"Ripen at home" Peaches/Nectarines

[tenex]

Once again the shops are full of these things.
Anyone got any idea if it is actually possible?

Ta in advance.

[Simpo Two]

Interesting. What they do is pick them unripe, put them in cold storage to stop the natural processes so they can ship them round the world, then sell the resultant inedible cricket balls in supermarkets.

Ripening is part of the senescence (dying) process. It takes a gas called ethene, notably given off by ripening bananas but I think common to all ripening fruits. Sugars are created and cell walls start to break down making the fruit softer and sweeter. As a lapsed plant physiologist, what bothers me is that there's a point before which a severed fruit is incapable of ripening properly. And so your unripe plum evolves into a unripened shrivelled monkey bk.

So it's really just a sop to logistics expediency.

[Shaolin]

Last ones we got went from billiard ball to blotchy brown squishy thing in a day or so. There is a narrow window of opportunity when the texture is like cotton wool and it tastes faintly of peach essence held 50 feet away.

Bleddy horrible things.

[tenex]

Glad it's not just me then. I agree with both of you.

They are just another marketing con.

[mattley]

Summary here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6wKLx2qqiM

relevant bit about 5 mins in.

[otolith]

We have some "ripe and ready to eat" nectarines which are hard, sour and starting to develop soft rot. As above, picked unripe and artificially ripened, like sticking green tomatoes in a drawer with a banana - which works, but they're never as nice as freshly ripened ones and you'd be better off making them into chutney.

[Mobile Chicane]

By contrast, a tree-ripened peach has to be one of the nicest fruits there is.

Friends have a house in Burgundy with peach trees in the garden. I have to restrict consumption to no more than 10 a day else I get the sts.

[Simpo Two]

Mobile Chicane said:

By contrast, a tree-ripened peach has to be one of the nicest fruits there is.

It can be done; as a small boy in about 1970 you could get (what seemed like) much larger peaches from market stalls that were so ripe you couldn't help getting juice all over yourself. Delicious. And if they coudl do that in 1970, why can't they do it in 2011 what with the digital internet and all that?

[otolith]

That's the joy of growing your own soft fruit.

[thetapeworm]

I bought some ripen at home bananas from Waitrose - after a week they were still green so I introduced them to a ripe example to try and tempt them to turn yellow. Two weeks later they were still green and they went in the bin, I suspect they are in a landfill somewhere now and will be discovered in 4000 years... still green.

[5potTurbo]

Stick a banana in the fruit bowl with them - speeds up the process

[thetapeworm]

5potTurbo said:

Stick a banana in the fruit bowl with them - speeds up the process

I tried that, the ripe one turned black and got thrown out while the others stayed rock hard and green. The whole banana thing is very interesting though, I seem to recall something on TV about it last year.

[obob]

Simpo Two said:

Mobile Chicane said:

By contrast, a tree-ripened peach has to be one of the nicest fruits there is.

It can be done; as a small boy in about 1970 you could get (what seemed like) much larger peaches from market stalls that were so ripe you couldn't help getting juice all over yourself. Delicious. And if they coudl do that in 1970, why can't they do it in 2011 what with the digital internet and all that?

You still can, just not from supermarkets. All the greengrocers or market stalls I buy from only have ripe fruit.