Sometimes it’s just impossible to buy perfectly ripened fruit from the grocery store, no matter how hard you try to pick the perfect pieces.
When it comes to choosing between an unripe banana and an overripe banana, you’ll take the unripe fruit every time.
But going for the lesser of two evils doesn’t add a whole lot of value when you have to wait three days for that green banana to finally start turning even the lightest shade of yellow.
The good news is, you don’t have to wait! There’s a simple trick to ripen fruit much faster—and all you need is one paper bag.
How to ripen fruit quickly
Here’s all you need to do to speed up the ripening process: Take your unripe piece of fruit and stick it inside a brown paper bag. Close the bag up tightly and leave it on the counter to work its magic. In no time, you’ll have perfectly ripened fruit! While this trick isn’t instantaneous, it does work really well on just about any fruit you can think of, including avocado.
How does it work?
There’s really no big secret here. All fruit produces ethylene gas, which is essential to the ripening process. By trapping ethylene gas inside a brown paper bag, it has nowhere else to go except toward the piece of fruit. This is a seriously helpful trick if you have a rock-solid avocado waiting to be used, or a bunch of totally green bananas.
How long should it take?
While speeding up the ripening process can take anywhere from a few hours to a couple of days (depending on the fruit), you’ll probably want to keep checking on the progress every couple of hours or so.
