How to Keep Bananas from Turning Brown: Part 2

It just keeps getting better, folks.


In the past week since I posted my oh-so-scientific how-to for keeping bananas from turning brown, it’s been kind of a running joke around the office that the bananas post has been going, well, bananas online. Is it weird that it makes me sort of happy to know that I’m not the only one who A) loves green bananas, and B) didn’t know to keep ’em that way? I’ve now done my Saran wrap trick three times, on three different bunches of bananas, and it’s worked every single time. Win!

A few Facebook commenters suggested some small tweaks that might lengthen the bananas’ shelf-life even more, so I was more than happy to try them out to see if they’d work. Here are my takeaways.

1. Saran Wrap Is Still Your Very Best Friend

Individually wrapping banana stems with plastic wrap, as I described in the original post, is definitely, definitely the way to go. If you do nothing else, this trick alone will keep your bananas greener longer.

2. Use Tape to Seal the Plastic Wrap

Someone on Facebook asked if using tape instead of plastic wrap would work. I found that it wasn’t quite as effective, but plastic wrap plus tape is a winner. If you feel like going the extra mile, a bit of tape to hold down the edges of the plastic wrap seems to help seal in the gasses even more.

3. Store Bananas with Another Piece of Unripe Produce

This, by far, is the very best tweak of all. It dawned on one of our smarty-pants readers that maybe—just maaaaybe—if you put an unripe piece of fruit near the individually wrapped bananas, perhaps it would absorb some of the excess ethylene gas coming off the bananas to help keep them greener longer.

I tried this last week with a rock-hard avocado, which I stuck in the middle of a fruit bowl with the bananas arranged artfully around it. Guess what, y’all? I totally got a two-for-one! Not only did the bananas stay as green as the day I got them, the avocado ripened absolutely perfectly. We ate the avocado last night (mmm, homemade guacamole), and I woke up to find that the bananas had finally begun to turn; they were pocked with a few light brown freckles but still had green stems. So, before I left for work this morning, I threw a couple of rock-hard peaches in the bowl to see if they’d work as well as the avocado. I’ll update this post in a few days to tell you how it goes.

Do you have any other suggestions for how to keep bananas from turning too quickly? I’m all ears!

Photo: Shutterstock