How to Ripen All Your Favorite Produce - ASAP

By: Brier Barclay

November 03, 2025

Instructions

No one loves rock-hard avocados on Taco Tuesday — or green bananas in their smoothie. And, while you can’t ripen fruits and vegetables instantly, you can significantly speed up the process to enjoy your favorite produce in hours or days.

Read on to learn how to ripen all your faves: Pineapples, mangoes and more.

How ripening works

Before delving into details, we need to go over the science. While each fruit and veggie can differ slightly, most produce ripens when it’s exposed to an odorless (and harmless) gas called ethylene. It’s naturally released by ripening produce to promote ripening for nearby fruits/veggies. Each ripening banana, for example, releases more and more ethylene as it starts to ripen, helping the rest of the bunch of the bunch ripen, too.

BTW, this is where the expression “one bad apple will spoil the whole bunch” comes from. Thanks to ethylene, that’s literally true.

How to ripen produce using a paper bag

The easiest way to ripen produce is to place it in a paper bag, away from direct sunlight. That’s because the bag traps ethylene gas, speeding up the ripening process. To make it even speedier, try adding a ripe apple or banana to the bag — these are ethylene “super producers” that’ll add even more ethylene gas to the bag.

Make sure to check the bag regularly — every 12 hours or so — to help ensure your fruit doesn’t become overripe.

This method works for ripening:

Avocados
Mangoes
Peaches
Pears
Apples
Bananas
Tomatoes
Pineapples
And most other fruits

How to ripen produce in the microwave

If you need sweeter produce ASAP — or you need to ripen strawberries, which won’t ripen once they’re picked — your microwave is your new best friend. The microwave won’t ripen fruit naturally like the paper bag trick, but it can slightly speed up the process to turn totally underripe fruit into something a bit more edible.

To do it, use a fork to puncture the outer skin of the fruit, then microwave for 5 to 10 seconds at a time until it reaches the desired sweetness. This method takes some trial and error (if it starts to cook, you’ve gone too far!) but it should help subtly boost the ripeness of your fruit.

How to store your produce after ripening

Unless you’re planning to eat those avos ASAP, you’ll want to keep ‘em at peak ripeness as long as possible. The temperature and humidity in your fridge is engineered to slow ripening as much as possible — so storing already-ripe produce in the crisper will stall the ripening process to maintain freshness.

The fridge won’t delay ripening forever, though, so use up ripe refrigerated produce in three to five days.