Photo: hurricanehank (Shutterstock)
Everybody has a favorite stage of banana ripeness. Do you prefer them still slightly tinged green? Uniformly yellow? Lightly freckled? Soft and beginning to show brown stripes along the bottom? Whatever it is, act fast, because they’ll be a different color tomorrow.
In my house, we all pretty much agree: The plain yellow stage is best. One of my kids prefers them a bit green, and I’ll still be willing to eat them as long as there’s more yellow than brown. But how do you make sure you always have yellow bananas handy, without going for a mid-week banana run? It’s simple: Buy two bunches of bananas.
You want one yellow bunch and one green bunch
A Korean grocery chain reportedly once packaged a seven-shade spectrum of bananas as a fastidiously exacting solution to this problem. If your grocery store carries enough of a variety of ripeness, you can try this yourself; they usually don’t mind if you break up the bunches.
But there’s a simpler way, good enough for most of us: If they have both yellow and green bananas available, buy a small bunch of each. Eat the yellow ones first, and by the time you finish them, the green ones will be just about ready.
Now all you have to do is calibrate the size of the bunches to the number of banana-eaters in your household, and work out your timing based on the range of banana shades that you each are willing to eat. Dial that in, and you’ll be able to have yellow bananas all week from a single shopping trip. And if you screw up—well, there are always smoothies, banana bread, and these creative recipes for mushy bananas.
