A Little Plastic Wrap Can Keep Just-Ripe Bananas Fresher For Longer

Perfectly ripe bananas are a treat any time of year, but like papayas and avocados, trying to enjoy them in the perfect state of maturity can be a challenge. It seems like it's never long before those fresh yellow bunches start acquiring little dark spots that multiply daily. Eventually, you have a dark, mushy banana that lacks any of its original allure. If you were hoping to make a loaf of banana bread with them, you're in luck, but any hopes beyond this are as dried up as those stem ends. 

The best way to keep your bananas from going to the dark side is to wrap those stems in plastic as soon as you bring them home. This technique works best if you leave them bunched together rather than separate them. Like many other fruits and vegetables, bananas produce ethylene, a gas emitted from certain produce as it ripens. The bulk of a banana doesn't release much ethylene, but the stems do. Wrapping the stems will prevent the ethylene from ruining the rest of the banana, keeping them yellow and firm for longer.

Ethylene is a gas that assists the ripening process of fruits and vegetables. It's what helps get these foods to reach their peak, but since it has no regard for what we consider ripe, shortly takes them from fit for snacking to fit for trashing. As ethylene is released from the banana stems, it permeates the area, and when it comes into contact with the flesh, hastens the aging process. By trapping the ethylene in the stem with plastic wrap, it doesn't have a chance to manipulate the rest of the banana. Wrapping the stem of a freshly-bought bunch should allow them to last up to a week on your counter.

While you normally want to keep ethylene from maturing fruits and veggies too quickly, you can use it to your advantage if you bring home extra-green bananas. Just stick them in a brown paper bag accompanied by an ethylene-producing apple and let it sit at room temperature for a couple of days, depending on how aged you want them to become. 

Double-check the bag daily to ensure your bananas aren't becoming too ripe, and remove them once they have reached your desired level of freshness. Then, wrap the stems in plastic to keep them in that state as long as possible. Other banana ripening techniques will get the job done faster, but this process allows the bananas to develop naturally over a short period.

If you want to extend their shelf life even further, you can store bananas in the refrigerator once they start showing signs of overripening. Putting bananas in the fridge will slow the maturing process, but too long in the refrigerator, and your bananas can start to become mushy. Bananas at their peak level of quality only stay like that for a few days in the fridge.

If an abundance of bananas are passing their prime on your counter, freezing them is a great way to save them from the trash. Cut your ripe bananas into slices and lay them out on a sheet pan. Pop the sheet pan in the freezer, and after about one hour, your banana slices should be firm enough to transfer into a freezer-safe bag for storage. Frozen banana slices are great as nutritious ice cream toppings, and they can take a creamy banana smoothie to the next level. But if you just want to keep fresh bananas looking nice (not in a bowl, preferably), wrap up those stems when you get them home.