Can You Ripen Bananas In The Oven?

When buying bananas at the store, there's often a 50/50 chance that we end up eating them when they're perfectly yellow and ripe or leaving them for too long, resulting in overripe, black bananas that can be great for baking. According to Best Food Facts, it takes an average of four or five days for bananas to ripen when placed in a room-temperature setting. So for those of you who leave your bananas to earn overripe status for baking, kudos to you for all of that patience. For the other group, sometimes we don't have that amount of time. Because of this, we've looked at all of the ways to try to speed up the naturally occurring ripening process.

The most common hack to speed up fruit — including bananas — to ripen? Storing them with an apple will ripen fruit faster. Still, you might not have that kind of time if you want an ultra-ripe banana that same day for baking. There's been talk that the oven could be used as a helpful tool in this problem. But does it actually work? Can you ripen bananas in the oven?

Yes – if you have a few hours

One morning you might feel inspired to bake a homemade banana bread recipe, or maybe muffins or pancakes are more your style. But shoot — there are no overripe bananas to be found. But there you look on your counter to find a bunch of half-ripe bananas. How could you ripen them fast enough to make banana bread that same day? You actually can pop them in the oven if you have some patience and time. According to All Recipes, simply preheat your oven to 300 degrees F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Then, place bananas with the peels still on them in the oven and bake for around 20 to 30 minutes. Check them out every 10 to 15 minutes to see how soft they are. A good way to know when they're ready and ultra-ripe is that the peel will turn black and the banana will be mushy, which is the consistency needed for baking!

According to Culinary Hill, you can also ripen bananas in the microwave. This method won't yield as good of results though and will only make your bananas soft and mushy instead of ultra-ripe and sweet. Try these tricks at home the next time you're in a banana bread pinch.