Banana Skin Recipes

Are these bananas over-ripe? Or are they perfectly ripe?

Who knew you could eat the skins of a banana? It’s amazing what we have been conditioned into discarding as not edible isn’t it? The amount of delicious and healthy fruit and vegetable offcuts – skins, leaves, stalks…that we just throw away is actually quite shocking. We could make our weekly food shop go so much further if we re-learn what is edible and what isn’t. Lack of dietary fibre is a big health issue here in the west. It’s so important to eat enough roughage to help your digestive system move, for bowel health, and to balance your blood sugar and lower cholesterol. Dietary fibre is found in fruits, vegetables, wholegrains, nuts, seeds and legumes.

Eating banana skins is not just about increasing your fibre intake. Banana skins are rich in potassium (amazing for your heart health), magnesium (helps your muscles and nerves work properly, maintains protein, bone and DNA, levels blood sugar and pressure), B6 (which improves your sleep) and B12 (keeps your blood and nerve cells happy, helps make DNA), Vitamin A (great for eyesight), antioxidants (lowers cancer risk) and more!

So here are a couple of ways to cook banana skins. Always choose organic to avoid nasty pesticides/herbicides and give your bananas a good rinse. Riper banana skins are softer and sweeter. If you don’t fancy making a meal out of banana skins, you can always blend some into your smoothie or next batch of banana bread too.

Liz x

Save Your Banana Skin ‘Bacon’

Rescue your ripe banana skins from heading to the bin by putting them in a box in the fridge to add to smoothies – or make this vegan bacon. Yes, this recipe is a bit of a gimmick, but it is surprisingly delicious. It’s all about the smokey bacon marinade of course (which you can use to marinade strips of aubergine, mushrooms, courgette, carrots etc to make whatever plant-based bacon you desire). Banana skins bring a light banana flavour to the party along with a deliciously chewy texture. Definitely worth a go!

Ingredients

  • 1 tbsp olive oil
  • 2 tbsp soy sauce
  • 1 tbsp sugar or maple syrup
  • 1 tsp garlic granules/powder
  • 1 tsp nutritional yeast flakes
  • 1 tbsp smoked paprika
  • 3-4 ripe banana skins, washed

Method

  1. Mix all the ingredients (except for the banana skins) in a container that will hold 3 or 4 banana skins. I use a sandwich box with a lid.
  2. Chop the tough ends off of 3-4 banana skins and tear them into strips (a banana skin should naturally tear into 3 or 4 strips). Use a spoon to scrape off the phloem bundles – that’s the name for the soft, stringy bits of banana stuck to the inside of the skins. These can be added to smoothies or banana bread.
  3. Place the scraped banana skins into the marinade and mix well ensuring each piece is coated in the marinade. Leave to soak up the flavour for at least 20 minutes. You can even prepare this the night before and pop in the fridge, then cook the bacon for breakfast in the morning.
  4. Fry the strips of banana skin with a little oil in a medium-high frying pan on both sides until sizzling and crispy. Enjoy as a side of your cooked breakfast plate or in a sandwich. Crumble over pasta or eat wherever you would like a sweet and salty, smokey bacon-like flavour.

Whole Banana & Coconut Curry

You need to really like banana to like this curry. It’s sweet, creamy, mild and absolutely delicious! I like it just as it is so I can really enjoy the flavour and texture of the banana skin and flesh with some simple rice, chilli flakes and coriander. But I often bulk it out with roasted cauliflower or squash or a drained tin of chickpeas too.

Ingredients (per person)

  • 1 tsp vegetable oil
  • 1 tsp cumin seeds
  • 1 tsp brown mustard seeds
  • a pinch of fresh curry leaves will take this curry to the next level
  • 1/2 a white onion, peeled and thinly sliced
  • 2 cloves of garlic, peeled and sliced
  • 1 very ripe banana
  • 1 tsp ground/grated ginger
  • 1 tsp ground/grated turmeric
  • 1 tsp curry powder
  • 1/2 tsp salt – or to taste
  • black pepper to taste
  • 1/4 tin coconut milk
  • rice, fresh coriander, chilli flakes, lime wedges to serve

Method

  1. Get your rice on to cook then heat up a pan with your vegetable oil to medium-high. Add the cumin and mustard seeds and cook them until they start to crackle and pop. They should get very fragrant. If you can get fresh curry leaves where you are, add a pinch of them now too and swoon at the gorgeous fragrance.
  2. Then add the sliced onion with a pinch of salt and sauté until soft and starting to turn golden brown. Add the sliced garlic and stir for a couple of minutes.
  3. While the onions and garlic cook, slice the tough ends off your banana and peel it. Cut the skin widthways into three roughly pinky-finger length chunks, then cut those chunks lengthways into nice thin strips. Add the banana skin to the pan and stir.
  4. Add the turmeric, ginger and curry powder and stir well. The curry will be quite dry now so add a splash or two of water and cook for around 5 minutes, stirring regularly and adding more water as needed until the banana skins have softened.
  5. Slice the banana flesh into thin, diagonal ovals and add them to the pan with the salt and pepper. Stir gently for a couple of minutes to warm up the banana, add another splash of water if needed.
  6. Add the coconut milk and turn the heat down to simmer. Taste the curry and adjust the seasoning if needed with more salt or a squeeze of lime if acidity is called for.
  7. Serve piled next to rice. Add a sprinkle of fresh coriander and some chilli flakes/slices for heat if you wish and enjoy!

