How to store chocolate at home: is it possible in the freezer, why not in the refrigerator, how long can it last, at what temperature, and expiration date

Home storage conditions

Failure to follow the rules for storing chocolate can lead to the product spoiling, and its color, smell and taste changing for the worse. To prevent this from happening, it is enough to provide the sweetness with suitable conditions:

The dessert should not be exposed to direct sunlight or heating devices, otherwise it will melt and change color.
Do not store weight chocolate in film or a plastic bag. Wrap it in paper or foil.
Do not store treats at air humidity above 75%; the optimal range is between 60 and 65%.
Sweetness can absorb extraneous odors; place it away from strong-smelling foods, for example, put it on a shelf with dishes. It is also advisable to keep it in an airtight container.
Chocolate does not like low and high temperatures; it will not change its properties and will not develop a coating at 16-20 °C.

Important!

The ideal storage location is the far corner of the kitchen cabinet.

How to store chocolates

It is recommended to store chocolate candies under the following conditions:

The optimal air temperature is no higher than +18C, otherwise the confectionery products will begin to melt quickly. Under such conditions, bars or candies can be kept on the shelf of a kitchen cabinet - their taste will not deteriorate.
If the room temperature is too high, the sweets should be placed on the refrigerator shelf.
The air humidity level should be less than 75%, otherwise the chocolate products will become covered with mold.

Chocolate is a favorite treat for millions of adults and children. The luxurious taste and aroma of the confectionery product can be preserved for more than 12 months if storage rules are followed. Fresh chocolate will be an excellent dessert for your everyday or holiday table.

Rating

How long can it be stored?

Shelf life depends on the type of chocolate, since its varieties contain different amounts of fat. The fewer there are, the longer the delicacy remains edible.

Maximum shelf life by variety:

tiled – up to a year;
dessert – 10 months;
with fillings and additives – 3 months;
loose chocolate – 2 months;
white (it contains a lot of cocoa butter) – 30 days;
handmade, with natural additives, such as fruits and nuts – 2 weeks.

When purchasing, carefully examine the packaging to find the production date of the product, or check with the seller. This will allow you to accurately calculate until what time chocolate can be used for food.

Why does chocolate turn gray?

A distinction is made between sugar bloom and fat bloom in chocolate bars. Droplets of water cover the surface of the tile after it has been transferred from cold to warm. The water vapor condensate serves as a solvent for the sugar contained in the sweet. After the bar dries, the crystals remain as white spots on the chocolate surface.

How to understand that the expiration date has expired?

Information on the product label will help you understand that chocolate is expired . A spoiled treat can be recognized by the following signs:

sour, rancid, astringent taste;
stale, stale smell;
too weak cocoa aroma.

Attention!

Chocolate moths pose a serious health hazard. Before eating dessert, break the bar. If small grains of feces, larvae or “tunnels” are visible, do not eat the product.

What factors influence the safety of chocolate?

Storage of any product must be carried out under certain conditions. The same goes for chocolate. To keep it at home for a long time, you need to provide the required conditions.

The shelf life of such products is influenced by:

packaging or wrapping;
environment;
temperature;
product components.

If storage in general is violated, or one of the factors affecting the success of such an enterprise is not provided, fresh chocolate will deteriorate and become unfit for consumption. To prevent this, you need to understand how long it takes for the quality of a stored sweet dessert to deteriorate.

Can the product be kept at low temperatures?

In a refrigerator

On hot days, the temperature in the house rises, and some people decide to place the chocolate in the refrigerator to prevent it from melting and losing its shape.

You can often hear that chocolate cannot be stored in the refrigerator, and it would seem that this is why: other products are placed in it, the smell of which can be collected by the delicacy, and the temperature in the refrigerator is kept low and it is quite humid there.

However, through repeated checks it has been proven that such a dessert can be kept in the refrigerator; it is enough to protect it from an unfavorable environment by wrapping it in several sheets of paper or foil.

In the freezer

In the freezer, chocolate without fillings and additives is stored for quite a long time and does not lose its quality after defrosting. Low temperature:

extends the shelf life of the product;
keeps it fresh.

Can chocolate be stored in the refrigerator?

Chocolate absolutely does not tolerate cold - a common myth. The product is not afraid of low temperatures. Sufferes more from changes. After aging in the refrigerator, it should be eaten within 2-3 days. Otherwise, after being placed in heat, condensation will appear and the oxidation process will begin. Gradually the tiles will become covered with a whitish coating.

