My Cooking Tip # 10: How To Store Bananas

Hello my dear readers,

Here we are, with my tenth tip in the kitchen:

How to store bananas.

Eating bananas is equivalent to filling up with taste and energy. Banana is one of the most nutritious fruits, but how to store them?

Eating bananas is equivalent to filling up with taste and energy. Banana is one of the most nutritious fruits and can also be an excellent, rich and healthy snack, to be enjoyed at any time of the day. There is a problem, however, and anyone who is a regular consumer of bananas knows it very well: they rot quickly, very quickly. Maybe too fast. How to recognize a ripe banana from one that has gone bad? And above all: how to keep them?

How to recognize the various types of bananas

The bananas on the market are usually harvested still green, but the fact of being separated from the tree does not stop their ripening process. When we choose them in the shop of our trusted greengrocer, or perhaps among the counters of a supermarket, we can recognize three different types of bananas, which are equivalent to different ripening processes of the fruit:

• there are yellow bananas with green tips, meaning that bananas are still not very ripe and a little unripe;
• there are bright yellow colored bananas, the perfect ones to be eaten immediately because they are ripe at the right point;
• and finally, those that begin to show brown spots, an unmistakable sign of ripening at an advanced stage. It must be said that the riper the bananas, the sweeter they are, and this could be good for certain types of recipes, like banana bread for example.

How to store bananas in the best way

Usually, the “life span” of a commercial banana is three days. What if during this period we don’t want to eat it? There is a practical trick to extend the life of a banana: wrap the stems with plastic wrap, a common kitchen cling film. This little trick is enough to “double” the life of a banana, allowing it to be kept for a whole week without it blackening. The reason? The film retains ethylene, the gas naturally produced by the banana during the ripening process. 

Another tip, in case you have cut the banana into slices or small pieces: sprinkle them with lemon juice and keep them in a container, they will not blacken.

How not to store bananas

Here are some useful tips on how not to store bananas. First of all: never put them in the refrigerator, but only at room temperature. At low temperatures, which are not typical of their habitat, these tasty fruits quickly spoil, blackening very quickly. Also, if you keep them in a container, do not place them next to the apples: once again, ethylene is involved. Conversely, if the bananas are too unripe and you are in a hurry to eat them, placing them next to the apples might be a good idea to have them available after a few hours. Enjoy your bananas.

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