How to Keep Cut Fruit Fresh

Prepping your ingredients for the week is a great time saver but then you have to consider how to keep cut fruit fresh. Once you cut produce it begins to oxidize, lost valuable nutrients, and look bad. Is there a way to save time and have fresh ingredients? Sure! Just like the professional chefs, you can prep your food and keep it delicious and fresh looking until you serve it.

It is important to remember that although cut fruit and vegetables do lose nutrition over time, this loss is slowed considerably by the refrigerator. Properly stored in the refrigerator at 34F fresh produce will retain its nutrition for about a week.  Cut fruit will be fine for about three days and cut vegetables should be good for five. That doesn't mean that it will maintain the fresh look, though. For that you will need to do some extra prep work.

If you want to keep the fruit fresh looking as well as tasting you will need to follow a few simple steps.

Prevent Oxidation

Keep a large bowl of water with the juice of a whole lemon in it near you as you cut. Once the fruit is peeled and cut drop it into the lemon water briefly. If you allow it to soak too long it will dilute the flavor of the fruit. Drain the fruit and pat dry. Now put your cut fruit in a resealable plastic bag or a glass Mason jar and store in the refrigerator.

Don't have lemon juice? Don't worry; there is more than one way to keep your fruit fresh looking and tasting. Just crush up two vitamin C tablets and add to a quart of water to do the same thing. You can also get a product like Fruit Fresh which is basically ascorbic acid, yes you guessed it – vitamin C.

Prevent Bruising

If you want your fruit to last the longest time possible you want to stay away from bruises. It is easy to get a perfect peach at the store and find, when you get home, that it has been bruised in transit.  There are ways to stop this. Once you have the fruit in the produce bag blow the bag up and tie it tightly. The air will cushion the ripe fruit and help prevent bruises.

Bruises will ultimately cause the fruit to age more quickly when it is cut.

Keep Different Fruit Separate

You should never keep fruit and vegetables, or different kinds of fruits together in the refrigerator. The ethylene (the product responsible for the ripening of the fruit) can build and up cause premature aging of your fruit. Always store apples with apples, pears with pears, and so on.

Prepping foods ahead of time does save a lot of time. When you get home from the grocery store you can easily wash, peel, and cut all of the fresh produce that you need and use these methods on how to keep cut fruit fresh.

You may find that you have fruit on the table a whole lot more often.