A common question is whether it is possible to store various chocolates in the refrigerator. In fact, a lot depends on the filling. More often than not, she will calmly survive the drop in temperature. But the glaze is also susceptible to the formation of a white coating. If sweets are intended for gifts, it is better to store them in another place.

By the way, gray plaque can appear under normal storage conditions. Over time, cocoa butter crystals grow. More often this happens after the expiration date.

Do you know how to choose chocolate?

Not really

The shelf life of dark chocolate and popular bars is 1 year, 10-12 months for milk chocolate. The ideal shelf life of white tiles is 31 days. But manufacturers are cunning and add preservatives. Chocolate candies can be stored for 2-4 months.

What is the best way to keep the product at home?

At room temperature

A suitable place to place chocolate would be a kitchen cabinet, for example, with clean dishes. At the same time, it is important that it is located away from heating devices and is not exposed to direct sunlight.

Advice

A bar in a sealed package does not need additional preparation before storage, but opened or weighed chocolate must be wrapped in paper.

In a refrigerator

When storing chocolate in the refrigerator, adhere to the following rules:

Wrap the tile in several layers of foil or paper to limit the entry of cold and create an optimal temperature of 16 ° C.
Place the chocolate bar on the shelf of the refrigerator door, preferably in a lockable compartment. This will protect the treat from foreign odors.
Make sure that moisture does not penetrate under the layer of material in which the chocolate is wrapped. It is good if the product is in a closed, sealed package.

Can it be frozen

At sub-zero temperatures, sweets are perfectly stored as long as they are not exposed to heat. When thawed, the surface becomes damp and deterioration accelerates. But it is freezing that confectioners practice. This product retains its properties for up to two years. Ingredients for icing and chocolate baking are at hand at any time.

Instructions for proper freezing:

Place the pieces on food foil and seal tightly.
Place in a bag.
Place in the freezer.

When using for icing or dough, no need to defrost. It is allowed to immediately place in a water bath and heat slowly. Sometimes grated shavings are stored. In this case, the chocolates are frozen, quickly crushed, poured into a container, and returned to the freezer. The main thing is not to wrinkle, to maintain looseness. Then it’s easy to take the right amount and quickly sprinkle on the dessert.

Signs of expired chocolate

If the chocolate was stored incorrectly or its expiration date has passed, you can identify the spoiled product by external and taste characteristics.

Failure to comply with the temperature regime causes the appearance of white fat or sugar deposits. But such a change in appearance is not a reason to refuse the treat. Plaque spoils the presentation, but does not affect the properties of the delicacy, i.e. the dessert remains edible.

Checking the quality of chocolate

If you are not sure of the quality of the purchased dessert, you can evaluate it according to several criteria. You don't need to be an expert to do this. It is necessary that the tiles be at room temperature.

If the chocolate is real, it will always crunch when broken.
At the break, a real chocolate dessert should be matte, without shine. There should be no treats or bubbles inside.
Natural chocolate, as everyone knows, melts in your mouth.
If chocolate does not melt well and resembles plasticine, it means that fats were used in its production, which should not be in a real dessert according to technology.

We can ultimately say that in an airtight wrapper and under proper conditions, a chocolate bar will retain its taste for a long time. However, you cannot neglect the advice if you need to save several chocolate bars, for example, for a children's party or as a gift. And, of course, the fresher the dessert is and the faster it is consumed, the tastier it will be.

Signs of a good product

The right chocolate bar makes a characteristic crunch when broken. It should not shine at the break. Shininess is a sign of excess fat presence. The break should be matte. If the chocolate is not porous, then there should be no bubbles in the thickness.

The broken piece of sweetness should quickly melt on the tongue. There is not a single person in the world who would not have tasted plasticine in childhood. So, if the taste of a cocoa treat is similar to plasticine, this means that it contains additives of extraneous fat.

To extend the shelf life of chocolate, manufacturers add E-200. This is sorbic acid. It is safe for human health. This preservative is widely used in the food industry.

Despite the health safety of preservatives in chocolate, it is worth choosing a bar with a shelf life of less than six months. This is a guarantee that it does not contain preservatives - that is, it is a priori safe for people prone to allergies.

