Where and how to ripen peppers at home: tips for storing vegetables and speeding up their ripening

Is it possible to remove unripe bell peppers?

Peppers at the period of technical ripeness have not yet acquired the color corresponding to them, but are quite suitable for consumption. Can such fruits ripen? Yes, if you keep them in a warm place. If you add other ripe vegetables along with green peppers, ripening will occur faster.

Why film

Unripe vegetables are removed from the beds when they face long transportation or are expected to freeze. During transportation and being on store shelves, peppers reach biological ripeness. If you pick and transport them when ripe, the fruits will quickly begin to deteriorate.

In summer cottages, vegetables are harvested before they are fully ripe so that new ovaries are formed. This increases the amount of harvest from each bush.

Burning sensation in the mouth and tongue - causes

Local factors:

1. Decreased saliva secretion. The mucous membrane becomes dry, lips and tongue crack. Food and liquid irritate the damaged areas, and they sting quite severely.
2. Fungal candidiasis. Popularly known as thrush. Fungi, during their rapid proliferation (which happens when the immune system is weakened), provoke a burning sensation in the oral mucosa and painful sensations.
3. Hard dental deposits. The formation of tartar is accompanied by the simultaneous delamination of old layers. The separated particles affect the mucous membrane, causing an unpleasant reaction.
4. Allergy. A burning sensation in the mouth is nothing new for those with intolerance to certain foods, medications, and even denture materials.
5. Leukoplakia. Excessive keratinization on any part of the epithelium usually does not provoke tingling sensations, but this disease cannot be excluded from the list of possible persons involved.
6. Diseases of the tongue. Desquamative glossitis, or “hairy” tongue, is a common cause of persistent burning sensation in the mouth. The papillae become very sensitive.
7. Herpetic infection. The blisters, which quickly transform into erosions, cause severe itching and unbearable burning both in the normal state and when eating.
8. Grinding of teeth. Unconscious movements of the teeth during sleep, called bruxism, automatically affects the tongue with the appearance of microtraumas on it, and, accordingly, a burning sensation.
9. Lichen planus. Erosive damage to the mucous membrane, white ulcers haunt the patient during an exacerbation, causing severe discomfort.

General factors:

• Unbalanced diet
• Blood diseases
• Hormonal disbalance
• Stomach pathologies
• Nervous disorders
• Avitaminosis
• Insulin-dependent diabetes
• Bulimia

In these conditions, a burning taste in the mouth may appear and disappear, as it is a concomitant symptom.

How to store unripe peppers

The task of any vegetable grower is to preserve the harvest for a long time. Bell peppers in technical ripeness have the same beneficial qualities as in biological ones, while in a cool place the shelf life increases to 2 months.

Attention! Only whole fruits with an intact surface are subject to long-term storage. Therefore, vegetables are picked along with the stalk.

Terms and conditions of storage

Intact fruits at the stage of technical maturity are kept in rooms at a temperature of 0...+3°C and a humidity of about 80% for 60–90 days.

In a cellar or basement at low temperatures, peppers do not lose their presentation for 70–90 days.

In freezers, vegetables remain fresh for 5-6 months.

Where is the best place to store

The conditions for keeping ripe and green peppers are significantly different. Ripe vegetables will not last long at room temperature and will rot within a few days. Therefore, they are consumed immediately.

Important! Before storing vegetables, ripe fruits are separated from unripe ones.

Unripe vegetables in the refrigerator spoil quickly. They are kept at a temperature of +10...+12°C and high humidity (80–85%), preferably in a cellar or basement. The room should be darkened, since in bright light the vegetables will begin to be damaged.

For better shelf life, use wooden boxes or cardboard boxes with side holes. Each fruit is wrapped in paper and placed in rows in containers. Sometimes vegetables are sprinkled with sawdust or placed in sand.

In rare cases, when there is a large amount of harvest, it is treated with a 1% solution of copper sulfate (copper sulfate).

