Use the whole bunch of bananas

What can I do with brown bananas?

Bake them. The browner a banana gets, the sweeter it is, so brown bananas make the best banana bread. Bake a loaf with two of them, put a tray of oat bites beside it with three more, and slice whatever’s left into a container in the freezer for smoothies or the next loaf.

Bananas: one of the five foods UK homes bin most

Bananas seem to go from too green to too brown overnight, usually on the days nobody fancies one. By the weekend the bunch in the fruit bowl is speckled and soft, and it looks like waste.

Those are the ones to bake with. A loaf and a tray of bites bake side by side at the same temperature, so one oven and one mashing bowl use up the lot.

In a WRAP survey in June 2024, UK households named the foods they threw away most of, and bananas came fourth on the list (Resource Media, reporting WRAP). Usually it’s the part left over after the recipe you bought it for. Giving every part a recipe in the same session adds about 11 minutes of hands-on time.

One session, in order

1. Heat the oven to 160°C fan and line the loaf tin and a baking tray.

2. Mash all five bananas in one bowl, then split them: two for the bread, three for the bites.

3. The loaf goes in first. It bakes for 35 minutes.

4. Mix the bites while it bakes and put the tray in beside it for 15 minutes.

5. Peel and slice the last banana into a container for the freezer.

6. Once they’re cool, slice the loaf and pack the bites with baking paper between the layers.

• Banana bread For the freezer, 8 slices
• Banana oat bites For lunchboxes, 6 portions

How we’d cook it, not advice. We don’t check recipes for allergens, and ingredients vary by brand, so check the label on everything you use. Prepare and cook food the way the Food Standards Agency says. Allergens and food safety

What each one adds

• +10 min Banana oat bites Mash, stir in oats and sultanas, and bake for 15 minutes on the shelf beside the loaf.
• +1 min Sliced for the freezer Peel and slice the last one into a container and freeze it.

Hands-on minutes on top of a session you’re already cooking, our estimate. Time in the oven or on the hob isn’t counted. How we work out the minutes.

More ways to use it up

Not baking this week?

Peel brown bananas, slice them and freeze them in a container, ready for the next loaf or a smoothie.

More foods to use up

• Use the whole loaf
• Use the whole bag of carrots
• All five foods