Preservation: A Challenge

• A tropical treat, bananas' strong, inedible peel protects a soft inner fruit with a sweet flavor that resembles honey. Unfortunately, bananas ripen very quickly at room temperature as their starch turns to sugar and their texture becomes mushy. The speed with which bananas ripen frequently presents the challenge of how to preserve the fruit for future cooking and baking.

Bananas Turn Mushy

• Ordinarily, rum-soaked fruit creates a delicious preserve useful for cooking and eating. A traditional German recipe called "rumtopf" uses rum to preserve summer fruits in layers that blend for about four months. But bananas are one of the fruits specifically not recommended for making rumtopf, because bananas turn mushy so quickly. Not even rum can keep bananas from disintegrating in this way.

Freeze Your Bananas

• Freezing offers a better way to preserve bananas, including banana mash, than the time-honored method of dousing the fruit with rum. Bananas that have ripened to the point that their skins are either spotted with brown or totally black can be peeled, placed in plastic freezer bags and kept frozen for up two to three months. The bananas can be frozen whole, sliced or mashed. If mashed, it's best to measure the amount of the mash and mark that on the bag for cooking purposes. Bananas will keep up to three months in the freezer.

Make Banana Wine

• Aside from freezing banana mash to use within a few months, squeezing some lemon juice over them is an effective way to keep mashed bananas for a day or two. Lemon juice's citric acid interferes with the fruit enzymes that react with oxygen and cause banana mash to turn brown. As little as a tablespoon of lemon juice blended well into a cup of mashed bananas can be sufficient to preserve the fruit until you can use it.