Under the right conditions, unripe fruits will not spoil for 2-3 months.

In the refrigerator, each fruit is wrapped in paper or packaged in a plastic bag. Lubricating the skins of vegetables with sunflower oil gives good results: it forms a protective film and prolongs the freshness of the fruit.

If the peppers begin to rot, cut off the damaged areas, remove the core with seeds, chop the fruits into strips, put them in bags in small portions and place them in the freezer. Such vegetables retain their beneficial and tasteful qualities for up to 6 months.

Some housewives dry bell peppers in a vegetable dehydrator or oven. To do this, the cored fruits are cut into strips and dried on a baking sheet at a temperature of +45...55°C for 8 hours. This pepper is stored in airtight jars.

By the way! Vegetables are dried in the sun for 4-5 days.

Useful tips

Storing fresh bell peppers at home is not an easy task, since the vegetable has a delicate, juicy and very fragile structure, quickly withers and reacts negatively to low temperatures.

In order to preserve the external and taste qualities of fruits for as long as possible, you should follow several recommendations:

• Before placing them in containers, all vegetables should be sorted and defective ones should be selected;
• do not tear off the tip with the stalk, because it is he who is responsible for the quality and duration of storage;
• Peppercorns should not be washed before storing. Washed fruits, even under ideal storage conditions, will not be able to remain for a long time;
• vegetables must be placed in boxes lined with paper, sawdust or sand, in several layers;
• It is allowed to wrap each vegetable in paper or cling film. However, with this storage method, peppers must be visually inspected for damage weekly.

Did you know? There is a special Scoville scale that measures the hotness of peppers.
The artificially bred Carolina Reaper pepper is recognized as the hottest, its indicator is 2 million 200 units of heat, that is, 100 points. Bell pepper takes last place with a score of 0 points. Knowing all the nuances of storing fresh bell peppers allows you to enjoy its amazing taste not only in summer and autumn, but also in winter. To successfully preserve a vegetable, it is enough to follow a few simple rules and maintain optimal conditions in the room where it is stored.

How to ripen pepper

Various methods are used to ripen bell peppers. How to store peppers so they turn red faster? To do this, place several red or yellow ripe vegetables between the collected fruits and place them in a warm, dark place for 4-5 days.

Temperature and storage conditions

For long-term maintenance, peppers are picked at the stage of technical ripeness. They are placed in 3 layers in small containers, which are left in a room with a temperature of +10...+12°C and an air humidity of 85–90% . Under such conditions, the fruits fully ripen in 1 month. After this, the temperature is lowered to 0°C to prevent the development of diseases. In room conditions, ripening is much faster.

One way to store fruits in a basement or cellar is to hang the bushes directly with the roots. Plants are planted at home in flower pots or wooden boxes for further ripening of vegetables.

Lifehacks

To speed up fruit ripening, various methods are used:

• during the period of vegetative growth of bushes, weak shoots are pinched and cut off;
• during fruiting, foliar feeding is applied: solutions of potassium and phosphate fertilizers are used;
• at the end of August, the remaining flowers are removed;
• in early to mid-autumn, small peppers that have not yet had time to ripen are picked. This will give the bushes the strength to grow large fruits before the onset of cold weather;
• to speed up the ripening of vegetables, at the end of autumn the crop is watered with warm water (+45...+50°C) at the root, without touching the green mass;
• in autumn, during cold nights, the bushes are covered with agrofibre or plastic film;
• tear off most of the leaf mass from plants for better ripening of fruits;
• To make vegetables ripen faster, at the end of the season they loosen the soil around the bushes as deeply as possible.

Peppers 2022. Ripening green fruits is SIMPLE!!!

Degrees of maturity

Fruits go through two stages of maturity: technical and biological.

At technical ripeness, vegetables reach optimal size, taste and beneficial qualities, but have not yet acquired the color characteristic of the variety. After harvesting, such fruits are transported, stored, and sold.

