How Does a Refrigerator Crisper Drawer Work?

Crisper drawers work by controlling airflow and, as a result, exposing food items to different levels of humidity in your refrigerator to create the optimal storage environment for your fresh produce and ingredients. By adjusting the crisper drawer settings, your drawers can be set to “high” or “low humidity” depending on your needs.

Using a Refrigerator Crisper Drawer: A Guide

While operation of refrigerator crisper drawers may vary across models and brands, learning how to properly store produce in your fridge drawers according to humidity level can help you use only the freshest fruits and vegetables for your signature recipes.

What Temperature Should Crisper Drawers Be Set At?

Your crisper drawers will perform at their best when the fridge is operating within its optimal temperature range, which is 32ºF - 40ºF (0ºC - 4.4ºC).

What Is Humidity Control in The Refrigerator?

Humidity control in a refrigerator is possible due to the management of airflow within the fridge drawers. By moving the convenient sliders located on your crisper drawers to indicate low or high humidity, you can easily adjust the drawers' ventilation and moisture settings depending on your needs.

What Foods Should You Put in The Crisper Drawer?

From juicy apples and pears to lush garden greens like kale or lettuce, a wide variety of fruits and vegetables can be stored in your fridge’s crisper drawers.

Can You Put Meat in The Crisper Drawer?

It’s important to keep fruits and vegetables separate from meat, as using the same drawers for produce and meat can increase risk of cross-contamination. While bottom shelves can provide the low temperatures ideal for storing meat, you should reserve crisper drawers for items sensitive to humidity.

Can You Store Fruits and Vegetables in a Crisper Drawer?

Fruits and vegetables are best kept in appropriate levels of humidity, making the fridge crisper drawer the ideal place for storing these ingredients. Use the crisper drawer settings on your fridge to keep your food looking and tasting its best.

Refrigerator Crisper Drawers: How to Use Them and How They Work

Your refrigerator crisper drawers offer a cooling and storage compartment to help keep ingredients fresh and ready for your next culinary creation. Read this guide to learn what a crisper drawer is and how to use them, so you can minimize food waste and maintain the freshness of ingredients.

Certain fridges are equipped with crisper drawer settings, such as these built-in or freestanding KitchenAid brand models, which give you control over the airflow inside a drawer. This helps you maintain the desired moisture level to ensure that items are safely stored and kept cool.

HOW DO CRISPER DRAWERS WORK?

Crisper drawers control airflow and expose food to various humidity levels, creating the ideal storage environment for fresh produce and other ingredients. Adjust the crisper drawer humidity settings to “high” or “low” based on your needs and what you’re trying to keep fresh.

The “high humidity” setting restricts the flow of air to a crisper drawer. This keeps the moisture released by produce inside the bin, creating more humidity. This is ideal for thin-skinned vegetables with a tendency to wilt like broccoli, lettuce and cucumbers.

The “low humidity” setting exposes fridge drawer contents to the outside air as moisture leaves certain food items. This is ideal for storing ethylene-emitting fruits that can rot or pitted fruits like melons and apples.

Assorted vegetables inside an open refrigerator crisper drawer

GUIDE TO USING A CRISPER DRAWER

How to use refrigerator crisper drawers may vary across models and brands. That said, it’s important to understand how to safely store produce in your crisper drawers based on the humidity level as this can help extend the life of fruits and vegetables, keeping them fresh for longer.

THE IDEAL TEMPERATURE FOR CRISPER DRAWERS

For optimal performance, crisper drawers should be kept within the temperature range of 32ºF - 40ºF (0ºC - 4.4ºC).

Crisper drawer settings are designed to expose food items to various humidity levels. Still, you can adjust the fridge’s temperature via its controls.

Consult your owner’s manual for instructions on how to adjust your refrigerator temperatures.

WHAT DOES HUMIDITY CONTROL MEAN?

A fridge’s humidity control is made possible due to airflow management within the fridge drawers. By adjusting the humidity settings on crisper drawers you are lowering or raising the humidity. Easily adjust a drawer's ventilation and moisture settings depending on the items in the crisper drawer.

Humidity control can help extend the freshness of fruits and vegetables by trapping or releasing moisture in crisper drawers. Models like these from KitchenAid brand, feature crisper drawers that offer more control over a fridge’s storage conditions. Another benefit is you can enjoy greater freedom to experiment with fresh ingredients.

A variety of fruits, vegetables and ingredients in a KitchenAid® FreshSeal Crisper Drawer

WHICH FOODS ARE SAFE TO STORE IN A CRISPER DRAWER?

Fresh apples and greens like kale are some foods that can be kept in a crisper drawer, along with various other fruits and vegetables.

High-moisture foods, such as leafy or thin-skinned produce can be stored in a refrigerator crisper drawer on “high humidity”. The "low humidity" setting is ideal for storing foods that require a low-moisture environment, including thick-skinned produce.

IS IT SAFE TO STORE PRODUCE IN A CRISPER DRAWER?

Produce is ideally stored in appropriate levels of humidity. This means crisper drawers are the perfect compartment to keep fruits and vegetables. Don’t forget, crisper drawer settings can be adjusted to keep your food fresh looking and tasting.

To maintain the freshness of produce, organize items to prevent overcrowding. You want to give produce some space in the bin.

Crisper drawers operate best when only about ⅔ full. Read this article to learn about certain foods that should not be refrigerated.

IS IT SAFE TO STORE MEAT IN THE CRISPER DRAWER?

It’s recommended that produce be separated from meat in a crisper drawer. Keeping meat and produce in the same crisper drawer may result in cross-contamination. Alternatively, bottom shelves can offer the ideal low temperature for meat storage, freeing crisper drawers for items with sensitivity to humidity.

Store raw meat like poultry in a fresh drawer to reduce the likelihood of contaminating fresh produce.

A stainless steel KitchenAid® French Door Refrigerator in a rustic kitchen

Shop KitchenAid® Refrigerators

By properly utilizing food storage, you can preserve the freshness, quality and flavour of food while freeing yourself up to explore the culinary creations that excite you. Whether adding peppery arugula to a salad or roasting fresh broccoli for a sheet pan recipe, KitchenAid^® Refrigerators can help organize and store all the ingredients you need inside a sleek and intuitive design that will elevate the style of your kitchen.