Bananas are among the most popular fruits in the UK, but choosing the best ones is not always straightforward. Most shoppers focus on colour or firmness, yet these do not always guarantee the best flavour. With dozens of similar-looking bananas on supermarket shelves, one chef suggests a simpler way to pick the sweetest ones—without squeezing or checking for spots.
The stem is the key
Chef Cristian Feher, who shared the tip on his YouTube channel Food Chain TV, says the key detail to look at is the stem. With more than 20 years of experience, he explained: “So, you're at the store, you're looking at bananas, but how do you know which ones taste the best? The secret is actually the length of the stem.”
He added: “It just so happens that the bananas with the shorter stems are a lot sweeter and have a lot more flavour than the ones with the longer stems.”
Testing the difference
To test his theory, he compared two bananas from the same bunch at the same level of ripeness. He scored each one based on sweetness and flavour. For the banana with the shorter stem, he said: “On the sweetness scale, I'm going to give it a three and a half. And on the banana flavour, it's got a lot of banana flavour - I'm going to give it a four.”
He then tried the banana with the longer stem, adding: “On the sweetness, I'm going to give it a two. And on the banana flavour, I'm going to give it a two and a half.” Cristian said the difference was clear, even though both bananas looked the same on the outside. “There is a big difference between the two bananas,” he said. “The bananas with the short stem are much more flavourful and sweeter than the bananas that have the long stem.”
Easy comparison while shopping
He also said it is easy to compare bananas while shopping. “Just put them up against each other, and you can really easily see which ones have the longer stems and which ones have the shorter stems,” he said. He added: “Just take the ones with the shorter stems.”
Cristian regularly shares cooking tips and food advice on his YouTube channel, where he helps people get better results in the kitchen with simple tricks like this one.
