Cooking For Engineers

[nishikaj]

If you have green tomato's and want to ripe it quickly then place a ripen banana in a zip lock bag along with the green tomato's then the tomato's will ripen quickly.

[Dude111]

Thats quite interesting,thank you for the tip and welcome ashore our site

[Listen_To_Vinyl]

You'd be better off using a paper bag. Moisture given off by the fruit will cause it to rot if it's kept in a plastic bag. Enough of the moisture will escape through the paper to keep that from happening. You can use the banana for speeding up the ripening of other bananas as well.

[tanblue]

I am using the paper bag method as well for making grilled tomatoes. They taste absolutely delicious. I am going to try baked tomatoes with this method next.

To enhance the flavoring, I sometimes add some salt or even lemon.

[DaphneT]

this is interesting. Does this work with other fruits? Normally i keep the banana in fridge if i do not want it to ripe so quickly.

[Dilbert]

some, but not all, fruits naturally produce ethylene - apples, avocados, bananas, melons, peaches, pears and tomatoes - which is a "ripening" agent.

putting those fruits in an 'enclosed' but not 'sealed' atmosphere can speed up the ripening process.

http://www.catalyticgenerators.com/whatisethylene.html
has a general discussion on the topic.

[Dude111]