When I buy bananas, I tend to buy one or two. I usually want one that’s ripe for the next day, and one for the day after. I go through all of your leftovers, and try to find some to give a good home to. Failing that, I’ll grab useful ones from some bunches.
Sometimes, even one banana is too much for me. My approach while in the produce department is to cut one banana in half!
Good to know! All these years, I was buying them in bunches because I thought it was kind of breaking the rules to do otherwise. From now on, I’m a banana renegade!
FYI, my husband used to work for a fruit company, so he visited Costa Rica to see bananas being grown and distributed. In the industry, they call a bunch of bananas a “hand” and single bananas a “finger.”
Relevant: Chiquita Banana Song
You should never put bananas in the refrigerator… until they’re ripe. Once they’re ripe, the refrigerator will hold them for a week or more.
My experience has always been that putting bananas in the fridge makes them go off much more quickly than if you leave them out. For some reason, bananas really don’t like fridges.
Bananas are shipped in refrigerated containers and trucks, in order to hold off the ripening process that will occur if left at room temperature. When they reach fruit distributors, they are put in ripening rooms so that they are ripe or almost ripe when they arrive at the grocery stores.
This reminds me of the quick thinking grocery clerk. A customer asked if he could buy half a head of lettuce. The clerk said he would have to ask the manager. “Hey boss there’s a goofball in produce who wants to buy half a head of lettuce” and suddenly the customer appeared, and the clerk said “and this kind gentleman asked if he could buy the other half.”
I’ll break a couple off, without bothering to check if they’re the correct ripeness. I’ll also nibble on grapes on the way around the shop, before getting them weighed at the checkout.
Definitely going to hell for that.
That’s interesting, it annoys the hell out of Mrs. Plant (v.3.0) who works in a grocery store.
And you banana fans should know that they are pollinated by bats. 
The skins will turn black much more quickly, but the fruit will not ripen nearly as quickly.
If you store them in a container filled with pure nitrogen they won’t ripen as quickly. Many gasses will do. The important part is to remove any traces of ethylene oxide (“banana gas”) from the banana’s atmosphere. You can often find banana sized hypobaric chambers at yard sales which you can use for this.
All I can say is try it. Don’t refrigerate them until they’re ripe. Once they are at their desired ripeness, pop them in the fridge and see how it goes. Then report your results.
I always wondered what those things were, over with the pressure cookers at the flea market.
I won’t break off one banana from a bunch. I worry it won’t sell and get wasted. People seem to pick over singles and doubles. They want a nice bunch. YMMV
I will break a big bunch in half. I like to buy 4 to 5 at a time. Breaking a big bunch of 8 in half still leaves a sellable product. I buy the greenest possible because they last longer. I’ll eat them a little green or a little over ripe. Doesn’t matter. The real ripe ones make the best peannutbutter banana sandwiches.
I didn’t realize I was in the minority on this. I can see somebody breaking a rotten banana off a bunch, and buying the rest of the bunch. And I can see a person who only wants one banana breaking one off a bunch and buying that.
But it really annoys me when people go through several bunches and take just the best one or two bananas off each. I wouldn’t let my kids do it. And I find it very hard to believe that the produce managers don’t mind it, although I’m sure that there are many, many store employees who hate their job and don’t care what people do, as long as it doesn’t make more work for them.
Just my opinion.
That is what annoys Mrs. Plant (v.3.0).
Just to pipe in about refrigeration, I don’t like the effect of putting bananas in the fridge, which is about 40 degrees F. But I’m lucky enough to live in an area with a very cool climate year around, and I’ve found that keeping them at about 50-55 degrees, which is the temperature of a closed, unheated room in my house, makes them ripen very slowly, and stay edible (not too green and not too ripe) for well over a week.
When I visit my mom, who keeps her apartment close to 80 degrees, bananas go from too green to too ripe in just a couple of days.
I’ve taken one off a bunch, and I’ve taken stragglers. I figure I’m keeping the universe in balance.
My grocery store often has a pile of sad-looking solo bananas off to the side with a lower price tag than the pretty ones. I sometimes grab a bunch of spotty soft ones to make banana bread.
It’s OK. But what’s not OK, imho, is to take one nanner of each of half-a –dozen bunches and ‘assemble your own bunch”.
My dad told me a tale of his Eskimo tribe, when first seeing bananas, to eat them whole, peel and all.