Are you a fan of banana bread? It’s one of our favorite baked treats, and if you check out my Instagram page you will find it highlighted in every other post, lol I am exaggerating, of course, but I am doing this to emphasize just how much my family loves this dessert 🙂
Banana bread is made with overripe bananas. But, what if you actually don’t want your bananas to turn brown fast, and you are looking for ways to extend their life?
According to an article published on the Eat This, not That! website, bananas are one of the fruits that release a gas called ethylene, along with apples, avocados, mangoes and pears. “Ethylene may sound scary, but don’t worry, it’s completely natural. It’s a gas that helps to ripen fruit or vegetables into that perfect, juicy produce that we all know and love.”
The ethylene gas is released through the stems of the bananas. As the author suggests, we can keep bananas fresh by wrapping the stems with plastic wrap: “Because ethylene production happens quickly, it’s important for bananas to have little exposure to carbon dioxide in order to delay ethylene from releasing. In order to keep bananas from ripening during transport, special boxes or ripening rooms are used. Once bananas hit your preference in ripeness, they will last 3 days in the refrigerator. Bananas also last 2 to 3 months in the freezer.” (“20 Foods You Should Never Store Near Each Other”)
This explains why oftentimes we see bunches of bananas with the stems wrapped in plastic at the grocery store – because vendors want to slow down the ripening process. Plastic wrap works great, and so does aluminum foil.
In my experience, for best results, you should wrap the stem of each banana individually. Since I’m not a fan of plastic and I like to observe minimal waste, I wrap the stems in aluminum foil, which can be reused several times for this purpose. You can also slow down the ripening process by hanging the bananas from a hook, since this makes the ethylene released by the stems work more slowly to affect the whole fruit. This is a method I have yet to try.
Once the bananas turn brown, I freeze them, or I use them immediately in banana bread, which I top with fresh fruit, homemade jams or preserves, or lemon curd, like in the pic below:
I also like to make a vegan banana bread, with vegan substitutions I highlight in this post.
For uses of ripe (not overripe) bananas, you are welcome to check out my posts here, here, here and here.
Do you have any tips for storing bananas to prolong their life? Let me know in the comments 🙂
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