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How to Ripen Green Bananas
By
Danelle Ice - Home Ever After |
February 9th, 2009 |
Category:
Kitchen Tips |
5 comments
Many times, the only choices for bananas at your grocery store are bright green, hard bananas that were clearly not ripe yet when they were picked. There is an easy way to fix this! We’ll teach you how to ripen green bananas that takes minimal effort and you don’t have to spend any money on specialized kitchen tools to use this trick. This kitchen tip will also allow you to ripen other produce as well.
When you are buying unripe bananas at the grocery store, ask the cashier at checkout for a full-sized paper grocery bag. Once home, put the green bananas into the paper bag. Close the top of the paper bag and roll it down to keep it from opening back up. Keep rolling the paper bag down until you reach the bananas. The goal here is to make sure that there is as little empty space inside the paper bag as possible. You can put more than one bunch of bananas in the bag at the same time. In fact, this will even speed up the ripening process.
Why it Works
Here’s why this works: bananas (and many other fruits) give off a gas called ethylene gas. Ethylene gas is a plant hormone that causes “growth”. What this means for produce is that any fruits or vegetables exposed to ethylene gas will have accelerated ripening. You can use ethylene gas to your advantage in certain cases, by allowing it to ripen fruits and vegetables that were picked before their prime.
Produce that gives off ethylene gas itself can be enclosed in a container or bag, and essentially trapped in the gas it produces to speed up ripening. Fruits and vegetables that do not produce ethylene gas can also benefit from this method. To ripen them, simply place them in a bag or container with an ethylene gas producing fruit or vegetable, such as bananas, apples, peaches, avocados, pineapples or tomatoes.
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I’ve also heard that you can put your bananas with an apple for a day or so, and that will help ripen them.
Just stumbled this so others will be enlightened!
My question is why do bananas get spots when you take them in the car? Every time we travel we bring them for snacks and if they stay in the car for more than 12 hours they start to get gross? I drive a suburban so I can’t imagine it is the gas… too much room for it to escape….
I use this trick mostly with avocados since I can never find ripe one’s at the store!
Thanks for sharing…
Toni
@Phoebe: Yes, that’s true! Putting ethylene-producing produce with any other piece of fruit or vegetable that produces ethylene (like an apple) also will just cause the process to spped up. Thanks for pointing that out!
Barbi
@Toni (Happy Housewife): Thanks for the Stumble! You know, I’m not sure about the spots; I’ve never really thought about it before. Perhaps one of our readers can shed some light on the subject before I Google it?! lol
Barbi
I now have my very green bananas that have not been ripening after a whole week(!) in a bag, and I have high hopes.
I also wanted to point out to others in case it helps someone that bananas keep very well in the fridge for the other way around, when you don’t want ripe bananas to go off. Yes it is true that the skins go black but inside the bananas keep fresh for a long time…
As for the bananas in the car developing spots, could this be that it is a more enclosed space than the kitchen, meaning that the level of the ethylene gas will be higher, and also it is often quite warm?