How To Ripen A Mango
This post may contain affiliate links (disclosure).
If you like to eat mangoes, I’m sure you know how important it is for the mango to be ripe. Ripe mangoes taste sweet and delicious, while unripe mangoes are hard and tasteless. If you don’t know how to tell if a mango is ripe before slicing it, see my article how to pick a ripe mango.
What if you see mangoes on sale at the store, but they are rock-hard? Good news is that if you buy them, they will gradually ripen on their own on the counter. You’ll just have to be patient and not eat them until they are perfectly ripe. Don’t put unripe mangoes in the refrigerator, store them at room temperature instead.
You can even speed up the process and make those mangoes ripen even faster. The trick to ripening the mangoes faster is putting them in a brown paper bag and closing the bag. The mangoes will ripen faster in the bag than simply sitting in a bowl on the counter. The bag will also prevent the mangoes from getting that dried-out wrinkled skin that they can get from sitting on the counter for too long.
When you put the mangoes in the brown paper bag to ripen them, one important step to remember is to label the bag. I just write “Mangoes” in large letters using a marker. Put the bag with the mangoes in the place where you can see it. Otherwise you might forget about the mangoes in the bag and find them a month later when they already got spoiled :)
How long does it take for a mango to ripen in a brown paper bag on the counter? Usually it takes about four days. If they are not ripe, keep checking them every day until they are just right. A ripe mango shouldn’t be rock-hard – it should feel slightly soft when you give it a gentle squeeze on the sides (but not too soft to the point of mushy).
Here’s the picture of the brown grocery paper bag where I kept the mangoes that needed to be ripened:
When the mangoes are ripe, my favorite way to eating them is making a mango salsa. Check out my easy mango salsa recipe – it’s really delicious!
