How to Grill Bananas

I’m not sure that this really belongs here, as my recipe wasn’t particularly healthy, but it sure was delicious. Beyond that, I have some ideas on how to make it much healthier in the future, so here goes…

I’ve been wanting to grill bananas for quite awhile now. We got a fancy new Fire Magic gas grill this summer, which has only heightened my interest. Tonight, I finally got around to trying it out.

As far as my recipe goes, I spent a bit of time Googling and wound up combining the things I ran across. For starters, I picked up six ripe (yellow) bananas from the grocery store.

Back at home, I combined some margarine with a good bit of brown sugar and some cinnamon. I didn’t make specific measurements, but rather combined them based on consistency and taste.

Note: It helps if you give your concoction a couple of short blasts (10-12 seconds) in the microwave to soften it up. You don’t want it runny, but it should combine together smoothly.

Next… I laid out the bananas and sliced them lengthwise being careful not to go all the way through the other side. I then opened up the slits and added the margarine/brown sugar filling (see picture below).

As far as grilling goes, I set the heat to medium low — you’ll probably need to experiment as every grill is different. I then covered the grate with aluminum foil so the filling wouldn’t cook down onto the burners.

It looked like this:

The total cooking time was somewhere in the neighborhood of five minutes. I just kept checking on them periodically to be sure they weren’t burning and then pulled them when they looked done.

This is what the finished product looked like:

While they would’ve gone great with a bit of vanilla ice cream, we just peeled them open and ate them with a spoon. Mmmm. They were delicious – though not particularly healthy.

Next time around, I’m going to try simply grilling the bananas straight up, without any filling. I won’t even both slitting them so I’ll be able to rotate them for evenness much like a bratwurst.

The fire does a fantastic job of carmelizing the sugars and freeing up the banana essence, so I suspect these “all natural” grilled bananas will likewise taste great without all the excess calories.

Filed under: Health & Fitness
Tags: bananas, dessert, recipes