You Might Be Storing Raw Meat In The Wrong Place—Here's Where To Keep It In The Fridge

Many of us strive for a perfectly organized fridge, and it’s a worthy goal. An organized fridge can help cut down on food waste and make it easier to find ingredients when you’re in the middle of cooking. There’s also a food safety element at play: Where you place items in the fridge makes a difference in how well they keep, as some parts of the fridge run colder than others.

While many items can be consumed directly from the fridge, like fruit salads or hummus, others must be cooked to be safely consumed, and it's best not to store the two next to each other, especially when it comes to raw meat. In the same way you default fruit and vegetables to the crisper drawers, there is a specific spot for raw meat in the fridge, too.

We’ll explain why there’s only one place you should be storing your raw meat, and it's certainly not the top shelf.

Where Raw Meat Belongs in the Fridge

The bottom shelves are the coldest parts of a fridge, as heat rises in a fridge the same way it does anywhere else. This makes the bottom shelves the best spot to keep raw meat cold, which is vital to keeping it fresh and avoiding harmful bacteria growth. 

Plus, when raw meat is stored on the bottom shelf, you can most easily prevent cross-contamination with ready-to-eat foods like dips, fresh fruit, and prepared sandwiches or salads. That’s because if the chicken package accidentally leaks, it can’t drip over everything in the fridge from the bottom shelf. 

How To Store Raw Meat

A great use for those trendy clear plastic organizational bins is containing raw meat on the bottom shelf. Sure, you can store your veggies in them, but this use is grounded in food safety, not just aesthetics. That way if a package does leak, clean up is a breeze, and you can just toss the container in the dishwasher or sanitize it in the sink.

If you haven’t succumbed to the plastic organizing containers, you can also place packages of raw meat on a plate, or in a casserole dish to help contain any potential leaking, which is especially important when defrosting raw meat. 

Where To Store Everything Else

If the bottom shelf is for meat, then what are the other shelves for? It’s most important to sequester meat away, but generally food safety would call for ready-to-eat foods to be stored on the top shelves. This include deli meats, sandwiches, dips, leftovers, and any other prepared foods, like potato salad.

That leaves the middle for everything else, like dairy products such as yogurt, sour cream, cream cheese, milk, etc. Fruits and vegetables can go in the crisper drawers, while condiments, jams, and pickles can be stored in the door, as well wine and beer, and other drinks, like soda. (If there's not enough room in the door for all your condiments or drinks, the middle shelves are also a good place to put them.)