This is a really trivial issue in the great scheme of things, but my absolutely favouritist pear is a comice and they have been stunning this autumn/winter - until the last two batches I’ve bought.
I always buy pears a bit green and let them ripen in the fruit bowl and up until now I’ve never had a problem with comice pears not ripening. But the last two (French) lots I’ve bought have been sitting there weeks and still they are not ripening.
I’ve had this problem with Rocha and Abate pears (from Portugal and Italy) in the past and I now won’t buy them.
Does anyone have any special “tricks” for getting pears to ripen please? I’m loathe to throw them away but I can see at this rate they are going to have rotted before they are edible.
Place them in a bowl with bananas/apples/avocadoes will ripen them, the ethylene they produce will do the job.
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Cut your losses, make a pear tatin.
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I’m with Colin on this one, with the addition of placing the fruit into a loosely closed brown paper bag.
Thanks for the suggestion, but nope! Hasn’t worked. I finished up throwing away the bananas last night they were so over-ripe and the pears are still rock hard.
Put them in the microwave for 10- 15 seconds and put them back in the bowl or cook them as suggested above.
Yup…I find that the ethylene /ripe fruit trick doesn’t work with fruit that has been cold stored for a long time. And if they are French pears then they weren’t picked recently (I’m looking at 40cm of snow out the window!). Bad time of year for fruit as we try not to buy airfreighted things. A good intention, but sadly not this time it sounds.
Thankfully we don’t have that problem where we are.
Fair point! It’s interesting though how late the guyot pears come into the shops (my second favourite pear) and they seem to ripen ok. Maybe because they have a very thick skin and longer “shelf life”?
Me too! I’d much rather buy local if I can - or at least just lorry journey distance.
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Problem? We are actually very pleased to live somewhere that has 4 seasons…nothing beats a bright crisp snowy day for lifting the spirits and giving energy.
Thanks for the suggestion Colin, but unfortunately I consider microwaves to be an abomination. They kill off most of the nutrients in food. But maybe then, there aren’t many in a rock hard pear that’s been refrigerated too long. 
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nothing beats a bright crisp snowy day for lifting the spirits and giving energy.
Totally agree and that day is Christmas Day 
I’m happy with frosty sunny days during the winter. Love the spring and autumn 
I buy ripe ish comics pears and keep them in the fridge, they slowly continue to ripen 
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Compared with what? Conventional cooking destroys more and eating plant material raw leaves nutrients tucked up inside plant cells where we can’t get at them because our digestive systems can’t deal with cellulose.
Used correctly microwave cooking is quite possibly the best way of preserving micronutrients.
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We haven’t eaten pears since we finished the last of our crop of Comice, which was a bumper one.
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It was an article in the Economist some years back showing the alternative ways of cooking starting with steaming and going through the alternatives up to microwaving.
Steaming is supposed to be the “best”
Their report said microwaving was the worst - destroying 80+% of nutrients.
Sorry Paul, don’t have any more details than that. Interestingly the Economist has always been rather good with its science articles.