Big Banana Harvest？ What To Do.

Hi, I'm Alex and we're here at Daly's Nursery. I have a really exciting step-by-step tutorial video for you today on how to prepare this amazing staple crop, the banana, into really tasty chips that you can prepare for dinner or a snack. So one of the things we're looking at, you can see this bunch of bananas here, when they go from kind of a square shape to start turning round, that you can see they start filling out. These are almost ready to harvest. We've harvested some in the kitchen, so let's go up to the kitchen and we'll show you step-by-step how to prepare them and they'll taste just like a delicious potato chip. Let's go. Okay, so we're in the kitchen. We've got our bananas that we've harvested. You can see they're a nice full size now and we're here with Pauline and she's going to explain all about how to prepare them. So what's the first step, Pauline? So I got started while you were down in the orchard. So you were saying how they have to be nice and filled. Well, you can probably start harvesting them when they're about like that and start by peeling them to get the skin off. You've generally got large bunches of bananas there, so it doesn't matter if you take a bit of the flesh off. You can see I've prepared a couple already on the table. They're going a little bit brown while we've been waiting, but that's all right. Once we get them covered in oil, ready for the fryer, they just stop doing that. So you can do them either in the oven or with an air fryer, right? Super easy with an air fryer. They're ready in like six minutes. We had some for morning tea yesterday, didn't we, in the staff room? With this bunch, you can see this one's already turning a bit yellow, so the starches in there are converting to sugars, so we probably won't give that one a go. It'll be too sweet. So right up to about this stage, you can cook them from skinny through to that, so that can give you food for quite a few weeks even, depending on your bunches. And I love the fact, like, you think of how heavy a big rack of banana is, kilos and kilos, and you think of how much a bag of potatoes costs at the supermarket. That's right. So the tree pretty much pays for itself, doesn't it? And how hard are potatoes to grow in our climate? It just so much makes more sense to have bananas. This is so easy to grow. So here are some I've chopped up into chip sizes already, and I've coated them in oil, of course they've just gone a little bit brown while we've been waiting, but that's fine. We're going to salt and pepper them and put them in the air fryer. It's so easy. And I actually really love the flavour of the just, yeah, simple olive oil, salt and pepper. And they're not, is there a little bit of sweetness? I can't remember from yesterday. No, if they're starting to get sweet, then they're starting to ripen. So once we get them in the air fryer, it's literally six minutes. So they're ready, yeah. That was just six minutes in the air fryer, and they're nice and crisp. It sounds crisp. We'll just hold that tray, and there they are. A little bit of seasoning in there, and then if you want to, you can serve them with sweet chilli or tomato sauce, whatever your preference is. Super hot. Soft, crispy on the outside, and just tasty. Just tastes like potato chips. Really good. There's other ways you can do it too. You can boil these whole, and when you boil them, they'll split like I've just cut with the knife, just to show you, and then that skin just falls off. And then you can fry that, or you can put it in your curries. And another way you can do it is to dry them green, and then you can process that into a meal, and then sieve out the flour. You can cook the meal up, or you can feed it to your chickens. So it's an amazing starch, isn't it? And so much easier than trying to grow your own wheat. It's a really great, like I eat wheat occasionally, but it doesn't really agree with me. So in terms of having other gluten-free options that you can grow easily. Now some of the questions we get asked as well, like what types of bananas do you need to be able to produce your own flour, and to be able to produce your own chips like this? Well plantain is the one that's used by most people around the globe, but I've made them with ladyfingers. These ones are a Cavendish type, and you could make them with any type of green banana, as long as you get it before it started to ripen. That's amazing. And just to be able to, you know, use that big rack of bananas at each stage of ripeness. That means you don't have to eat everything all at once. Or put a whole ripe bunch into the dryer, because you can't possibly eat them all. Yeah, yeah. So fantastic, thank you so much Pauline. We'll leave links in the description below, and as I said you can see all the different bananas that we stock. We host to most parts of Australia, so be sure to check out all the growing information in the links below. Thanks so much for watching. Thanks Pauline. See you in the next one. Bye.