Vegetables at the stage of technical maturity are green or pale yellow, sometimes almost white. They are selectively removed every 6–8 days. Harvesting occurs at the end of autumn, before the onset of the first frost. With the advent of constant cold weather, the remaining harvest is completely harvested.

If you place the fruits in a warm, bright place, they will acquire the appropriate color in a short time.

Biological maturity is the physiological ripeness of peppers when they acquire their final color, becoming red, yellow, orange.

Reference! If bell peppers are picked at this stage, they will not keep for long.

It takes 3-4 weeks from technical to biological maturity of vegetables. During this period, the content of vitamins, sucrose and other valuable substances in the fruit increases.

The degree of biological ripeness of bell peppers is determined by gently pressing on the skin. If you hear a slight crunching sound, it means the vegetables are fully ripe.

Advice from experienced summer residents

Most experienced summer residents agree that peppers do not have to ripen completely in the garden beds. Shiny, weighty and juicy vegetables already contain a lot of vitamins, and they can even ripen on the windowsill.

After the first harvest is harvested, the bushes will continue to bear fruit under favorable conditions. This process can be further stimulated by spreading banana peels on the soil under the plant.

If there is no well-lit place on the site and the crop has to be planted in the shade, you can add light using reflective screens.

Reference. You can speed up reddening by placing ripe apples and tomatoes next to the bushes under covering material. The process of ripening vegetables is accompanied by the release of ethylene, which will affect the peppers.

How to ripen hot peppers

Such fruits begin to be harvested when they turn brown. They are picked as they ripen. There is an opinion that the redder the fruit, the spicier it is. Hot peppers for drying are collected in a state of biological ripeness. Its walls are thin, so the fruits dry out quickly when dried. Ripe pods are picked for seeds or storage.

For storage, select vegetables without damage, leaving 2 cm of the stalk. How to make hot peppers turn red faster? To do this, they are strung on a thick thread, piercing the bases, and hung in the kitchen or on the balcony. When dried, the fruits ripen and change color, becoming rich red. After this, they are transferred to a cool, dry room.

Hot peppers are also ripened on a sunny windowsill for 3-4 days. Turn the vegetables periodically so that the sun warms all sides evenly. During this time, the fruits gain the necessary pungency.

Important! Green vegetables are not suitable for ripening. Collected in this form, they begin to rot.

Brown peppers in a plastic bag with holes made are placed in the refrigerator. After a week the fruits turn red.

What can be done to solve the problem

If the problem is the weather or improper care, you should try to eliminate the cause. When it gets cold, cover the plants with non-woven materials, if there is a lack of nutrition, feed them, water them with warm water and without fanaticism. When large but green fruits are already hanging on the bushes, the peppers do not need nitrogen at all, but they do require fertilizing with wood ash.

If the fruits have already reached the desired size, it is better to remove them, and if you want to get red ones, ripen them at home. They need to be laid out in a warm place (not in the full sun) and turned over periodically. The process will go much faster if you put a couple of red specimens nearby, or maybe a ripe apple. Peppers are often placed on foil, which reflects the heat of the sun falling on it and warms the fruit.

If you wish, you can speed up the reddening of peppers even on bushes, although there is not much point in this. For example, you can put banana peels directly under them, but this way you can also attract pests. A more reliable method, but a little barbaric, is to slow down the growth of the entire bush. At a height of several centimeters, a through hole is made in the stem (a split 2–3 cm long). An ordinary chip is placed in it, which stops the development of the bush and forces it to redistribute its forces to the ripening of fruits. The gardener receives red peppers, but after a week he loses the whole plant.

How to store and ripen peppers for seeds

Many gardeners grow proven varieties of bell peppers and collect seeds from the resulting harvest. To do this, vegetables are harvested at the stage of biological ripeness, but if the crop is not ripe before the onset of cold weather, it is ripened at home. Seeds obtained from artificially ripening vegetables have higher germination rates and germination rates than those collected from fruits grown on bushes.

