Bananas are a great source of many essential vitamins and minerals. This includes B vitamins, magnesium, potassium, zinc and calcium. They are also delicious to eat raw and can add a little something special to many sweet and savory dishes.
However buying and storing bananas is not always easy. Keeping bananas at the peak of their ripeness can be a challenging task. If bananas are under-ripe then the fruit flesh can be too firm with a bland, almost starchy taste. When bananas are over-ripe then they can develop black spots and the flesh can be too soft with a cloying, over-perfumed sweetness.
This makes it a challenge to keep bananas and many people find they end up throwing most of their banana bunch away.
Top Tips for Fruit Storage
However you can enjoy the perfect bananas at home with some simple but effective tricks. You need to master the art of storing bananas in order to enjoy these delicious fruits at their very best. You can buy bananas online these days and that is a great way to get access to top quality fruits.
With food delivery you can have you groceries delivered straight to your door and save time and money. Here are just a few neat tips to get you started with buying and storing bananas:
1. Don’t Buy a Whole Bunch – bananas come in convenient bunches. However you don’t need to buy one single bunch. Pick over the bananas and select a few green bananas from one bunch and then a few near ripe ones from another. If you buy all from the same bunch then invariably they will all ripen at the same time and you will not have a chance to eat them all before they go over.
2. Seasonal Buying – bananas are available all year round. However the ripeness of the banana will depend on the season in many cases. Food distributors keep bananas in ripening vaults. This enables them to very accurately control the ripening of the fruit. In the summer months they sell a lot more bananas. This means they will accelerate the ripening process so that when the fruit hits the shelves they are ready to eat. In the winter when the turnover is slower they delay the ripening. This means the fruit will have a longer shelf life. Just remember that if you are buying in the winter that bananas can take longer to ripen. In the summer you will need to eat them more quickly as it is likely they have been pre-ripened before arriving at the store.
3. Speed Up Ripening – you can help to control banana ripening at home as well. Other fruits like tomatoes and apples produce ethylene gas. This triggers ripening. If you put an unripe banana in a back with a ripe tomato or apple it will accelerate the ripening process for you.
4. Slow Down Ripening – you can also slow down ripening by removing bananas from sources of ethylene gas. Separate bananas from other fruits and store separately. Also remove the riper bananas from the bunch to slow ripening. Refrigeration can also slow down the process of ripening fruit.
5. Don’t Refrigerate Unripe Fruit – you can refrigerate bananas that have already started to ripen. However if you try and refrigerate unripened fruit it may spoil it.
6. Banana Hooks – you can buy banana hooks for the kitchen. This enables you to hang small bunches of bananas up. This can be a good idea as this lets the gases permeate all the fruits in the bunch to create more even ripening.
Enjoy the best of bananas with these great buying and storage tips. These delicious fruits are a great way to add essential vitamins and minerals to your diet. As well as making great snacks bananas can also be added to many sweet and savoury dishes including pancakes, pies, bread and cakes.
Carlo Pandian is a freelance writer and blogs about e-commerce, food wastage and organic products. He loves trying different food delivery services such as Milk & More and discovering new recipes on the Internet.
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