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One Good Idea

Go Gadget! Try this Trick to Ripen Fruit

Posted July 11, 2009

Ripe, juicy fruit. We adore it  (who doesn’t?). What’s even more important, though, is how much we hate wasting our money on fruit that only looks good, but has no flavor or texture. And let’s face it, hoping to put our hands on a perfectly ripe peach or mango is often a gamble at best — even in the height of summer.

Gadget to the Rescue! We’ve mentioned before how the love of gadgetry runs through our family, and, a few decades ago, our father brought home the first fruit-ripening bowl we ever laid eyes on. His love of Whoozies and Whatsits was relatively indiscriminate, so we were skeptical. Was this a Great Invention of Mankind, or a dud that would end up in the basement pile of Things We Shouldn’t Have Wasted Our Money On?

Well, it worked like a dream. This particular gadget is nothing more than a clear plastic bowl with a domed lid and strategically placed holes in both halves that allow for the proper mix of air, carbon dioxide, and ethylene gas.

The one drawback of this little item is that it’s really not very attractive, and tends to get scratched up and uglier the more you use it. But who cares?

Here’s how it works: Put unripe fruit in the bowl with one ripe fruit, and in no time, usually within 24 hours, you’re rewarded with a perfectly ripe, luscious, and juicy tomato, melon, or avocado.

There’s an added sensory benefit to this bowl, too. Lifting the lid as various fruits are ripening gives you a nose-full of incredible, concentrated fragrance — essence of strawberry or apricot or lemon. It’s a sniffing delight.

As you might suspect, we do tend to use the bowl more in the winter than in the summer, but it’s valuable all year around. Take avocados, for example. We like to buy them at Costco, where they tend to be both cheap and unripe. Pop them into the ripening bowl and we end up with perfect avocados about 12 to 24 hours later. Best of all, because we bought them in a rock-hard condition, there’s never a speck of bruised flesh — so there’s no waste – and they’re absolutely the perfect consistency and flavor throughout.

Using the ripening bowl in combination with our Debbie Meyer Green Bags gives us more control over when we use the fruit we have. If we’re having a party and want perfect guacamole, we can ripen the avocados and tomatoes, and then put them into suspended animation in a Green Bag, knowing they’ll be absolutely perfect when we’re ready to use them. This little bowl-and-bag system also saves us money, since we can buy larger amounts of fruit when the price is right and still have the option of keeping it over a longer period of time.

We’ve never been without a fruit ripening bowl since our father brought home the first one all those years ago. We find this clever invention to be well worth its price, which is usually around $12.  And we like it better than using paper bags, since it saves on natural resources and can also sit out on the counter so we can appreciate the delights that are in store. – Kascha Piotrzkowski, Deputy Whiner

The Whiner wants to know: What tricks do you rely on to keep produce ripe and fresh? What are your favorite fruits of summer? Any recipes you’d be willing to share?

Reader Comments

  1. abo gato

    Wow, a kitchen gadget that I don’t have! I looked them up on the Internet and they are going for 12.99 at one site I found. I wonder if a place like Tuesday Morning might have them?

    DW, since you are familiar with this, do you think it would work for pears which are actually nowhere near ripe yet, but are falling off my pear tree? They usually are ripe in late August but with our drought they are falling now. I hate to let them rot on the ground and the deer are eating them, but we want to be the ones to eat them!

    These are south Texas hard pears, they are never soft, but are more similar in taste and texture to the asian pears you can buy at the store, so I don’t expect for them to become soft, just ripe and edible.

  2. Deputy Whiner

    Hi Abo Gato–

    I don’t know whether Tuesday Morning might have the ripening bowls, but kitchen stores might. Then again, since it is one of those contraptions looked at as dubious by many, online might be the only way to go.

    Sorry to hear your drought continues. I only wish we could send you some of the excess rainfall we’ve had here in the northeast.

    Also hard to say whether the bowl would ripen your pears, although it does work on regular pears, so I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. But since your pears are falling due to drought, do you think that they might not have enough moisture to ripen well? (The bowl is great, but doesn’t work miracles — faulty fruit will ripen but still be mealy or whatever else its destiny demands.)

    Maybe you should try ripening a few in a paper bag and see how that goes, if that’s the main reason you’re thinking about getting the ripening bowl? Although I have to say I use mine constantly, for everything, it’s a great way to make supermarket fruit taste better.

    Good luck with those pears, and we hope that your ankle is improving, too.

  3. Rose

    Why spend money on a gadget. Bananas release ethylene gas as a normal by-product of their own ripening process. Keeping other fruit in a bowl with bananas helps them to ripen, or better still place your unripe tropical fruit together with a ripening banana in a brown paper bag, and, hey presto, a lovely ripened mango, or whatever!