How to keep your sliced bananas from turning brown

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While I was deciding on a few recipes that I wanted to do, a couple of them used sliced bananas as either a garnish or part of the recipe.  Just like a lot of fruit, bananas tend to turn brown after they are sliced.  I wanted my bananas to keep looking fresh after being sliced so I googled how to do that.  The two things I saw most was using orange juice or lemon juice.  I’ve always used lemon juice for keeping my apple slices looking fresh, but I was a little worried about how it would make my bananas taste.  So I did a little experiment to see which one worked best AND most importantly, tasted best.

Here is a picture of the bananas right after I sliced them and put the orange juice and lemon juice on them.  It was probably 1 minute from dipping them in the juices and taking the picture.  I used my cell phone for the pictures in sunlight only and didn’t do any type of filter or editing.

The next picture is from 30 minutes out.  I left the bananas sitting on my table and it’s approximately 70°F in my house.  After 30 minutes, I honestly couldn’t tell a difference between the two pictures.

The next picture is from 1 hour out.  Bananas still in the same spot, my house is still the same temperature, even if my 4 year old is telling me he’s FREEZING!  LOL!  After an hour, I’m still not seeing a difference.  The pictures seriously look identical to me!  If there is a change, it’s an incredibly slight difference.

Next I covered them in plastic wrap and put them in the fridge.  I left them in there for 2 hours.  As you can see, there is a very slight discoloration to both of the types of banana slices.  Nothing that I think would keep people from eating them though.

Lastly came the taste test.  I was thinking the orange juice would taste better because it’s a little bit sweeter and I thought the taste would pair well with the banana.  I figured the lemon juice would be too strong and change the taste.  Hudson helped my by “tasting out the food”. 🙂  He told me the lemon juice bananas had a different kind of banana taste.  I had to agree.  I could very much taste the lemon juice, but when it came to the orange juice, I could barely taste it at all.  Honestly, if I hadn’t put the orange juice on there myself, I wouldn’t have known.

So there you have it, in my opinion, to keep your banana slices from turning brown, squeeze some juice from an orange and roll your banana slices in it.  Make sure you get the cut ends covered as those will turn brown the quickest.  Do you have any other tried and true ways for keeping your sliced fruit fresh looking?  Let us know in comments!