Something Unexpectedly Cool Happens When You Use Banana Peel as an Ingredient
Something Unexpectedly Cool Happens When You Use Banana Peel as an Ingredient
Every time you peel a banana and dispose of the skin, you're throwing away a tasty, nutritious snack.
Just a reminder: bananas could be heavily treated with pesticides.
Will washing them in water help? I mean I eat them with my bare hands so I’m guessing I eat lots of pesticides everyday.
I don't think that washing will be enough to remove all traces of pesticides. I assume that some of the pesticides are embedded in the peel by the time the fruit is harvested. But don't take my word for it.
It might be better to just pick untreated fruit from the beginning, if possible.
You can also make a bread spread with them.
Here's the recipe!
- a dozen banana peels, washed and scrubbed, cut into large chunks (frozen peels are OK)
- ½ litre of water
- 800g of sugar
- juice of a whole lime
- random amount of cloves and cinnamon
- Cook the banana peels in the water, stirring occasionally, for five minutes or so.
- Blend the mix.
- Cook the blend again, alongside the other ingredients, stirring occasionally, for 40 additional minutes. It should thicken quite a bit, to the point that it detaches itself from the bottom of the pot. Let it cool and it's done.
You could also cover them in syrup and fry them, but that requires a lot of peels, and unlike the recipe above you can't freeze the peels, it gets a weird texture.
That much sugar makes anything taste good though. May as well blend lawn clippings.
It sounds like a lot but it's roughly the same weight in banana peels and sugar, it's typical for this sort of jam. For reference: you could sub the peels for the same weight in strawberries, and the recipe still works.
EDIT: it is by no means something healthy to eat in large quantities. It's a caloric bomb, just like any jam. But it works great as a bread spread, the banana peels won't go to waste, and it packs a lot of potassium too. (Most potassium from bananas is in the peel, not in the flesh.)
I also have a banana cake recipe if anyone is interested. It uses the whole banana but you can tweak it to use just the peels.