If not stored correctly, bananas can ripen in the blink of an eye making them go to waste.
Some enjoy the taste of an overripe banana, but for many, once they go brown they become inedible.
A known trick to prolong a bunch of bananas is to wrap their stems in cling film, but it turns out there is another method that could be better – it’s to immerse them in water.
An Express reader previously suggested: “A simple and cheaper way of making bananas last longer is to immerse the stalk end in water. Ours keep for 10 to 14 days when stored like that. Rather than the three or four days in a fruit bowl on their own or on a banana hook.”
If you have doubts about this tip, one man has tried the tip out for himself and shared the results.
TikToker Dustin Hadley regularly tests new life hacks he’s learned as a 40-year-old and shares the results with his half a million followers.
This time, he decided to experiment by putting one bunch of bananas’ stalks in a tub of water and leaving a second one beside them, leaving both for a week.
Posting on his TikTok profile @that40yearguy, he said: “I’ve never done a week-long test, we’re going to try this banana hack to see if they stay fresh for longer.”
After showing two bunches of three bananas and a small plastic container of water, he said: “I’m going to put three bananas in the water [stalk down] and I’m going to leave the other three sitting there. We’ll come back in a week or so and see what they look like.”
Dustin returned and revealed: “Let’s see what these bananas look like, they’ve been here for 12 days.”
The three bananas with stems in the water were yellow with lots of brown spots and still attached. They were solid and firm.
The three bananas that had been left on the side, not in water, he tried to pick up from the stem but it snapped off and peeled open the banana before dropping to the floor.
The peel on these bananas was browner, and the fruit itself was mushier, prompting the social media personality to call them “shrivelled up”.
If bananas are bought green and this method is then used, they can last up to 15 days in total. However, if this storage solution doesn’t work for you, then a reliable method is to use cling film.
TikToker @culinaryvlogsbyz claimed that using cling film on bananas “actually works” to “keep bananas fresh for longer”.
For this hack, the user instructed households to cut cling film into small strips and wrap them around the long end of each banana.
After five days, the most that happened to the bananas was that they gained a few black dots on the peels, but were still fresh.
