I grow green cooking bananas on the farm
Ever thought of eating a green banana? The starches in green banana are too bitter eaten raw but once they are cooked green bananas are delicious. You may find green, cooking bananas in your local grocery or health food store.
If you are not seeing them, one of the complaints I have heard from produce managers is that people don’t buy them because they don’t know how to cook with them.
It’s an excellent food source and a good replacement for other carbohydrates, like potatoes, you should not overlook in tropical or sub-tropical areas.
Generally, there are three types of bananas; sweet or dessert bananas, plantains and non-plantain cooking bananas. All of these you can eat green though some of the plantains and cooking bananas are often larger in size and more worth the effort.
Removing the skin is much harder on raw green bananas than ripe. (Some recipes call for boiling bananas in their skins.) To remove the green peel, you must first cut the ends off and slice the banana skin lengthwise. Wedge your knife in long-wise rocking and prying the skin loose. It is often sticky with sap. The sap is easily removed from your hands and knife with cooking oil –not soap and water. I keep a jar of gently used cooking oil for such purposes.
Once the skin is gone you can boil, fry or bake green bananas. Most of the recipes I make on the farm, I peel the green bananas first.
Green bananas are also have many health benefits you can read about here.
You can shred green bananas with a regular cheese grater and fry them on a hot skillet with onions, salt and pepper. Cook them like you would potato hash browns.
Grate green bananas
Fry with onions
Slice them into disks and double fry them to make tostones.
Serve hash brown or home-fries style green banana with eggs for breakfast. You can also use them in place of potatoes in potato salads. I also like to use them in a recipe that usually calls for plantains called tostones or twice fried green banana chips. Try growing the many varieties of cooking bananas on your land or ask your local produce manager to carry them. Don’t overlook this excellent source of nutrition and local food product.
hash brown-style fried shredded green banana