How to peel a banana
December 4th, 2010 at 10:40 am (Food)
I think we’ve all had the frustrating experience of struggling to open a banana in which the peel won’t split near the stem, which obnoxiously manages to be the strongest part of the fruit — so you pull out a knife to get it started, or just end up mashing the top of the banana in your attempt to get it open. And yet somehow it never occurred to to me to try peeling it… from the other end!
Known as the “monkey method” of peeling a banana, this approach is trivially easy to achieve. You simply pinch or twist at the bottom end of the banana, and it obligingly splits open. I’m astonished that it never even occurred to me to explore better ways to do this. Wow! (Thanks for the tip, Evan!)
| Standard | Monkey |
|---|---|
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Beyond that, there are apparently many strategies for peeling a banana that differ from the “standard” (and apparently suboptimal) approach. I’ve already employed the “thumbnail method” in the past, when a knife was lacking and I was still ineffectually wrangling with the stem end. Now I’m eager to try the “throwing method.” And do read to the bottom of that link to learn about the “pro method.”