Bananas, a staple in many of our fruit bowls, can offer a range of flavours depending on their ripeness. This often means that after purchasing a bunch of bananas, you might find yourself waiting for them to reach their prime before you can savour them, reports Manchester Evening News.
Depending on your intended use for the bananas, such as baking, you might even prefer them to be overripe. Consequently, timing your banana consumption to coincide with their peak ripeness can become somewhat of a waiting game. Fortunately, if you’re eager to hasten the ripening process, there are a few tricks you could employ.
A food expert from Good Food suggested two methods to ripen bananas – either by storing them in a paper bag or by warming them in the oven. Warming bananas in the oven can soften the fruit. While this doesn’t necessarily mean the fruit is ripening, it does mimic the process and makes the fruit perfect for baking.
If you’re aiming to ripen your bananas more naturally, placing them in a paper bag could be an effective way to accelerate their ripening process.
A food specialist from Good Food has revealed that bananas emit ethene gas, a natural plant hormone that aids in their ripening by converting starch into sugar. While all fruits do this, bananas produce a significant amount of ethene gas and can therefore also hasten the ripening of other climacteric fruits.
This implies that to speed up the ripening process of bananas, one simply needs to place the fruit in a bag which will contain the ethene gas. Given that bananas release moisture, it is crucial to ensure they are placed in a bag that won’t retain moisture, such as a paper bag.
Good Food suggests that after placing a banana in a paper bag, it could take up to a day or two for it to ripen, but it could be as quick as overnight.
To soften bananas, and to mimic them becoming riper, Good Food’s expert also recommends baking the banana in an oven heated to 180C for approximately 30 or 40 minutes. For this method, they recommend using yellow bananas that are already quite sweet.
As they are baked, the bananas will darken and become very soft, making them ideal for baking purposes.
