You’ve likely heard of saving your super-ripe bananas for making banana bread. The adventurous among you may have even kept the skins aside, spritzed them with lemon juice, and fried them up with aromatics and spices to make a vegetarian curry. However, there’s another way to cleverly repurpose those banana peels that would otherwise be discarded or tossed on the compost heap: adding them to your slow cooker to make juicier braised meats and stews.
Now, you’ll want to use fresher yellow banana peels here rather than the ones that are speckled with brown spots or patches. All you need to do is peel your bananas as normal and toss them into your slow cooker, along with the other core ingredients in your recipe, such as beef brisket, veggies, and a cooking liquid, like broth, wine, or water. Of course, you can use up the innards of your bananas as usual in smoothies, fruit salad, and warming bakes.
As your slow-cooked stew simmers away, the banana peel, which naturally contains around 85% moisture, will help to keep the meat tender and succulent. Once your slow-cooked meat is ready, you can remove the peel if it’s still intact. If it has cooked down thoroughly, you can leave it in there if preferred to lend your dish some texture and boost its nutritional profile. The skin won’t lend the stew any sweetness and neither will it impart a fruity aroma, so don’t worry about it tasting like bananas.
Freeze a bunch of banana peels for later
The most convenient way to add banana peels to slow-cooked meat dishes is to save them up in the freezer until you’re ready to cook. Simply pop them in a freezer-safe bag and keep adding in new peels until you have a stash saved for later (they’ll be good for about three months). As you can add them to your slow cooker in their frozen state, there’s no need to defrost them first, which is both convenient and quick.
Banana peels are rich in fiber, so they are great for the gut and useful for improving digestive health. They are also high in antioxidants, which may help to combat some of the free radicals that are linked to cancer. Another clever way to use banana peels is to turn them into a meat-free version of pulled pork. Begin by “pulling” along the cleaned peels with the tines of a fork to create strands that resemble the appearance of pulled pork before marinating them in smoky spices and frying them up in a skillet. To serve, stuff the peels into a soft bun to create a vegan zero-waste sammie that tastes like it was made with meat.
