Avocado and Cornstarch

[NeroW]

My sous chef insists that if you put unripe avocado in a plastic baggie with cornstarch surrounding it, the avocado will ripen more quickly.

Is this true, or what? Is there something in the cornstarch that could possibly ripen the avocado more quickly?

I keep telling him that perhaps if he pulled all the avocado out of the 41-degree walk-in, that might solve the problem.

[fifi]

I can't imagine cornstarch having anything to do with it. If you put it in a bag with an apple, things might accelerate. The apple gives off ethylene gas which goes to ripening.

[andiesenji]

A banana peel is the quickest way of ripening an avocado or a dozen or more, in a brown paper bag.

Avocados do not ripen until after they have been picked or fallen off the tree. My friends, with whom I spend the Christmas holidays every year in Yorba Linda, have an avocado tree. I pick them early one morning, rock hard, put them in a bag with a banana peel and by the following afternoon they are ready to eat. Otherwise, just sitting on the counter, they will take a week to ripen.

[Suzanne F]

Does the ethylene gas have any other effect, similar to making carrots taste bitter?

[fifi]

Ethylene gas makes things "ripen". As andie says, bananas are another excellent source. If the ripening process makes carrots bitter, then I would have to say yes. I just never heard of it making carrots bitter.

BTW... Those green bags and green discs for putting into the produce drawer in the fridge... They have a catalyst that sucks up ethylene. That is how they work.

[ladyyoung98]

actually ive never put a banana peel in the brown bag to ripen the avacado but i have used a brown bag and put it in the window sill and they have usually ripened within three or four days....maybe i ought to add the banana peel.....lol

Edited October 14, 2004 by ladyyoung98 (log)

[Stone]

Isn't ethylene gas the reason that one rotten apple really does spoil the whole bunch? (That and peer pressure, of course.)

[FistFullaRoux]

Isn't ethylene gas the reason that one rotten apple really does spoil the whole bunch?  (That and peer pressure, of course.)

←

How astute.... Never thought of that....

[Toliver]

Does the ethylene gas have any other effect, similar to making carrots taste bitter?

←

Some carrots just grow bitter and woody, too, and the gas has nothing to do with that. It's their nature, though this is changing, even as we speak, in the carrot growing industry.