Whether you like to pick your tomatoes early, or something happened to your plant before all of your tomatoes could totally ripen, there are times when you need to ripen your green tomatoes indoors.
Here are a few tips on how to ripen green tomatoes:
Whichever storage method you choose, remove vines, twigs, stems or leaves that might touch other tomatoes during the ripening process. This could cause damage on the other tomatoes. You can also gently wash the tomatoes if they are dirty.
Then you can allow to air dry before storing.
Tomatoes will take longer to ripen if the area they are being stored in is cold. In normal household temperatures, tomatoes should take about 2 weeks to ripen. You don’t want the area to be too cold or this could result in tomatoes with no flavor, or they may never ripen at all.
You do not want the area you are trying to ripen your tomatoes to be too humid. This will encourage rotting. But you also don’t want the area to be completely dry either or you may end up with dehydrated tomatoes.
One way that allows your green tomatoes to ripen indoors, is to place your green tomatoes into a paper bag with a ripe apple or banana. Be sure to check daily so they do not get too ripe. Also, if your banana or apple starts to rot before the tomatoes are done, remove it and replace with a new one.
If you have quite a few tomatoes, you can wrap them individually in newspaper and layer them in a cardboard box. Keep box in pantry or somewhere out of direct sunlight. If you want to speed up the ripening process, you can add a ripe banana or apple.
All of these tips are great ways to speed up the process a little, Let me know if you have any other tips by sharing in the comments below!
