Pears are one of the few fruits that don’t ripen well on the tree. Picked, packed, shipped, and stored in a hard yet mature state, they soften from the inside out and can spoil very quickly if left at room temperature for too long.
To get your money’s worth, let fruit stand in a cool place for a few days or up to a week. This allows for the changes in sugar and juice content that signal ripening. To speed things up, keep pears out of direct sunlight in a loosely closed paper bag; they will absorb the natural ethylene gas that ripening fruit produces. Putting a ripe banana in the bag with them steps things up even more.
Don’t count on color changes alone to tell if a pear is ripe. A good rule of thumb is to gently press the stem end. If the flesh yields slightly, th fruit is ready to eat. At this point, you can refrigerate pears for several days.
A typical 6 ounce pear has 100 calories, 1 g protein, 25 g carbohydrate, 1 g fat, 0 mg sodium, 210 mg potassium, and 4 g fibre. That’s about as much fibre as in 2 slices of whole wheat bread.