You can ripen tomatoes much faster off the vine by putting them in a breathable container with a banana and storing them in a warm place.

When fruits ripen, they produce a natural gas called ethylene, which is an autocatalyzer in fruits that ripen off the vine.

This means that an initial concentration of ethylene urges the fruit to produce more of the gas, which causes them to ripen.

A banana has one of the highest ethylene levels among fruits, so storing it with tomatoes can trigger ethylene formation in tomatoes and accelerate their ripening.

You should store them in a breathable container, as it traps the ethylene gas without creating a stagnant environment in which the food will go anaerobic.

For faster ripening, the ideal storage temperature is 85 F, while the lowest possible is 55 F. Avoid freezing, as ice crystals can rupture a tomato's soft cells while thawing.

One final tip for this hack is to ripen the tomato on its shoulders to keep it from getting soft and mushy on the bottom.

However, young tomatoes with immature seeds don't ripen in response to ethylene. For the hack to work, tomatoes must have matured enough on the vine to undergo a DNA revamp.