Red Bananas

Red bananas are becoming increasingly more available. They have the unpopular distinction (at least for commercial cultivation) of being the banana that is slowest to grow to maturity and the slowest to ripen; their price certainly reflects this. Be careful about buying a very unripe, hard hand of red bananas because they will most likely never ripen in your kitchen due to improper storage at the outset before shipping. Instead of becoming soft and ripe, they will simply turn even harder and dry, virtually petrified. Different varieties come in slender, plump, and stubby shapes. Red Cuban (also known as Cuban Red), Spanish Red, and the Costa Rican variety, Macaboo, are the three most commonly found. They are all fairly comparable. Fingers are 5 to 6 inches (12.5 to 15 cm) in length, with thick, dark purple skin that turns red when the fruit is perfectly ripe. The flesh of red bananas is a peachy dark yellow color and has a very distinctive, wonderfully sweet flavor. These are great keepers(up to two weeks after ripening, but heed the warning above.