12 Foods You Shouldn’t Keep in the Refrigerator

The fridge is the belly of any home. Here you get to store food and extend their shelf life, keep a tub of ice cream from melting, grab cold bottles of beer, and prevent leftovers from spoiling. You can even use it to prepare food like marinating meat overnight or chilling sorbets before serving. There’s so much that a fridge can do that you’d start to wonder… is there anything that a fridge can’t do? A lot, actually.

Here are 12 foods you shouldn’t keep in the refrigerator.

1. Honey

Not only is honey an excellent natural sweetener, it’s also a common ingredient in many home remedies. It can be applied directly to wounds to speed up their healing, taken with milk to promote sleep, used as a cure for acne, or help relieve sore throat and inflammatory conditions like asthma, allergies, and eczema, among other things.

Why it’s a bad idea: The problem with keeping honey in the fridge is that the cold temperature causes its sugar molecules to crystallize. Basically, what happens is that the sugar in honey clump together. The good news is that this won’t affect the quality or shelf life of the honey. But it can lengthen your preparation time since it isn’t as smooth and more difficult to spread.

Proper storage: Honey should be stored in tightly-sealed glass jars to prevent spoilage. Make sure to place them on a counter or in cupboards, away from sunlight and heat. Placing your jar near the oven and other sources of extreme temperature may have negative effects on the honey such as changing its color or flavor.