Selecting and Storing Fresh Fruit

Fruit should be an important part of every healthy diet, but, when faced with the myriad of choices available in most produce sections, selecting the best fruits can seem to be an arcane art.

Once you get those precious treasures home, keeping them fresh and delicious can also be a difficult task. However, with just a few simple tricks, you can learn to pick the best and freshest fruits and store them successfully.

Fresh fruits have the highest nutrition content and offer a better flavor than canned and even frozen fruits. However, this doesn’t mean a great deal if the fruits you bring home go to waste due to poor storage or if you selected inferior fruit to begin with.

When selecting fruit, it is important to note the colors, but you should also make certain you pick the fruit up, feel its texture and note the smell. First, choose in-season fruits, preferably from a local grower. The shorter the time from harvest to produce section, the better the flavor will be. Next, pick the fruit up. Fruit should feel heavy for its size. This indicates a delicious, juicy fruit. Note the texture of the fruit. If it feels mushy, it is probably overly ripe. However, some fruits, such as avocadoes and pears, should yield to the touch somewhat. If you intend to eat the fruit right away, a very ripe fruit should be fine, but if you are planning to keep them for a few days, you will be disappointed and probably end up throwing the fruit away. Choose fruits that a few days away from ripeness unless you plan to eat them the day they are purchased. Finally, smell the fruit. It should smell like the kind of fruit it is, with no musty aroma or smells from other kinds of produce.

Now that you have chosen the perfect fruits, you need to know the proper methods for storing and keeping them in top shape.

Many people come home from the store and immediately pop all their fruit into the refrigerator. This is a mistake. Some kinds of fruits are picked before they are ripe in order to keep from going bad in the grocery store. Keep unripened fruits at room temperature. This will allow them the proper time and temperature to come to maturity. Ripe fruits are usually a little soft; they have the ideal smell for their type and fairly uniform color (although some blemishes are okay and, in organic produce, are to be expected). Only store ripe fruits in your refrigerator. Refrigeration retards the ripening process, extending the life of the fruit. Depending upon the ripeness of the fruit, the storage time can vary from a couple of days to as much as two weeks. The storage times also depend upon the kind of fruit. For example, strawberries, raspberries, grapes and peaches may ripen and spoil just a few days and should be eaten quickly. However, apples, oranges, apricots and even cherries keep for as long as two weeks. Again, this does depend upon how ripe the fruit was to begin with. Obviously, an over-ripe apple is not going to last long.

Produce that is moldy, slimy, or emits a bad smell should be discarded immediately. Moldy fruit can actually release a toxin that will make you sick. If fruit does become moldy, make sure you clean out your fruit bin and areas you stored the fruit to thoroughly eliminate any health risks.

Fruit can also be frozen for a longer-term storage solution. You can freeze most types of fruit for up to one year. Berries, grapes, cherries, and melon freeze particularly well and can even be a delicious treat straight out of the freezer. For best results, cut larger fruit into smaller chunks and remove the skin of peaches, apples, bananas and similar skinned-fruit before freezing. Place in a single layer on a cookie sheet and put in the freezer. Bananas can also be mashed, if they will be used in breads, cookies or cakes. Once frozen, take the fruit off the cookie sheet and put into freezer bags or other freezer-safe containers.