Thanks everyone who submitted recipes and ideas for ripe bananas! I am looking forward to trying my hand at several of them. I will let you know the verdict once I do. What I hadn’t thought of when I did that post is that readers might be interested in how I freeze bananas. I had several ask, so I thought I would do a quick post on how I freeze bananas.
My frozen bananas in my freezer!
It really is quite involved. (Just kidding!) It is actually super, super easy. I throw the banana, in the skin, in the freezer. Done. Then, once I am ready to use the banana I put it in the refrigerator or on the counter to thaw and once it has I peel back the skin and clean out the “insides”. If I was wanting to be really freezer friendly I would put them in a gallon zipper bag to prevent freezer burn. Although, I can’t say I have ever had a problem with that in the past which is probably why I don’t take the extra step. I also know people that cut them up and flash freeze them. Like the reader yesterday who commented:
When I find bananas on sale, I too stock up. You can only eat so many before they turn brown so I peel them and cut them into 6 pieces. I then place them on a wax paper or foil lined cookie sheet and put them in the freezer for a couple of hours till hardened. I then take them off the cookie sheet and place them into a ziploc bag. Now I have bananas for recipes.
This method will also work well if you are willing to take the extra time. Either way, they are still quite usable for baking. And apparently for smoothies! 🙂 So now you know my banana freezing secret. To add your favorite banana recipe or to get some ideas for using ripe bananas, visit yesterday’s post.
7 Comments
Join the discussionI freeze my bananas the same way-just stick those ripe babies in there! i just pulled out two today for banana bread. 🙂 although, phil often comments when he opens the freezer, “These bananas just look DISGUSTING!”
when I freeze mine, they get gray and mushy… what should I be doing different?
That is definitely how they get so you aren’t doing anything wrong. If you use them right away in a blender they tend not to get as mushy so fast. However, the appearance is definitely not as pretty as fresh.
I peel them and put them in freezer bags.
I LOVE to eat frozen bananas with a pc. of dark chocolate. It’s a low cal yummy treat and the frozen bananas taste like ice cream to me!
You can do it when they are ripe or over ripe. I use over ripe ones in my breads and muffins.
I too just put them in the freezer whole and take them out as needed. My sister was at my house recently from out of state and she asks just what are you going to do with these black banans? I told her make bread. She is so not frugal.
I have tried freezing bananas before, but later when I take them out of the freezer they’re all SO, SO wet, just mushy. I don’t mind that they’ve gone dark since they’re for baking it’s just that they’re SO, SO WET and MUSHY. Am I leaving them too late to freeze as coming from a “produce market” family my father always said the flavour is better when they’re BLACK not just turning black, but BLACK. As for other fruits I do the tray freezing then bagging process, but not sure of this process for BLACK bananas.
It may be that they are just mushy prior to freezing, (my family has had this same problem lately with bananas). One thing I do when I’m worried about it is peel and chop the bananas prior to freezing so they’re in smaller pieces. Maybe see if that would help?