Ripening green peppers off the plant

[Potter]

Hi everyone,
We had a 'mystery' in our garden today, where I realised that about 6 of my lovely, big, 'on the verge of ripening' peppers had been stolen off the plant from our back garden. They are outside the back door and not really accessible by anyone except our immediate neighbours. I spoke to the kids from next door about it (with a sneaky comment about maybe having to involve the police, burgulars in the area etc ) and they miraculously appeared at the end of the garden.

I'll sort the kids out with a quick word with their mum, but my question is how is it best to ripen them now? They are still green, and I have one large one that I think we can eat now, but can I make the rest of them go red, and yellow for my banana ones?

Can't say how gutted I was though, we've been checking them every day for weeks !

Thanks, Julia

[Two_Sheds]

Go next door and steal and puncture their footballs. See how they like that. Grrrrr!

[Potter]

, we've had words since and they've owned up - a dare, grrrrr indeed!

[shirlthegirl43]

I think they will ripen fine on a sunny windowsill. Most peppers can be used while green anyway so no real loss except visually if they don't change colour.

[momol]

Hi Julia,

Sorry to hear that, don't get too up set, hope it won't happen again after having a talk with their mum. You can ripen them by setting them next to a ripe tomato or a ripe banana or even a ripe apple. Like Shirl said, it will work on the window sill too or consuming it while green, taste wise will be the same ( they said it will be less spicy at their green stage )

Cheers,
Momol

[devon-surfer]

thankfully mine have all started to rippen, we had some dwarf ones in a stir fry tonight,,,,wow, they certainly had a kick to them :-) As the weather has started to change (from wet to winter) ill be drying out the red ones and put others in a bopwl with the ripe banana

[rustylady]

Are they sweet peppers or chillies? Either way they can be used green, or you can try to ripen them indoors (just make sure they don't dry out instead of ripening). I dry my chillies to use during the rest of the year, but I'm not sure this would work with sweet peppers. A good tip for hastening ripening any sort of fruit (including peppers) is to put them in a bowl with a ripe banana - apparently the banana gives off some sort of gas which encourages ripening in other fruit