PINEAPPLES are often the stars of tropical fruit selections, but knowing when they’re ripe can be a prickly issue.
In the age of viral hacks and kitchen shortcuts, one popular tip suggests to store the pineapple upside down so that the “juices pool at the top” to help it ripen faster.
But before you start making your pineapples do head- or handstands, ask yourself this: is it true that a pineapple can really ripen after it’s been picked, or is this just another fruity fallacy?
Verdict:
FALSE
You heard it folks, contrary to whatever you’ve been told, pineapples cannot be ripened on your counter top.
In fact, you should more or less eat or cook it as soon as you bring it home as if you wait any longer, it will only start to ferment and go off.
You see, there are two types of fruits: climacteric fruits and non-climacteric fruits.
Climacteric fruits are fruits that as they grow on their parent tree or plant accumulate all the basic ingredients they need to ripen later on.
Such as starch to convert into sweet sugars as well as the various precursors to ripening hormones such as ethylene.
Once the seeds within the fruit are mature and the fruit is ready to ripen, it starts brewing those ripening hormones that catalyse it to eventually ripen.
Since the fruit already has all that it needs when this happens, it will ripen by itself regardless of whether or not it’s still connected to its parent.
Fruits that belong to this group include apples, mangoes, bananas and even tomatoes. These are all fruits that will happily ripen on your countertop (so long as they are mature that is).
Non-climacteric fruits, such as oranges, grapes, strawberries and yes, pineapples, use a different strategy to ripen.
These fruits slowly pull fully-brewed ripening hormones, sugars and aroma compounds from other parts of their parent plant as they grow.
The more time the fruit has to pull all this stuff into itself, the riper it gets. That means if the fruit falls from the plant or is picked, the ripening process stops and it can’t get any more ripe.
These fruits simply will not ripen after you buy them, no matter how many hacks you try.
So what should you do to make sure your pineapple is as sweet and ripe as you want them to be?
Well, the trick is to just buy one that is as ripe as possible.
Look for a sweet smelling pineapple with a decent amount of yellow on it – about 255 or so.
Depending on the variety, the yellow will either spread up from the bottom or be in between the ‘diamonds’ on the pineapple.
If the fruit is really yellow, has a really strong smell or its crown is dry or wilted, then it’s most likely starting to go off.
References:
1. journals.ashs.org/hortsci/view/journals/hortsci/20/1/article-p51.xml
2. www.sciencedirect.com/topics/food-science/pineapple
