Don’t you hate when you’ve got a hankering for a banana but all the ones in your fruit basket are green? Or you want to slice some avocado into your salad but they’re hard as, well, unripened avocados? Here’s a trick my mother taught me some years ago:
Place the bananas or avocados in a brown paper bag with a ripe apple inside. The fruit will emit ethylene gas, a naturally occurring hormone, which speeds up the ripening process. (It also stimulates flowers to open and leaves to turn colors in the autumn.)
Make sure you use a paper bag because plastic ones don’t breathe well and moisture may build up in the bag causing the fruit to rot.
Interestingly, I’ve also heard that you can speed up the ripening process of a mango by doing the same trick only inserting a ripe banana into the bag, rather than an apple. (My hunch is the apple will work just as well.)
This classic ripening tip also works for kiwis, pears, plums, peaches, nectarines, apricots… just about anything. Give it a whirl and you’ll see how great it works.
Comments (12)
Comment
- subscribe /
- give a gift /
- terms of service /
- about /
- contact us /
- write for us /
- ad info /
- subscriber services /
- press /
- privacy policy /
- rss /
© 2012 Mental Floss Inc. All Rights Reserved. Mental Floss is a registered trademark owned by Felix Dennis. mentalfloss.com is a trademark owned by Felix Dennis.
Disclaimer: All submissions made to mental_floss become the property of Mental Floss Inc and may be used without further permission by the submitter and without compensation to the submitter. If you do not agree to these terms, please do not submit anything to mental_floss.
I had a paper bag with green bananas in my kitchen for 2 weeks, it stayed green for about 3 weeks and then suddenly over night they turned almost black. Maybe I should have put some apples in the bag.
posted by AG on 10-21-2008 at 8:09 am
I’ve been told a ripe banana will always work the best for ripening other fruits, as they give off the most ethylene gas
posted by Clotho on 10-21-2008 at 9:04 am
This is why leaving rotten fruit in with fresh fruit causes them to go bad! One rotten apple really DOES spoil the whole bunch!! (my favorite tid-bit from 9th grade biology class!)
..if only the food service workers at my alma mater could have figured that out…
posted by Bri on 10-21-2008 at 9:46 am
If I have green bananas, what are the chances that I’ll have a RIPE apple to stick in a bag with them?
How do I ripen the APPLE?
posted by Rachel on 10-21-2008 at 10:19 am
How long do you have to keep the ripe apple with the avocado? Is it minutes, hours or days?
posted by Antonio on 10-21-2008 at 10:25 am
How long do you have to keep the ripe apple or banana with the unripened fruit? Are we talking minutes, hours or days?
posted by Antonio on 10-21-2008 at 10:27 am
depends how unripe the fruit is. usually a day or two at most.
posted by David K. Israel on 10-21-2008 at 11:18 am
At the end of the growing season, when we get the frost and freeze warnings, we will take in all of the green tomatoes that are left–this same technique will work to ripen them. It will usually take many days–even a week or two–but most of the tomatoes will become usable eventually.
posted by cmk on 10-21-2008 at 2:48 pm
So, using that same logic, if my bananas ripen too fast, they will ripen slower if I separate the bunch?
posted by Orange on 10-21-2008 at 3:58 pm
Both fruits are eating more and more and then it best role of of day to day for our health.
posted by Remi on 11-11-2008 at 3:54 am
Cool tip! Will keep that in mind.
posted by Dawn on 11-15-2008 at 6:49 pm
i like P.O.T.A.T.O.S!
posted by erven on 2-24-2009 at 9:09 pm