Bananas

[Angela Alaimo]

Banana Fritters to go with your daquiris!

I've heard more than once that you can indeed freeze bananas, as long as you're going to do something mushy with them later, like bread, ice cream, muffins, etc.

[Terrasanct]

Thanks for the suggestions--does anyone have a recipe for banana sauce?

I fried up one sliced banana this morning into chips. They tasted not bad, salted. The slices did an amusing thing in the pan--they made circles and zigazags around the pan while frying. I've never seen anything else do that.

And if I get a monkey, I'll remember about the monkey chow.

[fryguy]

One of our cooks at work made French banana soup yesterday.

Caramelize down some bananas with brown sugar and butter, add a splash of coconut rum. Puree with enough cream to get a soupy consistency. Season with cinnamon, etc.

Fry off some plantain chips, place on top of soup. Place a very thin layer of cream cheese on top of the plaintain "crouton." Sprinkle sugar on top of the cheese, put under a broiler or brulee sugar with a torch.

[Terrasanct]

Yummm...

Now I just need to make ten batches of it.

[Toliver]

Use what you can, freeze what you can then donate the rest to a local shelter or food pantry before they go bad.

[Sugarella]

If you're going to be using a bunch for muffins, pancake batter, cakes etc. just let them turn really black, then freeze them whole right in their peel. The peel will keep the freezer from adversely affecting them, and black bananas have a much more intense flavour, well suited for batter.

For banana chips, just slice the fresh ones, dip in straight lemon juice to keep them from turning brown, then dehydrate in a low oven (about 150 degrees). They'll store practically forever in a airtight container if they're fully dehydrated.

I can't think of anything else to do with bananas other than what's been mentioned, sorry.

[snowangel]

I should have known there'd be another topic here about what to do with too many bananas.

[jackal10]

Dry them. Semi-dried banana look like dog excrement but are delicious.

They also keep.

[Patrick S]

Its not what you asked for, but banana cake and banana bread with orange zest are great ways to use bananas.

[Terrasanct]

Snowangel, thanks for bringing up that thread. I had done a search but it didn't turn up.

Toliver, the food bank here is really picky about what they accept, otherwise I would. I don't even know if they take fresh produce at all. It's a shame, because I get a lot at a time every once in a while.

The problems I'm having are that it's only the two of us at home and I can't eat more than one banana a day (too sweet) and so I'm trying to find something I can freeze or can. Of course, the nice thing about freezing them is that I can make something another day when I'm more inspired.

I still have dried banana chips from last time, and frankly, we don't eat them.

Thanks for all the suggestions.

[Bridie]

With fresh food, you can sometimes give it to charities that provide people with prepared meals rather than foodbanks. Shelters, etc. that offer meals to the people they assist often take leftovers from events. If you did want to get rid of a load of produce, an organization like that might be more likely to take it than a foodbank.

[sadistick]

Donate some.

[chef koo]

chop the bananas into chunks. beat some egg whites. dip the banana into the egg and coat with corn starch. deep fry. do the same with some kind of white fish like cod. stir fry them together with sambal.

tired of pork and apples? try pork with bananas.

try pickling them. gotta leave them whole. if you peel and pickle they'll turn to mush.

[mizducky]

How about some banana chutney? I've never made it myself, but it sounds like an excellent way to preserve some of your bananas. Looks like there are other banana chutney recipes out there on the Web too--the above-cited one is just the first one I turned up.

[JustKay]

Has anyone mentioned banana pancakes? Not pancakaes eaten with sliced bananas though. I don't have an exact recipe. I just add enough flour to mashed bananas, some salt, sugar, and grated coconuts and a little water to achieve the right consistency. The batter should be thicker than regular pancake batter, that you need to spread it out on the pan. It's best cooked on banana leaf lining your pan/gridle.

The same batter will make banana err, hushpuppies. Just add some baking soda to the batter and drop spoonfuls of batter into hot oil. Deep fry till golden brown. If you scroll midway here

under the topic CEKODOK PISANG .... you can see what they are.

Or you can make a kind of dessert we have here ... bananas cooked in coconut milk, brown sugar and sago pearls. Usually we add some pandan leaves, but you can skip this if you can't find any. Just be careful to not let the coconut milk to reach the rolling boil stage or it will start to separate ... eeeewwww.

I just remembered more - steamed banana cakes, upside down banana cake, banana tarts, steamed banana bundles .... and a few more Malay desserts that uses either coconut milk or grated coconuts.

Edited March 29, 2006 by JustKay (log)

[deltadoc]

Freeze them, peel and dip in chocolate, wrap and re-freeze till use. There was/is a cart that sells/sold them in NYC a few years back. Chocolate dipped frozen bananas. QUite good, actually!

doc

[Teri Everitt]

I made some banana caramel spring rolls once, they were pretty good. I think the recipe is on Epicurious. Just make sure you fry them in clean oil........banana spring rolls that taste like fried chicken aren't so nice

[scubadoo97]

The banana trees in my back yard are in full swing. The problem with a stalk of bananas is they all ripen at the same time. I cut one stalk down the other day before heading out of town. Today I am blessed with a few dozen ripe bananas. Besides banana bread and smoothies, anyone have good recipes that use a lot of bananas? I have a couple of stalks that will be ready to cut down in the next week. In the end I will end up freezing some and giving away a bunch.

[Pan]

The one traditional Malaysian banana snack food JustKay didn't mention is pisang goreng -- i.e., fried bananas. The Malaysian version is to fry the bananas whole. The Carribean method is to fry them already cut up. Both methods are good. I had a really delicious dessert many years ago at a Cuban restaurant called Bayamo, which was on Broadway around Great Jones or so. It was fried plantains flambeed in rum, with dulce de leche ice cream (made in-house long before Haagen-Dazs started making that flavor). You could do the same thing with bananas in quantity, have a party, and get people to bring more rum so that you could flambee more of them. Or just fry a large number of them and have a party.

[Milagai]

The banana trees in my back yard are in full swing.  The problem with a stalk of bananas is they all ripen at the same time.  I cut one stalk down the other day before heading out of town.  Today I am blessed with a few dozen ripe bananas.  Besides banana bread and smoothies, anyone have good recipes that use a lot of bananas?  I have a couple of stalks that will be ready to cut down in the next week.  In the end I will end up freezing some and giving away a bunch.

←

you could "nip this in the bud" by cutting off some

of the flowers, and cooking those.

Southern Indian and Eastern Indian (=Bengal) recipes

have lots of banana flower recipes, also Thai, e.g.:

http://www.thaitable.com/Thai/recipes/Tropical_Yum.htm

http://www.ganeshvilla.com/bananas/banana_flower_salad.htm

http://www.bawarchi.com/contribution/contrib5006.html

http://pachakam.com/recipe.asp?id=996

There are dozens more on Google....

Milagai