My dad is particular about his breakfast. He eats the same meal every morning: jam-smeared toast, a melon wedge, and, most importantly, hot oatmeal topped with blueberries and sliced banana. Over the years, Dad has schooled me in banana selection. He doesn’t just set a bunch in the cart. That, he explained, would mean eating a firm, flavorless banana one day and a mushy, overripe one several days later. I have to admit it: My dad is right.
For his weekly banana supply, Dad chooses individual fruits of varying ripeness. Each banana reaches peak flavor on a different day, letting him peel the sweetest one every morning.
Why Bananas Ripen All at Once
I’ve tried many tricks for ripening bananas quickly, like bagging them, or slowly, like hanging them on a hook. Every trick ignores a simple fact: Store-bought bananas, even organic ones, are harvested and transported while green and hard to minimize bruising, then treated with ethylene gas to encourage timed ripening.
Bananas—like apples, pears, and some vegetables—naturally produce ethylene and are sensitive to it. Exposing an underripe banana to the gas helps ensure that it ripens evenly from top to bottom. However, its neighbors in the bunch will also ripen at roughly the same rate.
Basically, commercial banana bunches are meant to ripen simultaneously. That’s great for banana bread or banana cream pie, but when I want one perfectly ripe banana a day, I follow Dad’s lead and buy individual bananas instead of a bunch.
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The Trick for Choosing Perfect Bananas
Grocery store staff usually refresh the banana display with fruit from the same shipment or even the same box. So to create most of his “variety pack,” as he calls it, my dad sorts through single bananas that other customers have set aside while downsizing a bunch. Dad chooses by color: yellow to eat first, greenish yellow for a few days later, and completely green for the week’s end. The system works well, Dad says, until “your mom eats my banana and gets me out of sync.” So for a steady supply of perfectly ripe bananas, it helps to get the entire family on board.
Read the original article on Simply Recipes