How people use bananas in recipes all over the world

If you look across the world you will find many uses of bananas in cooking. There are lots and lots of different recipes containing bananas, different cultures use them in very unique ways. If you think of it you can kind of compare bananas to potatoes when it comes to different ways op preparing them across different cultures.

To show you what all you can do with bananas I’ll start with a well known dish, a classic American dessert called the Banana Split. It’s called Banana split because the banana is split in half then a few scoops of ice cream are added, some strawberry and chocolate sauce and maraschino. This banana recipe is quite old and it comes from Pennsylvania.

A very sweet dessert that is already quite different from Banana split because it involves cooking comes from Brazil. They mash the bananas together with some brown sugar and cinnamon and cook them very slow on low heat. Everything melts together and when it cools down you can make tasty rolls out of it.

Another popular banana recipe is the banana fritters of the Caribbean. The fritters consist of chunks of bananas dipped in flour, then dipped into rich batter. They are then flavored with rum. Next, they are deep fried in hot oil until they turn golden and finally sprinkled with powdered sugar.

In India, you are sure not to miss the Panchamrutham, which are cut ups of bananas spiced up and then sweetened with honey. Sweet yoghurt cheese, a mixture of banana, almonds and pistachios which are then sweetly spiced up with cardamom are also synonymous with Indians. You also are sure to spot Sweet Banana Lassi, a sweet, mouth watering cooling beverage purely made with banana and yoghurt only.

I am sure that the most widespread use of bananas in cuisine comes from the countries that actually grow bananas. There they have hundreds of recipes that also use bananas. These recipes cover everything from salads to soups to vegetable stews. One of the more known recipes are also different curry dishes that have bananas in them. These are very popular in countries like Philippines, Malaysia or Thailand.

So far we have eaten bananas raw, cooked and fried, now it is time to drink them. To do this we need to go to East Africa where they use them to brew beer! and if you are still not convinced how useful and widespread bananas are in cooking – of all the meals prepared with bananas only 80% are prepared with the fruit itself, all others use other parts of the banana plant, like leaves for instance.

Ben Cook also puts bananas in recipes on his banana bread website. If you want to find banana bread recipes, his website is the right right place to find them. You can find many variations to the basic recipe like this healthy banana bread recipes and many others.