Picture this: You’re toting an orchard’s-worth of fresh apples home from your local farmers market, dreaming about the many ways you’ll put the haul to use (apple pie! applesauce! caramel apple cheesecake!). Upon your arrival, you can hardly wait for a taste, so you slice into one of those gorgeous apples and behold its juicy, glistening interior, all white and creamy and crisp. You turn around to grab the peanut butter, but when you look back to the cutting board—no, that can’t be! The flesh of the apple has already started turning brown.
No matter how fresh the fruit is, a sliced apple is likely to start browning in a grand total of two minutes. Why does your favorite fall fruit seem to deteriorate so quickly? And how can you stop apples from browning forevermore? The truth is, you can’t. But there are some things you can do to delay the process.
Home cooks have come up with plenty of creative ways to keep sliced apples from turning brown, such as rubbing slices with lemon juice or soaking apples in honey water or lemon-lime soda. But Which of these methods actually work? More on that below, but first: Why is your perfect apple changing the color of its flesh in the first place?
Store Apples In The Fridge Once rinsed and dried, your apples simply need a trip to the fridge to maintain maximum crispness for as much as two months, though some may start to brown at six weeks. Leaving them on the counter will only give them a shelf life of a few days.
Why do apples brown when sliced?
According to Tenley Fitzgerald, vice president of marketing at Yes! Apples, a network of New York–based apple farms, the unsightly hue is the result of a process called enzymatic browning. For more on what that means, I spoke to Christopher Watkins, a professor at Cornell’s School of Integrative Plant Science Horticulture Section, whose research focuses on apple storage life and quality. Watkins explains that visual browning is the by-product of an interaction between the apple’s naturally occurring phenolic compounds and an enzyme called polyphenol oxidase (PPO). “Normally the phenols and PPO are [stored] in separate places in the cell,” Watkins explains. But when you slice into an apple, you damage the membranes, allowing these enzymes to come into contact. PPO facilitates the reaction between the phenols and oxygen, causing the apple to produce brown-colored melanins. (Yes, the same melanin that brings color to human skin.)
But why do some types of apples brown faster than others? Different varieties of the fruit contain varying amounts of the above compounds. “You can have an apple variety with high phenolics but low enzyme activity, and the reverse,” says Watkins. Antioxidants also play a role here: They slow the chemical reaction, so apples with high antioxidant levels are slower to brown.
Browned apple slices might not be the prettiest, but they’re perfectly fine to eat.
McIntosh, Golden Delicious, and Fuji apples are relatively quick to brown; Honeycrisp and Snapdragon apples brown at a moderate rate; and Pink Lady, Empire, and Cortland apples are slow to brown. “Browning resistance can be passed down genetically through apple breeding programs,” says Watkins. Some of the most popular apple varieties, like white-fleshed Pink Lady apples, are a direct result of such crossbreeding. Only one variety of the fruit—Arctic apples—has been genetically engineered to not brown. All in all, a lesson in why it’s important to choose your apples wisely.
Environmental factors (like the ambient temperature and oxygen level) also play a role in how quickly a sliced apple will turn brown. The more oxygen exposure, the faster an apple slice will brown. The lower the temperature, the slower the reaction, according to Watkins.
HOW TO KEEP SLICED APPLES FROM TURNING BROWN | KITCHEN HACK
FAQ
How do you keep apples from getting soft?
How do you keep apples from getting mushy?
How do you keep apple crisp crispy?
How do you make apple crisp from scratch?
With a crisped oatmeal crumble on top and velvety cooked fruit underneath, this apple crisp is incredibly easy to make from scratch. The best apple crisp boasts perfectly cooked apples that are soft but still hold their shape. The tender apples should be coated in a caramel sauce that isn’t too watery, but not too cloying either.
Is it ok to eat 3 small apples everyday?
Yes, the ideal would be to consume at least three servings of fruit a day, each serving being a different fruit, but eating 3 apples is still a great option.
Can you make apple crisp ahead of time?
Yes, apple crisp is a perfect candidate for making ahead of time. To store pre-prepared apple crisp, keep the topping and the filling separate. Cook the individual parts separately, then store the apple mixture in the fridge and the topping in an airtight container at room temperature.
What makes a good apple crisp?
The best apple crisp boasts perfectly cooked apples that are soft but still hold their shape. The tender apples should be coated in a caramel sauce that isn’t too watery, but not too cloying either. And the streusel crisp (the best part) should be exactly that, “crisp”, with the oatmeal clumping in just the right way. An apple is an apple, right?