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A quick blanching in boiling water works. (That is why we blanch all fruits and
vegetables before preserving.)
2
3
. You can deactivate the enzymes by freezing the fruit, too. Although freezing doesn’t
destroy them, they cannot continue their activities.
. You can also slow the enzymes' action down drastically by cooling the fruit to
refrigerator temperature. You have already personally witnessed the fact that this doesn't
stop the ripening action completely, if you ever found fruit tucked into the back corner
of the refrigerator’s vegetable bin weeks after you placed it there. Cold only retards
enzyme action.
TASTINGS How they discovered fruit ripening
Commercial producers ripen mature fruit with ethylene gas. They discovered the
process in 1924 when growers started using kerosene heaters in California's San
Joaquin Valley orchards to avoid frost damage. They were dumbfounded to discover
that fruit ripened faster in the vicinity of the heaters. Eventually, researchers traced
the accelerated mysterious change to ethylene gas that the heaters gave off.
A ripening fruit produces ethylene gas. The riper it is, the more gas it produces. An
astonishingly tiny amount of this gas will ripen climacteric fruit (0.1 to 1 part per million).
Climacteric fruits continue producing ethylene after they are harvested, and this continues the
ripening process. The way fruit packers ripen fruits artificially is to expose them to ethylene gas
under controlled conditions.
Non-climacteric fruits refuse to ripen further after taken off the vine or tree, no matter how
long they expose them to ethylene gas. They do undergo subtle ripening-like changes but there's no
increase in sugar. They do lose some of their acids and tannins when in storage and seem sweeter
because they have lost some of the sour, bitter or astringent taste.
Ethylene gas is helpful to growers, wholesalers and retailers, but not to consumers. Very few
fruits will achieve the flavor of natural ripening through this artificial method. Two exceptions are
bananas and pears.
These days mature ripe fruit is almost unavailable, except at farmers' markets and farm
stands. Ripe fruit is too soft to withstand the rigors of transportation and handling, and has too short
a shelf life to survive lengthy storage. Picking fully ripened fruit is uneconomical—the chain
between growers and retailers has grown too long. The fruit you see in your supermarket is a
compromise. It is picked while still very firm, what growers call the mature stage, the growing stage
at which a climacteric fruit will ripen even if harvested green. Legally growers can call these mature
fruits "vine-ripened"even when picked virtually inedible green.
Wholesalers and distributors may further ripen the billiard ball-hard mature fruit in their
warehouses before delivering to the retailer almost ripe. At this stage the fruit is still very firm,
something like a ping pong ball. The retailer may continue ripening in their storage area but the fruit
still must remain in tennis ball-firm, perfect and unblemished condition or the consumers will not
buy it. Only firm fruits can withstand the rather rough handling fruits go through before they are in
the display case and most firm fruits are not fully flavored, ripe fruits. It is your job to complete the
ripening process. How do you accomplish that?
Imitating fruit distributors is a good idea. You want to preserve the ethylene gas many
ripening fruits emit to accelerate the process. Keeping the unwashed fruit in a heavy closed paper
bag is the best way. Enclosing a banana helps, if you have one—banana is a generous ethylene
play © erdosh 336
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