Adviсe

As usual, people buy chocolate for children. In this regard, when purchasing, you need to choose the highest quality products. Here are the recommendations to follow when purchasing such products:

Always check the packaging. It should contain the following information - name of the manufacturer, date of manufacture, what the product consists of, expiration date.
Check the tightness of the wrapper. It should be neat, without damage. Air should not penetrate through it.
If you have chocolate and you don’t know how high quality it is, then you need to evaluate it yourself. Bring it home, put it in the closet. After a couple of hours, remove the product from the wrapper and try to break it. At the same time, high-quality chocolate will become crunchy. Its fracture should be matte, without shine or air bubbles.
Next, you need to taste the chocolate. If the product is natural, it will quickly melt in your mouth. If this does not happen, it means that some fats were used in the production of this product that should not have been present.
Having carried out such diagnostics and convinced of the high quality of the chocolate product, you can offer it to children for consumption.

Having studied all the features of chocolate and the rules for storing it, you can now buy your favorite dessert for future use and store it for a long time. If guests suddenly arrive, you will not need to urgently run to the store to buy dessert for tea. It will be enough to take a few steps to the refrigerator and remove from it the chocolate bars that have been stored there for several months. However, it is still better to eat this product fresh, when it has not lost any of its beneficial qualities.

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How do you know if chocolate has gone bad or not?

After opening the package, inspect the chocolate bar. Its surface should be a uniform brown color. If the chocolate is covered with a white coating, it means it was stored incorrectly. Plaque indicates sugar or fat bloom.

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Hazardous factors

This delicious delicacy is made from the ripened fruits of the cocoa tree, which grows in America, Australia and Indonesia. The process technology is quite simple: the grains are fried and cocoa butter, powdered sugar, a thickener and natural additives are added, depending on the type of confectionery product.

Since the basis of chocolate is cocoa and sugar, these are the ingredients that are most exposed to external factors. If the storage conditions of chocolate are incorrect, its taste and appearance change. All this is influenced by the following factors.

Low or high temperature At temperatures above 30 degrees, the product melts, as a result of which it loses its shape. At low temperatures, a white coating forms on the surface of the tile - these are sugar crystals. In the latter case, you can eat chocolate, but you are unlikely to dare to offer such a treat to guests.
Water If you store chocolate in a humid environment, mold will form on it. Consumption of such a product may lead to poisoning.
Sun rays Molten chocolate loses its shape, and when exposed to the sun for a long time, it loses its taste.
Oxygen The shelf life of chocolate directly depends on the packaging. The fact is that cocoa butter tends to oxidize when directly interacting with oxygen. This affects the taste of the product: it becomes bitter. That is why manufacturers use foil as packaging, which not only reflects the sun's rays, but also prevents the penetration of oxygen.

How to choose

When choosing a sweet treat, you should remember that the retailer places the product on the shelves in such a way that the expired product is closest to the buyer. Therefore, it is better to take candies from the farthest rows, in the depths of the rack. Getting there can be difficult, and that's what enterprising sellers are counting on.

Another important feature when choosing confectionery products: the absence of a sticker pasted over the factory data about the product. Often unscrupulous sellers hide the real date of manufacture in this way.

Sweets that are sold by weight are often past their expiration date. Therefore, it is better to purchase a product in a closed manufacturer’s packaging, which contains all the data about the product.

Discounts and promotions that supermarkets often hold are nothing more than a way to get rid of goods that have expired or are about to expire. Such products are no longer suitable for subsequent storage - this should be understood from the very beginning.

When buying chocolates (if they are in transparent packaging), pay attention to their appearance. There should be no dents or sagging on the surface of the product - it should be smooth and shiny.
The filling of a high-quality chocolate candy is homogeneous, without sugar crystals or other inclusions.
The aroma of sweets should be pleasant, fresh, without any extraneous shades.
If there is a white coating on the surface of the candy, this indicates violations during the storage of the product.
The best situation is with products in a closed manufacturer's box. On it you can read the release date of the product and its shelf life, which is usually 9 - 12 months.

Main life hack

In order not to think about how to store chocolate and consume only fresh confectionery products, it is recommended to buy sweets from suppliers who work with manufacturers. Such organizations often provide a pre-booking service. Thanks to this, you can order goods a week, a month or more in advance.

After completing the application, the supplier makes a request to the factory that produces the chocolate. The latter draws up a plan according to which the products are manufactured, i.e. the dessert will be produced a couple of days in advance or on the day the goods need to be delivered.