TikTok's Latest Hack Claims You Can Ripen Peaches Faster Than Usual

There's truly nothing like a fresh, juicy peach on a hot summer day. The sweet and filling snack is a staple in many people's diets, but like any other fruit, there is a certain skill to picking a good one and allowing it to develop to its best flavor when you do.

Thankfully, as it does with many of life's most pressing questions, TikTok has answers to the questions of when a peach is ripe enough, and how to get your fruit to that point more quickly than just leaving it out for days and hoping for the best.

With that being said, what exactly is the science behind the latest TikTok hack that shows viewers how to ripen peaches quicker than usual? Here's a breakdown of what it all means.

The viral hack for peach ripening began with TikTok user @brunchwithbabs, who goes by either Babs or Nonna amongst her fans. In her video on the subject, which has garnered almost 200,000 views since being posted, the food aficionado shared her personal trick for getting the juiciest, ripest peach possible, and it actually involved a little bit of help from another fruit.

According to Babs, to get the juiciest peach you could possibly imagine, one must employ the aid of a banana. You might ask yourself, why a banana? Well, per the user's directions, taking an unripe peach, placing it in a brown paper bag alongside a banana, and leaving it on a sunny windowsill for 24 hours will make it come out as ripe as could be.

The process differs slightly between various kinds of peaches, so it's important to be aware of the kind you bought and its unique tendencies. For example, in yellow peaches, one should look out for when the rind develops a warm yellow color and no longer shows much green color near its stem. In the case of white peaches, the more creamy colored it is, the riper it has become.

The science behind why this works so well is quite simple. Compared to other fruits, bananas produce a much higher level of ethylene gas, which is the main chemical required for fruits to mature. By trapping it in the bag next to the peach and supercharging it with sunlight, the ripening process that would normally take days in a room-temperature bowl in the kitchen can be done in just about 24 hours.

If you don't have bananas on hand, however, apples, pears, and apricots could work as substitutes since they too produce more ethylene gas than pears.

Conversely, if you want your peaches not to ripen as quickly so that they could have a longer shelf life, all you need to do is place them in a bowl in the refrigerator. The cold temperature in there will greatly slow down the ethylene gas output of the fruits and make them last longer before eventually becoming fully ripened.