The duration of ripening of the crop depends on the size of the peppers, their degree of ripeness and storage conditions. Vegetables are placed in a warm, dry room with a temperature of +28…+30°C. Thin-walled varieties are kept for 3 days, thick-walled ones - 6-7 days. The stalk with seeds is removed from ripe peppers and dried for another 3 days at +35...+40°C. After this, the seeds are freed from pulp and kept at +55°C, placed in paper bags and stored in a dry place at a temperature of +18...+25°C.

Spicy food - harm or benefit

Why is spicy not a taste?

There are no others, which does not prevent us from using the word “taste” in everyday life when assessing the taste and aroma properties of dishes or drinks. The combination of signals from receptors in the sinuses and mouth allows you to experience sensations such as pain or irritation. For example, a fire starting in the mouth from spicy food.

When a spicy dish or sauce contains pepper, we are left breathless by capsaicin, a substance named after the Capsicum family of capsicums and which gives its name to a class of structurally similar substances.

About 10 capsaicinoids of natural origin have been isolated from hot pepper fruits. Capsaicin in this mixture accounts for an average of 70%, the second most common is dihydrocapsaicin (about 20%), the content of other species is less than 2%.

Fire in your mouth?

The highest content of capsaicin is in the pulp of capsicums and their seeds. In its pure form, if it comes into contact with the mucous membrane or skin, it causes severe irritation, but even the hottest pepper contains capsaicin that is safe

When spicy food enters our mouth, capsaicin binds to TRPV1 receptors located on the surface of the taste buds of the tongue and in the mucous membranes. After activation by capsaicin, TRPV1 receptors change their structure, and the signal about this change begins to travel along the trigeminal nerve - the main sensory nerve of the face and oral cavity - to the brain. The brain interprets this signal as an increase in the temperature in our mouth. The reason for this sensation is that TRPV1 receptors are usually activated when the temperature rises above 43°C. Thus, TRPV1 sends a signal to the central nervous system, warning that the body is overheating, thereby protecting its owner from the danger posed by hot food. These same natural “thermal sensors” can also recognize certain types of substances contained in foods that we consider “spicy”.

TRPV1 receptors are also activated by allyl isothiocyanate, a substance that gives mustard, horseradish and wasabi its pungency.

How capsaicin tricks the nervous system

TRPV1 receptors play a game of “confuse a chemical signal with a thermal signal” with our nervous system. Therefore, as soon as we eat something spicy, the brain believes that we ate something hot. The central nervous system takes urgent measures to cool the body: blood circulation is activated to speed up metabolism, and intense sweating begins to cool the body. The concentration of natural painkillers - endorphins - increases in the blood. The nasal mucosa becomes inflamed, which is why the nose begins to run, tears also flow, the eyes close - the brain gives the eyelids a command to protect the organs of vision from the “high temperature”.

The sensations that arise when a dish turns out to be more fiery than expected undoubtedly cannot be classified as pleasant. However, in the amount in which capsaicin and capsaicinoids are contained in peppers or sauce, these substances do not cause physical damage to tissues and organs, but this does not mean that spicy foods are completely harmless.

Experiments on mice showed that the dangerous dose of capsaicin is 47.2 mg per 1 kg of animal weight. In terms of an average person weighing 80 kg, this is 3.8 grams. That is, you need to eat 200 grams of dry chili powder at once, which is physically impossible.

Spicy: harm and benefit

If we accidentally put something too spicy in our mouth, we may experience indigestion, nausea and vomiting. Why? If the activation of TRPV1 receptors is too intense, the brain reacts as if we had swallowed something very hot. Having been deceived, he tries to take all measures to bring out the supposed danger as quickly as possible, initiating vomiting. And during the urge to vomit, gastric juice ends up in the esophagus, where it should not be, and the acid it contains can severely damage the esophagus. The degree of damage will directly depend on the degree of irritation of TRPV1 receptors and the brain’s assessment of the potential “threat”.

