What To Do With Overripe Fruits and Vegetables

While overripe fruits and vegetables may not be ideal, it doesn’t mean they’re unusable in the kitchen. Instead of contributing to the country’s billions of pounds of food waste, get creative with your sprouting spuds, pruney peaches, and brown bananas. Below are a few uses for overripe fruits and vegetables, as well as a few specific solutions for giving common culprits a second life.

Ways to Use Overripe Vegetables

Pasta Sauce

Having an abundance of fresh, in-season vegetables means you may not get to enjoying them all in a timely manner. If your vegetables are starting to lose their visual appeal, consider using them in any of the following ways:

  • Make a soup or stew: Throw veggies, broth, and spices and herbs into a stock pot and let them simmer to perfection. Or, puree softened carrots, cauliflower, or potatoes with milk to make a creamy fall or winter soup.
  • Offer seasonal dishes: Create zucchini noodles in the summertime or pumpkin ravioli in the fall to make the most out of your seasonal produce.
  • Create a pasta sauce: Overripe tomatoes can be peeled and simmered down to produce a flavorful sauce used on subs, pizzas, spaghetti, or with mozzarella sticks.
  • Blend a salad dressing: Throw carrots, green peppers, red onions, and cucumbers into a blender or food processor along with oil, vinegar, and spices. Drizzle the final product over a bed of mixed greens.
  • Pickle vegetables: Aside from cucumbers, you can pickle a number of overripe vegetables including banana peppers, mushrooms, radishes, and tomatoes.
  • Make veggie chips: Slicing vegetables thin and roasting them in the oven with an abundance of spice can bring new life into soft, old produce.

Ways to Use Overripe Fruit

Overripe fruit can often contain even sweeter, juicier flavors than fresh fruits. This makes them a great addition to a number of recipes, with some recipes calling them out specifically. Below are a few creative and delicious ways to use overripe fruit in your kitchen:

  • Make a smoothie: Soft fruits are pureed into a delicious blend of flavors when combined with ice, milk, yogurt, or orange juice.
  • Squeeze fruit juice: The juices from overripe fruits are perfect for making fresh beverages, such as lemonade and classic OJ.
  • Create fruit jams: Fruit jams, such as strawberry, grape, or raspberry, capture the sweet essence of fruit no matter how fresh or ripe they are. Simply muddle the fruit, add to a sauce pan, and mix with sugar and fruit juice.
  • Bake a quick bread: Use old bananas to make a loaf of classic banana bread, or get creative with other baked goods including peach muffins, raspberry scones, and blueberry pancakes.
  • Flavor ice cream: If you’re proudly serving homemade ice cream, incorporate the sweet flavors of strawberries, peaches, blueberries, or bananas into your chocolate or vanilla base.

Examples for Specific Fruits and Vegetables

If you have a specific fruit or vegetable you’re still unsure about, check out the list below of common types of overripe produce to learn what to do with it.

What to Do with Overripe Bananas

Here are a few common uses for overripe bananas:

  • Bake banana bread, muffins, or pancakes
  • Replace one egg with a ripe banana when baking
  • Freeze and blend to produce banana ice cream

What to Do with Overripe Peaches

Overripe peaches offer a sweet flavor and soft, juicy texture perfect for pairing with a number of recipes. Here are a few creative ways to incorporate overripe peaches into your favorite recipes:

  • Create peach salsa or peach curry
  • Mix into butter to produce a peach butter
  • Combine overripe peaches with milk, honey, and yogurt and freeze to make peach popsicles
  • Puree the peach and freeze to use in bellinis, wine slushies, or mojitos

What to Do with Overripe Strawberries

Strawberry Jam

Transform mushy, soft strawberries into decadent dishes by using any of the following suggestions below:

  • Roast overripe strawberries glazed in honey for a sweet topping to brownies, cake, and ice cream
  • Mash and blend strawberries with butter to make strawberry butter
  • Freeze a mixture of ripe strawberries, honey, vodka, and lemon to make strawberry sorbet
  • Combine strawberries with balsamic vinaigrette and olive oil for a sweet salad dressing

What to Do with Sprouted Potatoes

When potatoes are overripe, they tend to develop sprouts that stick out the sides. Transform sprouting spuds into delicious mealtime favorites with the following ideas:

  • Grate older potatoes into hash browns for breakfast
  • Boil and mash into classic mashed potatoes
  • Make baked potato soup
  • Combine older potatoes with other vegetables to make a vegetable stock

Use the suggestions above to bring fresh life to your overripe fruits and vegetables. Finding creative alternatives to disposing of perfectly good produce means you can do your part to help reduce food waste in America. But if you've waited a little too long to use those fresh veggies, consider composting your unusable pieces of produce instead of simply throwing them away.

Posted in: Eco-Friendly Tips|Kitchen & Cooking Tips|By Rachel Jenkins
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