What makes a good fruit bowl

What sort of fruit bowl looks good?  Does the type of bowl affect how long fruit lasts? Or is it just a simple question of deciding what size fruit bowl is right for me? There’re lots of questions and plenty of ways you can look at it but the best one I know of is what sort of fruit bowl helps the most fruit get eaten?

The right size fruit bowl

A simple rule of thumb is to have a fruit bowl that, at maximum, holds about a week’s worth of fruit. So, depending on how much fruit you and your household get through in a week, this might vary quite a lot.

The thinking behind this is that at least every week you really want to be emptying your fruit bowl. A technique we use to good effect in our house is to rotate two fruit bowls: when the new fruit comes into the house we put it into an empty fruit bowl and then deposit any of the remaining older fruit on top which means the most ripe fruit is on top – as opposed to burying it at the bottom to die.

Why fruit goes bad;

how a little knowledge and the right fruit bowl can make a real difference

A shallow wider fruit bowl is a really good idea! 

We all know the feeling when you grab an apple or peach to discover that it’s so soft it barely holds together as you carefully move it to the compost bin… I’m sure there are worse things when it comes to putting people off eating fruit but I bet that one’s high on the list.

Did you know that the gas coming off some fruit (particularly apples and ripe bananas) rapidly speeds up the ripening, and potential over-ripening, of all the other fruit in the fruit bowl!

This can be used to your advantage if you’ve got a bunch of fruit that are under-ripe and you’d like to speed up their ripening. Simply putting some of them in a bowl with one or two apples or ripe bananas will ripen them up in hours or days.

But, more often than not, these gases are the culprits involved with your fruit going from crunchy and yummy to overly soft and squishy.

Are there alternatives to the classic big high-sided fruit bowl?

One solution, if your fruit is already at a good ripeness, is to simply separate your apples and bananas from your other fruit. Put them in separate fruit bowls.

Another good solution is to have a fruit platter instead of a fruit bowl. Ripe fruit gases will easily disperse if the fruit has air moving around it. Having the fruit on a more open platter, or a bowl with open voids, or just low sides, really helps the gas to disperse. 

You don’t need to worry about this too much if you have a regular supply of fruit and get through your fruit in good time. But conversely it’s really worth keeping in mind if your fruit only gets delivered every couple of weeks.

NB If you occasionally have a bit more fruit than you can eat in a week, put the extra cold climate fruit (apples, pears, etc) in a box in the fridge for next week. Warm climate fruit (subtropicals like citrus, tomatoes and bananas) don’t want to be in the fridge. At best they will lose their flavour, at worst they may brown and rot.

A classic high-sided fruit bowl is a perfectly fine option if you have limited space or tend to get through your fruit in good time. 

Having more than one fruit bowl can be a really good idea

As mentioned above, it’s a really good idea to have your apples and bananas in separate fruit bowls/platters from the rest of your fruit (unless you want to speed up the other fruit’s ripening).

It’s also great to have a spare fruit bowl to put your fresh fruit into so you don’t end up with your oldest fruit being left at the bottom of the bowl.

Consider a fruit platter instead of a fruit bowl

In addition to the better airflow mentioned above, the more your fruit is spread out the more easily you can spot the right piece of fruit that’s ready for eating now (or notice a piece of fruit that may have passed its use by date and wants to be removed before it spoils whatever it’s touching).

What about what the fruit bowl is made of?

I’ve seen fruit bowls made out of a lot of things, including wire which is admittedly rather good for airflow, but for some reason I’m rather partial to a wooden fruit bowl. Mainly because wooden bowls tend to make the fruit look really good which is back to making fruit appealing to eat. Anyway, a wooden fruit bowl made from sustainably sourced hardwood has the potential, with a little care, to last for generations and that’s got to be a good choice for you and your planet.

Other points about keeping your fruit good to eat

In addition to maintaining good airflow around the fruit, it’s also a really good idea to  keep your fruit in a location that maintains a fairly consistent temperature. I really don’t recommend hiding your fruit bowl away in the pantry as that’s a sure fire answer to forget to eat any of your fruit but it’s also a good idea to keep your fruit bowl out of the windowsill if that spot gets direct sunlight at some part of the day. That temperature change will drastically reduce the longevity of your fruit. 

There’s a whole lot of really good information out there about how to store different sorts of fruit – particularly if you need to store them for longer periods of time.

A few notable examples are:

• Tomatoes should always be stored out at room temperature (putting tomatoes in a fridge is a guaranteed way to lose their tastiness).
• An avocado or two can also be best at room temperature (unless you are wanting to slow down their ripening).
• Citrus (oranges, lemons, mandarins etc) like to be dry and, ideally, no colder than about 5 degrees celsius.
• Figs, summer fruit and berries need to be kept dry, so although they might ‘keep’ longer in a fridge they tend to taste less good and even go moldy in there. Best to choose a cool part of the table or bench, put them out on a platter where you can see them, and eat within a few days.

Sustainably sourced & made by hand

All the native timbers I use are sustainably sourced, hand turned and / or hand-carved. If you’d like to read more about the process your bowl goes through when I turn a wooden bowl: check out the process of making a wooden bowl.