Fresh fruit is juicy and delicious! It’s also often slippery, ornery, and filled with seeds. This article compiles 16 of the most ingenious fruit hacks that help you bend stubborn fruits to your will!
1. Ripen Fruit Faster
Drop unripe fruit (green bananas, crunchy peaches, rock-solid plums) into a paper bag and fold down the top. Ethylene gas emitted by the fruit will be trapped inside the paper and speed up the ripening process.
2. Ripen Fruit Even Faster
Bananas emit more ethylene gas than other fruits and all fruits emit more gas the riper they are. Want to eat that pear for breakfast but afraid you’ll break a tooth? No problem! Just toss it in a bag with a ripe ‘naner’. You’ll have pear juice dripping down your chin in no time!
3. Extend The Life Of Your Bananas
Cover the stem end of your bunch of bananas with plastic wrap. Each time you go to remove a banana, just unwrap the plastic and replace it. This will keep your fruit from browning for an additional three to five days.
4. Extend It Even Further
Separate your bunch and wrap each individual banana with its own piece of plastic wrap to maximize ripening time without having to freeze or otherwise alter the flavor of your precious ‘naners.’
5. Peeling Stubborn Bananas
Slightly-green banana got you twisting, wrestling, and otherwise mangling the stem-end of your fruit? Try peeling it from the bottom up instead. The skin there usually isn’t as thick and is much easier to break into.
6. Peeling Stubborn Citrus Fruits
Sometimes the rind comes right off and it’s like unwrapping a juicy, delicious, citrusy present. Other times it chips away in an endless pile of tiny, frustrating bits of peel. If you’re like most of us and prefer option number one, roll your orange around on a hard surface for thirty seconds or so to soften up its skin before digging in. Works like a charm!
7. More Juice From Citrus Fruits
Roll limes, lemons, oranges, grapefruits, etc on a hard surface for a minute or two before squeezing the juice out. Not only will you get more juice this way, but the fruit will also be easier to squeeze.
8. Even More Juice From Citrus Fruits
Insert the tines of a fork into the juicy flesh before squeezing. This will help to break up the fruit, releasing even more juice with less work from you!
9. Remove Seeds And Pulp From Juice
Lay a piece of cheesecloth into the bowl or glass with the corners draped over the sides of the container, insert juice, then slowly lift out the cloth. The liquid will drain through the cheesecloth while seeds and pulp will be trapped for removal. (If you don’t have cheesecloth, this also works really well with a pair of clean stockings or nylons!)
10. Easy Coring For Strawberries
Use a straw to remove the white, flavorless cores from your strawberries. Press the straw into the bottom of the strawberry, straight up through the middle, and out the top. When the straw breaks through the stem-end of the berry, it should take the core with it every time.
11. Easy Pitting For Small Fruit
Position cherries, grapes, or other small fruits right-side-up on top of an empty bottle, poke straight through the fruit with a straw, watch the pit or seeds fall into the bottle, repeat.
12. Easy Pitting For Large Fruit
Cut plums, peaches, and nectarines in half length-wise. Grip the two halves and twist in opposite directions then use your thumbnail or the tip of a butter knife to pop the pit.
13. Keep Cut Fruit From Browning (the sour way)
Fill a small spray bottle with lemon juice and spritz the cut sides of apples, avocados, etc. This will prevent the oxidation that turns fruit flesh into a less-than-appetizing shade of brown.
14. Keep Cut Fruit From Browning (the sweet way)
Use a 1:2 ratio of honey and water for the same effect minus the sour flavor of the lemon.
15. Instantly Chill The Wine Without Diluting It
Slide a few grapes onto a toothpick and put them in the freezer. Later, you can use this as a pretty garnish that will chill down your wine without diluting it.
16. Clean Fruit Without Soap
A mixture of baking soda and water (just enough to form a paste) works wonders to remove dirt and pesticides from the outside of the fruit.
Let’s try to Use these genius fruit hacks right away!