A New Way to Ripen Fruits

Whenever we buy an unripe avocado and need to ripen it in a hurry, we do what most people do… and place it in a brown paper bag.

Sometimes we put in a banana, which hastens the process – the reason being that fresh fruit produces ethylene gas. By ‘trapping’ the gas within the bag, the theory is that the fruit you are trying to ripen will reabsorb the gas – and therefore ripen more quickly.

However, Belinda from Malaysia (who inspired this recent post about a supplement called lingzhi ) has sent us another informative message about a completely different – and seemingly very effective – method of ripening fruit.

Belinda says

Hi Christine – I have here a great method to ripen avocados and any other types of fruits. This method is used by us Chinese since a long, long time ago (I’m 60 and I learned of this method from my mother and she from her mother and so on).

Just bury them in rice in a covered container. They will ripen between 2 – 4 days depending on the degree of ripeness of the fruits.

I bought 2 avocados that had a few brown specks on the skin but they were still not ripe. The whole fruits ripened beautifully within 2 days after I put them in the rice.

I had tried using the paper bag with a banana inside method on 4 avocados. 2 fruits took a week to ripen and there were still some unripe spots in the fruits. The other 2 fruits only ripened 2 days later and there were also some unripe spots. I had to change the banana 3 times within that period 🙂

Well, that’s an idea we’ve never heard of before and something we’ll definitely be putting into practice when the need next arises! Thanks again, Belinda – we appreciate your taking the time to share your tips and it’s fascinating to learn how certain things are done elsewhere!

If you use this method – or if you give it a try after reading this post – don’t forget to come back and tell us how it worked by leaving your comments below!