A poll of the BA staff revealed that, when eating bananas out of hand, most prefer the fruit just before it reaches that prime state of ripeness—when it’s mostly yellow but still slightly green around the tips. At this point, it has a firmer texture ideal for snacking, adding to a bowl of cereal, or slicing to use fresh in desserts, like banana pudding, banana cream pie, or banoffee pie.
But there’s a special place in our hearts for the speckled specimens. As bananas ripen, their natural starches convert into sugars, which is why some baking recipes (like banana bread) call for overripe bananas—they add sweetness, moisture, and more concentrated banana flavor to baked goods.
How to ripen bananas, depending on how much time you have:
A general rule is to set green bananas out to ripen 3 to 5 days before you plan to use them. But if you’re a procrastinator, don’t worry: The BA test kitchen knows a few tricks to expedite the process.
Keep in mind that if your bananas are still lime-green, only time will transform them into the spotty-sweet fruit you want for banana bread. These techniques work best if your bunch is almost ripe but needs a little push toward the finish line.
One to two days: Stash them in a paper bag
Need ripe bananas tomorrow? This is the low-effort trick for you: Storing your bananas in a paper bag traps the fruits’ naturally occurring ethylene gas, which expedites the ripening process. (Note that our colleagues at Epicurious found that storing bananas in a plastic bag had the opposite effect, prolonging the fruits’ ripening.)
Storing bananas in a paper bag will help the bunch ripen within one to two days. Need ripe bananas sooner than that? Turn to one of the following methods.
Five to ten minutes: Roast them
Associate food editor Kendra Vaculin went through plenty of bananas while developing her Buttermilk Banana Cake. If she’s working with an underripe bunch, Kendra roasts the whole lot—separated, skins on—at 250° until they’re just warm, about five to 10 minutes. This quick stint in the oven helps the fruit soften enough to incorporate easily into a batter.
When she really wants to dial up the banana flavor, Kendra roasts whole, unpeeled bananas for upwards of an hour, until the skins are completely black. A long roasting time concentrates the sweetness, producing a caramelized banana pulp that tastes “almost like banana Laffy Taffy,” Kendra says. Long-roasting bananas will cause the fruits to shrink to about half their size, so you’ll want to roast more bananas than your recipe explicitly calls for.
Less than five minutes: Microwave them
When food editor Shilpa Uskokovic needs ripe bananas ASAP, she puts them in the microwave. While this technique does not turn the starches into sugars, it helps the fruit soften, Shilpa says, which makes for easier mashing. Microwave unpeeled bananas in 30-second intervals, until just warm on the outside and soft on the inside.
