- Asian pears are ready to eat when purchased; European pears ripen after harvest.
- Check European pears for color changes, sweet aroma and soft flesh near the stem to spot ripeness.
- To speed ripening, keep pears in a bag at room temperature—add an apple slice for extra help.
Fall produce means crates of crisp apples, bins of cheery orange pumpkins and loads of sweet, juicy pears with toothsome, yielding flesh. But it can be tough to know when a pear is ready to eat, or how long you’ll have to wait for the pears you buy at the grocery store or farmers’ market to ripen. That’s because pears ripen differently than many other fruits, explained Ben Wenk, a seventh-generation grower and co-owner of Three Springs Fruit Farm in Aspers, Pennsylvania.
“Pears can continue to ripen off the tree, and their maturity can be highly variable based on environmental conditions and weather,” Wenk said. Plus, in contrast to fruits like watermelon, pears don’t offer many visual cues or other obvious signs of ripeness that farmers can use to time their harvests. In fact, some types of pears are harvested unripe on purpose, making it even tougher to know how to choose the perfect pear.
That said, there are a few signs and strategies you can use to increase the chances that the pears you buy will ripen more quickly—and taste sweet, juicy and tender when you enjoy them.
Tips for Selecting Pears
Knowing whether a pear is ripe starts with knowing which type of pear you’re working with. There are two major types—Asian and European—that come with different colors, shapes and ripening habits.
Asian pears have golden skin, a round shape and crisp, firm flesh similar to an apple’s when they’re ready to eat. “Asian pears can ripen on the tree in ways that European pears cannot,” Wenk said. “If you’re seeking instant pear gratification, this will be your best bet.” A ripe Asian pear will have very firm, crunchy flesh but taste sweet, complex and full-flavored. The skin will have a golden-brown or even slightly rosy color.
However, European pears—a category that includes popular varieties like Yellow Bartlett, Red Bartlett, D’Anjou, Bosc, Seckel and Comice—aren’t ready to eat off the tree like Asian pears. That means they’re harvested unripe, and when you bring them home from the market, they’re still anywhere from a few days to a week or more away from ripeness.
To check if European pears are ripe, “gently measure the firmness and evaluate the background color,” Wenk said. “For varieties like Yellow Bartlett or D’Anjou, you’re looking for the green-yellow background color to change to pure yellow.” For russeted varieties like Bosc—whose skin has a coarse, golden-brown netting—the color may change a little, but a more reliable indicator is checking the firmness by pressing lightly with your thumb on the flesh at the stem end of the fruit. “If the narrow end of the stem is a little pliable, you’re in business,” Wenk noted.
Aroma is another sign of ripeness for European pear varieties, though it’s less reliable than color or firmness. If your pears smell sweet and fruity, there’s a good chance they’re ready to enjoy, or close to it. “It’s less invasive than trying to determine firmness by bending and squeezing,” Wenk said. “Definitely get your nose in there first.”
Do Pears Continue to Ripen After They’re Picked?
Only European pears that are harvested at the proper maturity will ripen off the tree. One benefit of this is that with their firm flesh, these pears are less likely to be damaged on the journey from the farm or orchard to your local market. But it does mean that you need to do a little advance planning to ensure they’re ripe when you want to eat them fresh or use them in dishes like pies and salads.
So…how long do European pears take to ripen off the tree?
“I wish I had a better answer, but my response is best summed up with ‘as long as it takes,’” Wenk said. “The time for the fruit to ripen is determined by when it was harvested and what the weather might have been like leading up to the harvest of the pears.”
Unfortunately, a lack of research into how those variables can affect ripening means there’s no definite answer. The amount of ripening time can vary depending on the variety, too. As a general guideline, you can expect European pears to take anywhere from four to seven days to ripen, though some may take a little longer.
How to Store Pears So They Ripen More Quickly
It is possible to encourage European pears to ripen more quickly once you bring them home from the grocery store or farmers’ market. Like many other fruits, pears produce ethylene gas to induce ripening. “You can take advantage of this in your home by enclosing the pears you’d like to ‘speed ripen’ in a plastic bag and sitting them on the counter or on top of the fridge. We actually do something similar on a larger scale before we send pears to market if we can,” Wenk explained. “If you’re really craving a pear, you can put a slice of apple in the bag with it. The apple flesh will release ethylene. This trick works for peaches and nectarines, too.”
You can store your pears in a bag if you plan to eat or prepare them all at once when they ripen, but Wenk recommends using the bag trick to spread out the ripening if you’d like to enjoy a fresh pear as a snack each day, for example. “The pear on the counter in the bag ripens first, the pear on the counter ripens second,” he said.
Once the fruit is fully ripe, you can store it in your fridge’s crisper drawer for anywhere from a few days to a week—but it’s important to keep unripe pears at room temperature, not in the fridge, until they’re ready to eat.
The Bottom Line
Pears come in two major types: Asian pears—which should be crisp, sweet and ready to eat when they arrive at the market—and European pears, which are sold firm and unripe. European pears can take up to a week to fully ripen. To tell when they’re ready to enjoy, use clues like skin that is yellow or red rather than green, a fruity aroma and yielding firmness near the stem of the fruit. Store European pears in a bag at room temperature to help them ripen more quickly. Asian pears and ripe European pears can be stored in a plastic bag in your refrigerator for up to a week.
