15 Easy Recipes to Try

You buy a bunch of bananas with the best intentions, mostly to slice and eat on cereal or top yogurt for breakfast.

Or maybe you plan to eat one every afternoon as a pick-me-up since bananas are loaded with natural sugars to give you a boost. Vitamin C and potassium provide more healthy benefits. Oh, and fiber.

Then two or three of the bunch turn on you as they ripen. First they sport tiny bruise spots, then the bruises overtake the fruit until they don’t look like anything you want to eat. Rest easy, overripe bananas are not inedible but have reached another stage in their development.

Something magical happens as bananas ripen and transform from bright yellow to that unappetizing brown/black. They get sweeter as the starches develop.

So before you pitch or compost them, heed our recipe suggestions on what to do with overripe bananas. Think banana ice cream (mix slices into vanilla ice cream), banana cream pie (a smoothie with a vanilla wafer crunch), classic banana bread and even banana pancakes and muffins.

How to Freeze Overripe Bananas

If you have overripe bananas but aren’t ready to use them right away, freeze them. You may be tempted to put the ripe bananas, peel and all, into freezer bags and toss into the chill. It’s best to peel ripe bananas first or you will struggle to get the thin peel from the frozen banana once it’s thawed.

Also, keep in mind that thawed ripe bananas are best for baked goods, smoothies, puddings, and anything where the fruit is mixed in. They will mostly be mushy when thawed so aren’t great for eating out of hand.

Here are two ways to freeze overripe bananas:

1. Peel whole ripe bananas and put them into freezer bags. Squeeze as much air as you can from the bag, and write the date on it with a smudge-proof marker. The fruit can be used frozen or thawed depending on your recipe.
2. Peel ripe bananas and then slice in ½-inch pieces. Place banana slices on a baking sheet lined with wax paper and freeze for…