Ripening Fruits With A Kraft Paper Bag To Save More Time

Do you know how ripening fruits with a kraft paper bag easily?

When buying some fruits in a grocery store, typically, we will pick the ones which look have already riped and are full of charming fragrance. Many times, due to the excellent quality or the attractive price, we can’t help but buy too much. As a result, the fruits go bad before we finish all of them.

Why A Kraft Paper Can Ripen Fruits?

Before plastic bags came, almost all grocery store owners loved to package the fruits their customers picked with a paper grocery bag; it’s also normal nowadays. But once we didn’t take the fruits out at once while back home, we will see they go sofer and over-ripened on the second day. Especially in the cases like apples, peaches, and bananas.

Some experienced friends prefer to pick the fruits that look close to ripe, and they won’t take them out from the paper bag that the grocery ower gives for packaging. In this way, they can always enjoy the fruit later when they just become ripened enough and reach the best flavor.

Why will the fruits be ripened faster in a paper bag?

First, when we talk about the fruits’ ripeness, we are talking about the best eaten time of them. Ingredients of most fruits will keep transforming after they are picked off the tree. Especially the sugar level improving greater, making the fruit more delicious and fragrance.

These fruits contain a kind of phytohormone called ethylene; it’s typically gas. After the fruits are picked off the tree, they still breathe and exhale gas, like ethylene, and the ethylene boosts their ripe process.

When we put the fruits in the kraft paper bag, it will lock the ethylene exhaled from them, making it in a high concentration in the confined room. That makes the fruits get ripe in a short time. So even in the supermarket, fruits are placed in an open rack for sale but not in a pre-sealed package like steaks; it’s for extending the shelf life.

In The Plastic Bag or Cloth Bag Cases

So what if to put the fruits into a plastic bag or cloth bag? Can it still get a faster-ripening effect?

The answer is positive. But the result may be not satisfactory.

Because to accelerate the ripening of the fruits needs enough oxygen to take part in, and the plastic bag’s air permeability is far away from the paper bag. Packaging the fruits with a plastic bag, they can’t get enough oxygen to produce the ideal amount of ethylene. The ripening speed also slows down. Of course, you can open the plastic bag a little; but it also leads the ethylene to go away.

Besides, during the fruit getting ripe after pick-off, they will also release water except for ethylene. If to store the fruits in a sealed plastic bag, the humidity gets high, and it’s easy to breed bacterium and makes the fruits go bad. The Paper bag has an excellent water absorption capability, it can keep the inner space dry enough.

The cloth bag is like the paper one; it can also accelerate the fruit ripening well. But just like we aforementioned, the fruits will evaporate water, and the cloth bag also absorbs it. Compared with the disposable paper bag, the reusable cloth bag needs to be cleaned after use, or it will leave a terrible smell.

Avoid The Fruits Being Over-ripeness

It’s worth knowing that not all fruit can be ripening faster and get a better flavor by storing them in a paper bag. Fruits like strawberry, orange, cherry, and pineapple won’t get riper after picking off the tree. And mango, apple, banana, kiwi fruit, peach, etc., can be ripening faster with a paper bag storage.

Fruits will ripen faster by storing in a paper bag. In a general way, they will reach the best flavor state in one night. Thus, you need to notice, do not keep storing the fruits which look have already riped enough in a paper bag. Or they will be over-ripeness and go bad.

Suppose you put the ripe enough fruit and the not enough ones together in the same paper bag. In that case, it can theoretically get a better result. But the ones which are taken as “catalysts” may go bad quickly.

Besides, the root of a plant like a sweet potato will also release ethylene after being harvested. But the difference is that to store the sweet potato in a paper bag, the ethylene will slow down its germination speed and extend the storable time.