Kitchen Hack: how to stop apples and pears from browning - Chelan Fresh (2024)

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Kitchen Hack: how to stop apples and pears from browning - Chelan Fresh? ›

Soak them in a bowl of cold lemon water. This is better than squeezing the lemon juice directly on the fruit, unless you don't mind the fruit tasting really lemony. Mix 1 tablespoon of lemon juice per 1 cup of water.

This is known as enzymatic browning. Keep cut fruits, such as apples, pears, bananas, and peaches from turning brown by: Coating them with an acidic juice such as lemon, orange, or pineapple juice. Use a commercial anti-darkening preparation with fruits, such as Fruit-Fresh®*, and follow the manufacturer's directions.

One of the easiest things you can do to prevent browning is to submerge the cut fruit in plain water, which reduces the amount of air, and therefore oxygen, that can get to it.

How can we prevent apples from turning brown? To slow the chemical reaction, you can isolate the fruit in an anaerobic – or oxygen-free – environment. This is possible by placing lemon juice or pineapple juice on the apple. These liquids carry antioxidants which eliminate oxygen.

Wrap the apples individually in pieces of newspaper and place them into dimpled, cardboard trays – your local supermarket will have an ample supply of these. Once packed, place them in a cool, but frost-free place, such as a cellar, garage or garden shed.

Make sure you coat your freshly cut apple in syrup or sugar. This coating can reduce oxygen diffusion at the surface of the apple, thus slowing down the browning reaction.

Mix 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt into 1 cup of cool water until dissolved. Add your sliced apples and soak for about 10 minutes. Drain the apples and store in an airtight container for up to a week. If you're packing the apples in a lunch box right away, give them a rinse under cool water.

Ascorbic acid prevents enzymatic browning by reducing the quinone products to their original polyphenol compounds (Walker, 1977). Ascorbic acid has been widely used as an antibrowning agent for processing of fruits and vegetables.

The browning can be slowed down by preventing the enzyme from working properly. Lemon juice contains an acid which can stop enzymes working properly as enzymes often work best at a certain pH. Water and sugar, in jam for example, stops oxygen in the air getting to the enzymes and prevents the browning.

Citric acid is used to preserve the color of fresh cut fruit or as a pre-treatment for frozen and dried fruit. It can be used either alone or mixed with other substances, such as ascorbic acid, erythorbic acid, N-acetylcysteine, glutathione, and EDTA.

Can pears be cut ahead of time? ›

Yes, if you store them in the fridge or the freezer.

If you're keeping them at room temperature, you can only cut them 1 day ahead of time. Pears taste best when they're fresh, though, so try to eat them quickly. If you're packing pear slices for lunch, try putting them in with an ice pack to keep them fresh.

If you'd like to ripen your pears faster, you can put them in a paper bag with ripe apples and/or bananas. “Doing so exposes them to ethylene, a natural gas emitted by ripe fruit that ripens the fruit around it,” says Edwards, adding this method takes about two to four days to ripen the pears.

Apple Treatment Method: Lemon Juice

These slices fared almost as well as the citric acid-treated ones did — the lemon juice stopped the browning for almost seven hours. Taste-wise, the slices retained a lemon-fresh tartness, but were not as strongly acidic as those with citric acid.

Refrigerate ripe pears to keep them fresh.

Placing them whole in the fridge can extend their shelf life up between 5 and 12 days. The temperature of your refrigerator should be set at or below 40 °F (4 °C). If you've cut up your pears, wrap them tightly in a bag or container before refrigerating to limit air exposure.