What to Make With Bananas

As a banana ripens, its starches convert to sugars, so it gets sweeter, softer, and easier to mash. That one fact decides what to cook: yellow bananas with green tips are firm and mild, best for eating fresh or slicing onto cereal and oatmeal. Yellow bananas with brown spots are sweeter and softer, ideal for baking, where the extra sugar and moisture improve the result. Fully brown or black bananas are too mushy to enjoy raw but are at their sweetest, which makes them perfect for banana bread, muffins, and pancakes.

The rule of thumb: the uglier the banana, the better it bakes. If you are buying bananas specifically to bake with, choose the spottiest bunch in the store. They are often discounted, and they are exactly what the recipe wants.

This is the classic destination for 2 to 3 very ripe bananas. A standard loaf uses about 1 cup of mashed banana, mixed into a simple batter of flour, sugar, eggs, butter or oil, and baking soda. The bananas provide most of the moisture and a good share of the sweetness, so very ripe fruit gives a deeper banana flavor than yellow ones.

The one trick that matters: mash the bananas thoroughly and do not overmix the batter. Lumps of banana bake into gummy pockets, and overmixed batter turns out dense and tough. Stir just until the flour disappears.

One mashed ripe banana transforms a batch of pancake batter: it sweetens it, keeps it moist, and lets you cut back on added sugar. Mash one very ripe banana per 1 cup of flour in the batter and stir it in with the wet ingredients. Oat-based pancakes are especially good here because the banana helps bind the oats.

Cook them a touch lower than plain pancakes. The banana's sugars caramelize fast, so medium-low heat gives you golden outsides without burnt spots before the centers set. Flip when bubbles hold on the surface, about 2 to 3 minutes per side.

Frozen banana is the backbone of a thick smoothie: one frozen banana plus about 1 cup of milk or juice, blended with whatever fruit you have, gives a creamy body without any ice. For nice cream, blend 2 to 3 frozen banana chunks with just a splash of milk until it turns into soft-serve, then add cocoa powder, peanut butter, or frozen berries for flavor.

The key is freezing them right: peel, slice into coins, and freeze in a single layer on a tray before bagging. Loose coins blend easily; a solid frozen lump does not. Never freeze bananas in the peel. It turns black and welds itself to the fruit.

Bananas that are fully brown or black are still fine for cooking as long as there is no mold, no fermented or alcoholic smell, and no leaking liquid. Their sugar content is at its peak, which is exactly what banana bread wants. Mash and measure: about 2 to 3 medium bananas make 1 cup.

If you cannot bake today, freeze them now and decide later. Peeled, sliced, and bagged, they keep 3 months in the freezer at their best quality. Label the bag with the date and roughly how many bananas went in, so a future baking session starts with measuring instead of guessing.

Keep unripe bananas on the counter at room temperature. Cold stops them ripening and can damage the texture. Once they are as ripe as you like, move them to the fridge. The peel will darken, sometimes dramatically, but the fruit inside stays good for several more days.

Bananas give off ethylene gas, which ripens nearby fruit faster. That is useful if you want to ripen an avocado or peaches: put them in a paper bag together. It is a nuisance if your other produce is already ripe, so store the banana bunch away from it. And do not refrigerate green bananas unless you want them to stay green.