APPLES · IN THE FRIDGE
3–6 weeks
Three weeks in the refrigerator is a safe plan, and six is achievable. UC Davis notes apples have the longest storage potential of any fresh fruit — months at near-freezing — which is exactly why the ones in the store are often already weeks past harvest. Your three weeks starts from the day you buy them, not the day they were picked.
The cold matters more than the time. An apple left in a fruit bowl runs through its window several times faster than one in the crisper.
These are quality windows drawn from published UC Davis storage research — an estimate of how long produce stays good, not a safety date. If the package carries a printed use-by date, that date governs.
ALSO SOLD AS apple
Near the end of the window?
An apple that has gone soft or mealy is still a cooking apple. It is the same fruit with less structure, which is irrelevant to sauce, and largely irrelevant to a crumble.
Worth knowing what else that apple is doing while it sits there: apples emit ethylene, and ethylene ages everything nearby. We wrote about that separately in one bad apple is not a metaphor.
SOURCES
- UC Davis: apples have the longest storage potential of fresh fruit (months at 0-1°C); retail fruit is already long-stored. Conservative home fridge 3-6 weeks. Larger haircut 3 d (often weeks post-harvest at retail).
- UC Davis Postharvest Technology Center, Fresh Produce Storage & Shelf-Life recommendations (postharvest.ucdavis.edu).
Ranges are as published. Treat the short end as your real window — grocery produce is already days past harvest, and a cooked dish starts its clock at the stove.
Looking up your groceries one at a time is a hobby. A bad one.
Savery scans your grocery receipt and tracks these windows for everything you bought at once. The spinach, the strawberries, the milk you forgot about — all on one shelf.