Foods Not to Refrigerate

The emphasis of this article is the storage of whole fruits and vegetables. For safety’s sake, cooked foods, raw meats, and fresh dairy are perishable and should be stored at refrigerator temperature to keep bacterial entropy at bay. For full disclosure, we’ve accomplished this by using an icebox, but the space in such a device is, admittedly, limited, forcing us to find other places to keep most of our fruits and vegetables.

You can often figure out how to store fruits and vegetables by looking at how and where they grew on the plant. Plant parts that grow underground usually need a similarly damp, cool environment to stay fresh; otherwise, they’ll wither and wrinkle. Plant parts that grow aboveground usually need some source of water to keep them from wilting. Seed-containing plant parts that are meant to fall from the vine or tree – seeds and the fruits that often hold them – can typically sit on a countertop for a surprisingly long time. Keep those tips in mind as we delve into the fridge-free world.

Foods That Shouldn’t Be Refrigerated

First, I want to review foods that shouldn’t be refrigerated in the first place. The cool, relatively damp environment inside a fridge isn’t ideal for the following, and can lead to rotting, sprouting, or loss of flavor.

• Garlic. Refrigerated garlic will sprout quickly. Instead, braid your homegrown garlic and hang it in a cool, dry place, or put garlic heads in a basket or bowl in the kitchen.
• Bananas. The history of how these tropical fruits became a staple in every American household is surprisingly sordid. According to the documentary Banana Land: Blood, Bullets and Poison, one of the (many) low points in the banana story was early propaganda that encouraged Americans to store bananas in their refrigerators. It made the bananas deteriorate faster, which made folks have to buy them more often. Store bananas in your warm kitchen instead.
  
• Whole onions. Like garlic, onions need a cool, dry place to keep from sprouting.
• Fresh tomatoes. Tomatoes will lose flavor if left in the fridge. If you grow your own, you may already know they can keep for a few weeks on the counter in a basket. When I harvest all of my still-green tomatoes the night before a hard freeze, I leave them in a basket in the kitchen to slowly ripen. I’ve been able to keep fresh tomatoes on hand until mid-November this way.

Foods That Don’t Need to Be Refrigerated

• Butter. Butter keeps longest in the refrigerator or freezer, but you can also store butter in a ceramic “butter bell” that sits on your counter. When the butter bell’s water is changed out daily, the butter entombed within the bell stays fresh and spreadably soft for more than a week. I’ve found these cups-within-a-cup at antique malls.

• Fresh-laid eggs. If you keep your own hens, you may already be aware that eggs are laid with a beneficial bloom over their surface. This maintains the eggs in a relatively stable stasis for at least two weeks at room temperature, as long as they haven’t been washed.
  
• Homemade yogurt. Yogurt was originally used as a means to preserve fresh milk in warm climates. Through fermentation, the milk was transformed into tangy yogurt, all without the need for refrigeration. In countries where yogurt-making was developed, the milking of animals, the culturing of yogurt, the consumption of yogurt, and the making of new yogurt was all part of a day’s natural cycle. That means this system works best if the homemade yogurt is consumed within a 24-hour period of being cultured.
• Squash. Cured winter squash are remarkably stable at room temperature. Some notable varieties, such as ‘Hubbard’ and ‘Jarrahdale,’ can last for more than two years in ideal conditions.
• Unwashed sweet potatoes. Like squash, sweet potatoes are easy to store for a long period of time at room temperature. You can acquire unwashed sweet potatoes by growing your own or asking around at your local farmers market.
• Bread. I bake sourdough bread daily, and I’ve found that it keeps for up to three days when wrapped with a clean towel.
• Salty sauces. Many store-bought sauces don’t require refrigeration – we just store them there out of habit. Check the label of your favorite sauces to see if refrigeration is actually required.

Foods That Need Water

Aerial plant parts, such as leaves and petioles, are really the most perishable category in this article, so everything in this section should be consumed as close to harvest as possible.

• Leaves. Freshly cut greens can wilt during the journey between the garden and the kitchen, so the best course of action, when possible, is to only cut what you need right when you need it. If that’s not possible, however, leaves can be kept fresh in a bowl of cool water for a day or so. In fact, wilted leaves can also be revived with the same cold-water bath.
• Petioles. Plants with edible, succulent stems, such as celery, Swiss chard, and rhubarb, can be kept fresh in a clean vase of fresh water. Change out the water daily and use as soon as possible.

Foods That Need Cool, Damp Conditions

Root vegetables. The original food-storage location was the root cellar, offering edible roots a facsimile of the cool, moist earth that grew them. Lacking that, you can mimic the same environment with a box of moist sand kept in a cool, dark area of the house. Carrots, parsnips, rutabaga, beets, and turnips won’t quite last for months this way, but if you keep the sand misted, they’ll last long enough for you to eat them.

Fermented Storage

Detailing the nuances of vegetable fermentation is way beyond the scope of this article, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least mention it. Technically speaking, unrefrigerated fermented foods don’t really spoil – they just keep fermenting until they pass the point of palatability. If you’re able to ferment vegetables and consume them on a regular basis, you may not need to store them in the refrigerator. If you’re able to store your ferments in a cool part of your home, you can at least slightly slow down the fermentation until you’re ready to dine on all of that tangy goodness.

Resources for Fridge-Free Exploration

The Art of Fermentation by Sandor Katz

Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning by the Gardeners and Farmers of Terre Vivante

I hope these ideas have whetted your appetite for thinking outside the (refrigerator) box when it comes to short-term storage of your food. If you’re hungry for more ideas, however, I’m hardly the first one to kick my fridge to the curb for good. Consider the following resources for more information:

Save Food From the Fridge; Jihyun Ryou’s work comprises a website, a Ted Talk, and functional artistic creations that both reeducate people about traditional means of storing food and empower them to make better short-term food-storage choices.

Originally published as “Think Outside the (Ice) Box” in the December 2024/January 2025 issue of MOTHER EARTH NEWS and regularly vetted for accuracy.

Wren Everett and her husband live off-grid in the Ozarks in a home they built with their own hands. There, they try to grow as much of their own food as possible and rediscover the old skills of self-sufficiency.”