The 30 -minute banana ripening hack you would like to have knew sooner

We were all there.

Hungry on a thick slice banana breadJust to get stuck with a lot of green bananas. In the perfect world, we simply pull a bag of freezer, but real stocks are not always so reliable. In such cases, there are few choices: keep banana bread, put green fruits or false maturity by baking banana.

If you have patience, then there is nothing wrong with the opportunity, but I'm not wild about alternatives. Underripe bananas have weak taste, while high starch content becomes fast bread and dry. Oxidation can black the skin and soften the cellulose by breaking the cell walls, but these bananas must achieve up to three hours of roasting to achieve any significant starch-sugar transformation. (Do not take my word; Just ask Harold McGee.)

Fortunately, I figured out a fourth opportunity. A simple trick that takes a banana from starch to sweet in just 30 minutes, without strange ingredients or significant time investments. In fact, you only need one egg. Well, technically just one egg yolk that sounds a bit crazy, so take care of me when we get into the background history.

The carbohydrate content of immature banana is about 22%, which can be divided into about 14% starch and 8% sugar. After harvesting, the banana begins to produce ethylene gas and several enzymes develop. One enzyme breaks the chlorophyll into black and the other breaks pectin to soften the fruit, but the third (the one who cares) turns the starch into liquid sugar: maltose and glucose.

This enzyme was known as amylase, and it is so effective that by the time the banana becomes completely black, the pulp does not contain starch at all – so we often find excessive bananas sitting in the Goo pool. If you do not cause sticky mess on your counter, Goo (glucose and maltose) will add wet and gentle crumbs to banana bread and the characteristic sweets we love.

As mentioned earlier, you can simply let nature start over time and reach the banana over time. You can also try to accelerate things by gluing the knot into a paper bag to the ethylene trap and accelerating the production of amylase, but it takes a while.

The above banana came from the same knot (together, immature, some paragraphs left). The left trio sat on the counter, exposed outdoors, while the trio on the right was filled in paper bags. After three days, they were vaguely yellow than they stayed outdoors, but not much. The reason for this is that no matter how ethylene traps, the banana alone synthesizes the synthesis of amylase.

What did I think: Why wait? Of course, amylase occurs in egg yolk, and this is what can reduce it to a beautifully thick lemon cat during hours. This is the reason why most recipes cook starch-thick pudding until bubble. Eggs and starch stand up nicely at much lower temperatures, but all of them are for nothing when the amylase is not denatured (which occurs at about 170 ° F; a little higher when sugar is involved).

If some egg yolks can destroy a quarter of the pudding, I thought they had no problem with breaking down the starch banana. To test the theory, I packed some yellow-green bananas and egg yolks, an egg yolk for every four ounces of fruits. Then I divided this mixture into several equal items by weight.

Then I grabbed a bottle of lugol iodine, a dark-orange solution from iodine and potassium iodide, which becomes blue-black in the presence of starch. I mixed a few drops into part of the banan mixture that immediately turned a disgusting shade ewwwwOr

Yes. It's a starch banana.

I covered the remaining parts and planned to re -examine every 30 minutes, but to my surprise the next item showed a shocking improvement. As the pulp itself darkened from oxidation, the iodine revealed only a few starch spots.

Continuous oxidation of banana pulp made it difficult for some later tests to be visually evaluated, but the significant difference between the first two items was that the amylase was probably the egg yolk.

Obviously, this does not help the banana smoothie (unless open to the thought of raw eggs), but this is the change of the banana bread. Whatever your recipe, just mix the necessary bananas and eggs and wait for at least 30 minutes for a longer time if the banana is super green.

If your recipe is heavy on banana and low on eggs, slide an extra egg yolk to make enough fuel for the conversion. This makes banana bread a little richer and wetter, the victory/winning scenario, if I have ever seen it. If you do not change your recipe, just give a little more time to the process for about an hour for two eggs/four banana recipes.

Whether to accelerate the acceleration banana my recipe Or yours, happy baking!

September 2016