Keeping apples in your refrigerator, instead of on your kitchen counter, helps keep them ripe and delicious longer.

Oh, the mealy apple. It looks so crisp, it feels so firm, but the second you bite into it, it falls apart like a soggy shortbread cookie. Disgusting. The key to fighting mealy-ness is controlling the weather. Yes, you read that right.

Apples are not like Han Solo. When you pick them, they don’t go into suspended animation. They are fully alive, and so the weather that affected them on the tree will also affect them in your kitchen.

But by tweaking your kitchen’s weather, you can trick your apples into thinking they were just picked yesterday.

Storing your apples on your counter — where the average yearly temperature is 65 to 70 degrees — is like storing them in Tallahassee, Florida. That’s where apples go to die.

Your fridge, on the other hand, somewhere in the 35- to 38-degree range, is more like Warren, Minnesota. The cold environment will slow down the chemical reactions in your apple — and since those reactions eventually lead to mealy-ness and spoilage, your apples will stay fresher longer.

Apples also like high humidity, so you might think to put them in the crisper drawer, but beware: apples have gas. Ethene gas, to be exact, which accelerates ripening and spoilage. So you need a balance of high humidity and good air circulation. Conclusion? Poke some holes in the bag you put your apples in at the grocery store and place on the top shelf of your fridge, close to the fan.

So it turns out that your kitchen has its own weather Who knew? Well, now you can use that fact to keep your apples fresh and crisp for a long time.

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