This reaction of the body, in turn, suggests that a sharp transition from the usual sweet bell pepper to one of the hottest cayenne peppers will not only give us a lot of unpleasant sensations, but also endanger our health.

However, regular consumption of pepper dishes with a gradual increase in their heat allows you to develop resistance to the action of capsaicin and train the body to do without vomiting. And endorphins, natural painkillers and substances that allow you to feel pleasure that enter the bloodstream as a result of activation of TRPV1 receptors, contribute to the fact that over time a person can completely genuinely enjoy dishes with hot peppers.

Where hot peppers began to be grown and consumed earlier, people get used to it earlier. Some children's Mexican dishes seem too spicy for adult Europeans, because the Aztecs and other inhabitants of Central America grew hot peppers long before Columbus.

The domestication of chili peppers most likely began after it was noticed that meat and fish that came into contact with these red pods or powder from them had a longer shelf life - many of the substances contained in chili peppers are natural preservatives that kill microorganisms that cause food to rot.

Many guidebooks to South America recommend that tourists eat spicy foods to avoid contracting an intestinal infection. The substances that make up chili peppers kill pathogenic microorganisms or slow down their reproduction. Capsaicinoids inhibit the growth of some bacteria dangerous to humans, but pepper owes its antimicrobial properties to another substance - the flavonoid chrysoeriol, which, like many other flavonoids, tastes bitter to us.

The name “chili pepper” is similar to the name of the country Chile, but comes from a word from the Aztec Nahuatl group of languages, from which “chilli” is translated as “red.”

How to determine the heat of pepper

You can understand which pepper will be too hot for us using the heat scale. There are several of them, but most often scientists and cooks take the Scoville scale as a basis.

In 1912, American chemist Wilbur Scoville proposed using a quantitative scale based on taste sensations to measure the spiciness of peppers. An extract from various varieties of pepper was dissolved in alcohol, after which a drop of the alcohol solution was mixed with sweetened water and given to five tasters to taste. If they said that the burning sensation was felt, the solution was diluted and given again for testing. The unit of measurement was the volume of water drunk, which was required for the heat to cease to be noticeable - the more points a pepper or dish scores on the Scoville scale, the spicier it is.

The scale, compiled according to the subjective feelings of tasters, cannot be called ideal. Later in chemistry, more accurate approaches to determining the capsaicin content in a product appeared. But culinary experts still prefer to use the Scoville scale - in cooking, what is more important is what sensations a person will experience.

Published: February 2, 2022

How to Make Peppers Ripe at Home. Some tricks for making peppers turn red faster

You should put a couple of red fruits in the boxes with folded and unripe sweet peppers.
It could be a couple of tomatoes, red apples or the same, but only red peppers. The top is covered tightly with newspaper. The ruddy sides of the peppers will begin to appear after just one week. The accumulated ethylene in scarlet fruits will spread throughout all vegetables and promotes rapid ripening. It is very important that the vegetables lie in bulk all together. If each of them is wrapped separately in newspaper, nothing will happen. The best stimulants for ripening are red apples, so they are not recommended to be placed next to already ripe vegetables. Such proximity will lead to rapid overripening and rotting.

Some summer residents have adapted, and the picked unripe peppercorns are placed on food foil. The foil is then placed on the eastern or western window sills. The sun will be pushed away from the foil, this promotes rapid ripening.

You can artificially stop the development of the bush and stimulate ripening. At a height of 3-4 cm from the ground, use a sharp knife to punch a through hole and insert a sliver of wood into it. The bush will stop growing, the peppers will ripen sooner.

Even when technically ripe, sweet peppers have an excellent taste, are suitable for preparations, and even contain more vitamins than ripe ones. But every housewife wants to decorate the table with bright, colorful vegetables, and peppers sometimes hang on the bushes for weeks and still never ripen. What is the reason? How to deal with this problem?