Description
Use this simple guide to freeze and thaw your ripe bananas for baking recipes. You can peel the bananas or leave the peel on, it doesn’t make a difference either way. If leaving the peel on, the peels considerably darken in the freezer.
Ingredients
- 4 ripe bananas (or however many you have)
- freezer container
Instructions
- Place bananas in a freezer container. Feel free to peel first or leave the peel on. You can freeze bananas in a large zipped-top freezer bag or any covered container, such as these glass freezer containers.
- Freeze bananas for up to 3 months.
- Defrost: Remove the frozen bananas from the freezer and thaw at room temperature for 2 hours, or in the refrigerator overnight. Or you can defrost in your microwave at 50% power. The time varies depending on your microwave, but for 4–5 bananas, this probably takes around 3 minutes.
- Bananas release liquid as they thaw. For best success in your baking recipe, pour all or most of this liquid out because it could add too much liquid to your batter. (Tip: If your banana baked good recipe calls for a liquid like milk, you could use this brown banana liquid instead. See recipe Note.)
- Gently mash thawed, strained bananas with a fork and then use in your baking recipe, such as banana bread.
Notes
- If it’s helpful: 1 very large banana usually gives you about 1/2 cup (115g) of mashed banana. When freezing and thawing the banana, this amount may be a little less since you are discarding some excess liquid. So if a recipe calls for 2 cups of mashed bananas (usually about 4 very large bananas, or 460g), you may need 5 frozen, thawed bananas.
- Using the brown banana liquid: If your recipe calls for a liquid such as milk, you can replace some of it with the banana liquid. This banana cake, for example, uses 1 and 1/2 cups (360ml) buttermilk. You may get 1/4 cup (60ml) brown liquid from your 3 frozen and thawed bananas, so go ahead and replace 1/4 cup (60ml) of buttermilk with the banana liquid.
- Can I combine frozen, thawed, mashed bananas with bananas that have not been frozen? Yes. If you have ripe bananas on your counter AND frozen bananas in your freezer, you can combine the mashed ripe bananas and the frozen, thawed, strained, mashed bananas to yield however much mashed banana you need in your baking recipe.