Can You Ripen Fruit After Cutting It?
Many fruits do not continue ripening once they are cut. The main reason for this is that picking, cutting, and slicing all damage the fruit’s cells, making it much harder for the fruit to continue ripening. Horticulturists have observed that fruits do try to continue ripening, but they are also more prone to rotting more quickly as they do so.
The biggest misconception that people have about all fruits, especially the ones that are small and hand-sized, is that all these fruits will ripen in a bag. This is not the case.
For example, if a pineapple was picked before it was ripe, then you have to eat the pineapple at that point in the fruit’s development. Putting the pineapple in a bag won’t do anything. If this is true, why do some fruits taste sweeter after being bagged for a few days? The sweetness is not something that bagging the fruit will improve. However, the bagging can make the fruit release more juices, which is something that you might appreciate if you like extra juicy fruits as dessert.
But as for its ripeness, it’s going to rot in an unripe stage. This may come as a surprise to people who like the bagging method, but at least you know now that you’re not tasting ripened fruit but rather fruit that is already breaking down.
What Kind of Fruits Can Be Ripened After Cut and What Cannot?
There are two kinds of fruits – climacteric fruits and non-climacteric fruits. It has been observed that climacteric fruits tend to continue ripening after being cut off from the mother plant because they naturally produce ethylene, which is important for ripening fruits.
Some common examples of climacteric fruits include tomatoes, pears, mangoes, avocadoes, apples, peaches, and melons. The ethylene emitted by these fruits can also improve the taste and ripened state of other fruits around them. That’s why semi-ripe fruits are always kept away from the very ripe ones because just one very ripe fruit can cause an entire basket of unripe fruits to ripen suddenly. If you want to speed up how climacteric fruits ripen, get a ripening bowl, or use a slightly open paper bag. Unfortunately, using plastic bags won’t work; it has to be a paper bag.
Then we have the stubborn fruits – these are fruits that do not produce sufficient ethylene so that they may ripen away from the mother plant. Once picked, these fruits will stubbornly stay unripe no matter how you bag them. Of course, being in an unripe state doesn’t mean that the fruits will not rot. Like we said earlier, they will continue to break down in their unripe state. Some examples of these stubborn, non-climacteric fruits are strawberries, limes, lemons, grapes, grapefruit, watermelons, blueberries, and raspberries.
