The Right Way to Use Your Refrigerator's Crisper Drawer

Refrigerator storage remains a mystery to many people. They store their milk and eggs in the fridge door or put items on the incorrect shelves. As for those crisper drawers at the bottom of the fridge? If you don't know how to use them, you're not alone. We all have different ideas of what belongs there: Some of us use them to stash beer, cheese, or odds and ends that don't fit anywhere else. To help, we spoke with a few experts to learn the right way to use a crisper drawer.

What Is a Crisper Drawer?

Crisper drawers, sometimes called humidity drawers, are located at the bottom of the refrigerator and are designed for fresh produce storage. When used correctly, they can keep produce fresher for longer, extending the life of your fruits and vegetables.

How It Works

Crisper drawers offer a more humid environment than the rest of the refrigerator interior. Most are adjustable between high and low through a sliding humidity control setting that opens or closes a small vent in the drawer. "It's pretty simple if you think about it this way: It's all about the airflow in and out of the drawer," says Mary Kay Bolger, senior product development manager of refrigeration at Whirlpool.

The high-humidity setting closes the vent, shutting off the air and producing more humidity. Low humidity means that the vent is completely open, allowing air to move freely. If your drawers don't have any controls, they are simply high-humidity crispers. If you have two crisper drawers, it's best to separate them into high and low humidity, so you can store all kinds of produce.

How to Use a Crisper Drawer

What you place in your crisper drawers comes down to humidity—and the moisture levels fruits and vegetables prefer.

High Humidity

The high-humidity drawer should contain thin-skinned or leafy vegetables that are prone to wilting or losing moisture quickly, such as asparagus, fresh herbs, and greens. "I wash, spin dry, and wrap lettuce in clean kitchen towels as soon as I get home and store them in the crisper drawer. Lettuces stay crisp and fresh much longer that way than if you just leave them in the clamshell container or plastic bag. Plus, they're clean, dry, and ready to eat whenever I want a salad," says Greg Lofts, our former deputy food editor.

Low-Humidity

The low-humidity drawer can house a variety of fruits, from apples and pears to peaches and melons, that give off high levels of a gas called ethylene that speeds up the ripening process. The gas not only can cause the fruits themselves to over-ripen, but can also damage other produce that is sensitive to ethylene. The open vent in the low-humidity setting allows the gas to escape, which prevents the fruits from descending into the rotten stage too quickly. Isolating these fruits in the low-humidity bin also keeps them from spoiling the ethylene-sensitive fruits and vegetables in the high-humidity bin.

Drawers Without Humidity Controls

If you don't have humidity controls on the bins in your refrigerator, it's still a good idea to separate your fruits and vegetables based on ethylene production. If your refrigerator only has one crisper drawer, use it for leafy greens and thin-skinned produce. Store ethylene-emitting fruits somewhere else in the fridge, and make sure your bin has a tight seal.

How to Organize Your Crisper Drawers

Once you have your produce correctly separated,"organize your drawers from front to back," Bolger says. "Placing items that have a shorter shelf life in front will ensure that you see them first and use them before they spoil."

If you don't have enough produce to fill two bins, Lofts has a suggestion: "Use one of your crisper drawers for raw meat, fish, and poultry. The drawer is at the bottom of the fridge, so it's particularly cold and there's no chance of cross-contamination."