries in a colander at the bottom of the fridge. This technique, which you’ve used for years, prevents them from spoiling by facilitating moisture drainage. However, you’re unsure about the cherries: should you refrigerate them or leave them in a bowl on your countertop? When in doubt, you place them in your fruit basket, already filled with some bananas and sweet apricots. Mistake! “That will make them rot much faster”, warns Steven from the @grabafriut account. He cautions that these fruits must be kept away from cherries at all costs.

The reason is straightforward: bananas, apricots, and apples are examples of climacteric fruits. What they have in common is that they continue to ripen after being harvested. In doing so, they emit ethylene, a natural gas that accelerates ripening. As a result, other fruits in the basket are likely to spoil much faster… Steven is adamant: to keep cherries fresh, it’s best to store them in the refrigerator. “Ideally, isolate them in a tray and then refrigerate them”, he explains. “If the tray is ventilated, it’s even better to prevent moisture buildup,” adds the expert.

Next time you return from the market, remember: cherries are best kept cool, unwashed, in a ventilated and isolated tray. Your fruit salad will be all the better for it!