Carrot Top Chimichurri

It’s new carrot season and we are really pleased with our crop again this year. They are the sweetest, most fragrant carrots ever! While they are being harvested fresh for the boxes (before we do a big harvest and store them for winter) we hope you really enjoy the greens too! They are perfectly edible and incredibly delicious and nutritious. Think of them like a fibrous herb. They have a strong parsley/carrot flavour and are best whizzed up into a pesto or other green sauce like this chimichurri. Or you can slice them finely and add them to soups or stews. Whatever you do, don’t throw the greens away, you’ll be missing out on some amazing dietary fibre, vitamins and minerals.

The main ingredient for a traditional chimichurri is parsley so carrot tops work really well as a replacement here. Simply whizz the ingredients up together in a food processor, allow the flavours to sit and mingle for a little while and you have a delicious herby drizzle to make your tacos (or barbecue, burritos, roast veg…) pop!

How do you use carrot tops? Liz x


Ingredients

  • Carrot tops (I used tops from 8 carrots)
  • 1 tsp chilli flakes (or use fresh red chilli to taste)
  • 1 tsp dried oregano
  • salt and pepper to taste (I use about a tsp of each)
  • 8 tbsp extra virgin olive oil (or more!)
  • 4 tbsp vinegar (red wine vinegar is traditional but local apple cider vinegar works well for this recipe too)
  • 3 cloves of garlic

Method

  1. Rinse your carrot tops well, then roughly chop them and add them to a food processor.
  2. Add the rest of the ingredients and pulse until they come together into a rough, loose sauce. You may need to stop the machine a few times and scrape down the sides.
  3. Taste and adjust the seasoning if needed. You may also need to add more oil or vinegar to loosen the sauce. Blend again briefly to combine.
  4. Spoon the sauce into a small bowl, cover and allow the flavours to mingle and marinade while you prepare the meal you’ll be eating the chimichurri with. We drizzled ours over hard shell tacos this time and they were absolutely delicious! Enjoy.
Carrot top chimichurri, roasted carrots and bean chilli about to be stuffed into tacos!

Roasted Fennel & Tomato Pasta Sauce

One of my go-to weekday dinner solutions, for those hectic days when the juggle between work-life and family-life has left you reeling, is to roast a big tray of vegetables and then while that’s cooking decide what to do with it. I usually turn it into pasta sauce or soup with the help of my handy stick blender and add some extra protein with a drained tin of beans or lentils. There is always the option to stir the roasted veggies through rice or add them to tacos or a make a warm salad by tossing them through a drained tin of cooked pulses (our organic range from Bunalun is so handy). Roasting vegetables makes them sweeter and more delicious and our farm grown fennel and tomatoes are just *made* for pasta.

Like most of my recipes, this is a flexible affair. Make it smooth or chunky, don’t worry too much about the ratios of the different vegetables. Make do with what you have and if in doubt, add a tin of chopped tomatoes. Liz x

Ingredients (serves 4 generously)

  • 2 fennel bulbs (roughly chopped, fronds kept to one side to use fresh as a herb)
  • 250g tomatoes (roughly chopped)
  • 1/2 a bulb of garlic (peeled and chopped)
  • 1 onion (peeled and chopped)
  • optional extra vegetables like courgette, peppers, carrots…(roughly chopped)
  • olive oil for roasting – about 4 tbsp
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • 1 tbsp fennel seeds
  • optional drained tin of green lentils
  • pasta to serve
  • optional chilli flakes and extra virgin olive oil to serve

Method

  1. Turn your oven on to 200C and find your largest oven tray.
  2. Roughly chop all the vegetables and scatter them onto the tray.
  3. Drizzle generously with good olive oil and season with salt, pepper and fennel seeds.
  4. Use your hands to mix the vegetables, oil and seasoning well, then pop the tray into the oven to roast the vegetables while you cook some pasta (we stock a range of brilliant organic pastas, including gluten free varieties, which you can add to your veg order).
  5. After 20 minutes, the vegetables should be soft and starting to caramelise. If you used a smaller tray then it will take longer and you should stir them occasionally to ensure they all catch some direct heat.
  6. Carefully tip and scrape the roasted vegetables into a deep container. I like to use a sauce pot so that I can easily re-heat the sauce if needed. Then using a stick blender, blend the vegetables into a sauce. You can make it perfectly smooth or leave some texture and chunks, however you prefer it is fine! Or add some vegetable stock to loosen the sauce into a soup?
  7. Add the chopped reserved fennel fronds if you like that fresh, aniseed flavour. For extra protein and fibre, add a drained tin of lentils or white beans to the sauce.
  8. Stir through freshly cooked pasta and serve. I always put extra virgin olive oil, flakey salt and chilli flakes on the table too with this dish. Enjoy!