To provide a refrigerator for preventing the oxidation and discoloration of preserved objects including vegetables while maintaining the freshness, and to provide a preserving method.

The low-temperature preserving refrigerator 1 comprises a refrigerating chamber 3a for preserving preserved objects at a low temperature, and a cooling mechanism 16 for cooling the inside of the refrigerating chamber. It has a reduced pressure chamber 4 having air tightness separately from a storage chamber, and a pressure reducing mechanism 15 for reducing pressure in the reduced pressure chamber. In the reduced pressure chamber, a closeable reduced pressure chamber door 8 is provided separately from the storage chamber and a pressure resistant container 20 is provided to be removable from the reduced pressure chamber. In the state of being stored in the reduced pressure chamber, the pressure resistant container has a check valve 24 for allowing the flow of air from the inside of the container to the outside when pressure in the reduced pressure chamber is reduced and pressure inside the container is higher than pressure outside the container and for preventing the flow of air from the outside to the inside when pressure inside the container is in turn lower than pressure outside the container, and an air opening valve for breaking the pressure reducing condition inside the container to introduce outside air to the inside when air opening operation is performed.