Killer Bananas

Most fruit naturally produces a gas called “ethylene” which can cause other fruit to ripen. It’s an invisible gas, but the more of it there is, the quicker your fruit will ripen. If some fruit starts producing the gas then other fruit will start producing more of it and so it goes on increasing the amount of ethylene gas until the fruit is over-ripe and needs to be thrown away. Certain fruits also produce more gas than others, and some fruits are also more susceptible to ethylene than others.

- Bananas, avocados & apples produce a lot of ethylene and are highly susceptible to the effect of it
- Kiwi fruits don’t produce a lot of ethylene, but they are highly susceptible to the effect of it

We can put this knowledge to good use and actually speed up the ripening process by putting fruit in an enclosed container. This gets around the hard avocado syndrome - you want to make a dish with them but the shops only have un-ripe avocados. The answer is to put them together with some bananas and let nature take its course. About 8 hours on a warm window sill in a paper bag should have the desired effect.

The opposite is of course that we may want to prevent fruit from ripening too quickly. In this case ensure that the area where you store your fruit is well ventilated or keep the fruit separate and this will help the fruit to stay perfectly ripe without starting to go over.

Ethylene will also affect some vegetables and can be responsible for pitting and brown spots on fine beans and lettuces, yellowing of broccoli buds and sprouts, and bitterness in carrots.

Keeping tomatoes and cucumbers together causes the cucumber to rot more quickly.

Supermarkets tend to keep bananas separate from the other fruit for this very reason. You might like to invest in a ‘Banana Tree’ for home use. This device is a way of hanging bananas to allow a good air flow, away from other fruit.