Wondering how to freeze bananas for later use? Here’s an easy way to preserve your fruit and recipes to use them in!
This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Last summer I found a 40-pound box of bananas for only $5 at my local wholesale store. I couldn’t pass up a deal like that but I had no idea how to use all those bananas! That experience prompted me to learn more about freezing bananas and how to use frozen bananas in recipes we already loved! I’ve kept bananas in our freezer for baking and smoothies ever since. Here’s how you can become a banana-freezing pro too!
Table of Contents
How to Freeze Bananas
I found that this 3-step process for freezing bananas was the quickest and most useful way to preserve bananas for banana bread and smoothies throughout the year. Never throw away another bad banana! This is a great method, too, to save money if you find a good deal on bananas and want to buy in bulk.
1. Peel The Bananas
It’s possible to freeze a banana in the peel but it’s difficult to take that peel off a frozen banana. It’s even less fun to remove it from a mushy, thawed banana. You’ll thank yourself later if you take the time to peel your bananas before freezing. This goes for ripe or brown bananas.
2. Package the Bananas
The best way to package frozen bananas depends on how you plan to use them later. If you want to use your bananas in smoothies, you may want to slice your bananas into chunks before freezing.When freezing a large amount of thin banana slices you may want to flash freeze before packaging. If you want to use them for banana bread, go ahead and leave the bananas whole. Regardless of how you slice (or don’t) your bananas, you’ll want to freeze them in a Ziplock freezer bag to protect them from freezer burn.
Because I mostly use bananas banana bread, which I know uses 3 bananas, I packaged my bananas into bags of 3. 3 bananas fit well into a quart-size freezer bag. This made the bananas stack nicely in my freezer and easy to pull out when I was ready to bake!
3. Freeze the Bananas
The best way to freeze bananas is to lay them flat in the freezer. Some people will say that you should flash-freeze your bananas before packaging them so they don’t stick together. I don’t think this is necessary unless you’re freezing a large amount of thin banana slices. To freeze bananas for banana bread, I laid my bags of packaged bananas out on a cookie sheet that I placed in the chest freezer. If you’re freezing a lot of bananas, you can stack multiple trays of bananas. Once they were mostly frozen (a couple of hours) the packages fit nicely into a freezer bin.
How to Thaw Frozen Bananas for Baking
There are 2 ways to thaw frozen bananas and they are both super easy! First, you can leave them out on the counter for a couple of hours if you plan to use them that day. If you want to pull them out the night before you can leave them in the fridge to thaw. When frozen bananas thaw, they get very mushy and have extra water liquid around them. You’ll want to drain this liquid before baking, or your bake may turn out more dense and with less rise. Sally’s Baking does a great side-by-side comparison of banana bread baked with and without the liquid removed in this post.
Smoothie Recipes Using Frozen Bananas
Baking Recipes Using Frozen Bananas
FAQ
Freezer bananas are best used within 3 months. Longer than that and they are still safe to eat but can become overly mushy and freezer burned.
Yes, you can freeze yellow or brown bananas. If you freeze fresh, yellow bananas, they will turn brown as they thaw
Yes, frozen bananas turn brown as they thaw. This is normal. They are still safe to consume and work well for baking!
Frozen bananas thaw in 2 hours or less
You May Also Like: