When green bananas stay green
I bought these bananas five days ago. They are just as green today. This has happened to me before — I buy green bananas and they stay green. What’s the protocol here? They’re defective bananas, refusing to ripen. Should I bring them back to the store and ask for a refund? Even if I should, and they would refund my money — they probably would, since it’s a supermarket chain and they want to keep customers happy — I don’t still have the receipt because I didn’t expect to need it five days later. And anyway, I don’t think I’d bother bringing the fruit back for the $1.30 or whatever it was I paid for three bananas. I guess purveyors of defective bananas are counting on that. If I did return them, what would I say? “I don’t have my receipt, but these bananas refuse to turn yellow.” It’s too much like a Seinfeld episode. And why is there a sticker of a masked professional wrestler? Is it there to scare people into buying the bananas?
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I am told by a friend on Facebook that these aren’t bananas; they are plantains. I don’t know how my friend knows this from the photo. Maybe the wrestler sticker? Anyway, according to the helpful link my friend provided about plantains, they should be larger than bananas. Yet these are the same size or smaller than a typical banana. There I go, stereotyping bananas. I didn’t think I bought plantains and the site my friend sent me to doesn’t convince me that I did. But I could be wrong. For now, I continue to believe that I was sold some bad bananas.
These look like bananas to me, although I’m not a food expert. In any case, I once saw a cooking show where the host baked the bananas in the oven. Perhaps that would work for these over-ripe bananas, and they could be salvaged?
okay so yes you have bananas – chiquita bananas now come adorned with one of the funny face stickers you mentioned.
I like my banana with a few brown spots, and let me tell you, it’s so hard to find a good one in the winter (here in CT). Every store has green bananas, and you are right, they never ripen properly – bananas are picked green but undergo a series of special “treatments’ in special ripening chambers but for some reason, it does not work well in cold weather.
green bananas just turn black – and mostly inedible unless you are not a critical careful banana fan.
Thank you. Finally, confirmation. I knew that they were bananas!
I don’t know how I missed this one!
They were picked too early and didn’t have enough ethylene in them when they were picked- so they will probably never ripen on their own.
Ethylene is what makes them turn their complex starchiness into sugar and thats what makes them soft and ripe.
you can try to put them in a brown paper bag with some apples and see if the ethylene in the apples can also ripen the bananas.
But they are definitely not Plantains!
Ah, our resident chef and food expert has spoken. Now it’s settled.
Since these bananas were purchased in early December and were thrown out weeks ago, I can’t put them in a paper bag with apples. Maybe next time.