Drying Bananas: This Is How You Easily Make Your Own Banana Chips

Drying bananas is a great way to turn overripe fruit into a tasty snack. You have several options for drying the bananas. One of them doesn’t even cost you a cent.

Dry banana: You need these ingredients

In general, freshly ripened bananas are best for making your own banana chips. However, if you still have some overripe bananas that nobody wants to eat anymore, you can also easily process them into banana chips.

• You don’t need much to make delicious chips from your bananas. All you need is a sharp kitchen knife, a board to process the bananas, lemon juice and, depending on your taste, various spices.
• You can season the banana chips with brown sugar, cinnamon, honey or speculoos spice, for example. If you want the banana chips to be a little heartier, season them with a little sea salt or nutmeg, for example.
• If you want your homemade crisps made from dry bananas to remain as light as possible, add lemon juice.
• There are various options available for drying the bananas. In addition to the oven and dehydrator, this also includes free drying with the help of the sun.
• By the way: Bananas are completely wrong in their reputation as fattening foods. In fact, you can lose weight with bananas too.

Drying bananas: This is how it works in the oven and dehydrator

Whether in the oven, dehydrator or in the air, first you have to peel the bananas. The popular fruit is then cut into slices about 0.3 to 0.6 centimeters thick. The thinner you cut the fruit slices, the crunchier your banana chips will be. Drizzle the finished banana slices with a little lemon juice so that your banana chips remain as light as possible.

• Dry the banana slices in the oven, first preheat it to around 100 degrees. Meanwhile, line the trays with parchment paper. Place the banana slices next to each other on the trays and don’t forget to season the banana chips.
• After you have put the trays in the oven, set the temperature of the oven to 40 degrees. Put a wooden spoon or something similar between the oven door so that the door remains slightly open. This allows liquid to escape.
• If you have a dehydrator, the procedure is basically the same as with the oven. However, drying the bananas in this device is significantly cheaper in the long run. If you dry food more often, the purchase of a dehydrator can be worthwhile.
• When it comes to inexpensive drying, nothing beats the sun. If the summer is warm enough here and you have a sunny place to lay out the banana slices, you should take the opportunity.
• By the way, drying the fruit is most effective if you hang it on a line. This way air gets to the banana slices from all sides. Alternatively, you can also use a close-meshed grid.
• How long the fruit needs to dry depends on how thick you want the banana slices to be and how crispy you want them to be. Anything between 8 and 20 hours is possible.
• Allow the bananas to dry thoroughly. Theoretically, your homemade banana chips can be kept for years – but in practice this is hardly possible, as the popular snacks quickly find buyers.