The Simple Aluminum Foil Hack To Keep Bananas Fresher Longer

With so many uses, from snacking on them plain to using them as a topping for your cereal, yogurt, or oatmeal, bananas are the most popular fruits sold in the U.S., according to the International Fresh Produce Association. The downside to bananas is that they don't stay fresh for very long when kept on your kitchen counter — only around two to six days when they're ripe. Luckily, there are a few different ways to keep bananas fresh. You can use a plastic wrap hack, but if you're fresh out of plastic wrap, there's another simple hack that calls for aluminum foil instead.

Simply rip off a small piece of aluminum foil and wrap that tightly around the stems of a bunch of bananas. This prevents the bananas from releasing something called ethylene gas, which is what's responsible for their sometimes too-rapid ripening, and makes your bunch of bananas stay fresher longer.

Some people say that for better results, take your bananas apart first and wrap each stem individually in aluminum foil. But tests of both methods don't show that many differences between the two, other than that you can control your bananas' individual ripening better if you separate them. Plus, this makes it difficult to hang your bananas — another good trick for slowing down the release of ethylene and preventing bruising that can occur when bananas are stored on the counter. You should also keep the wrapped bananas away from other fruits that release large amounts of ethylene gas, such as apples, avocados, pears, peaches, and plums — some of the foods you should never store together.

And finally, if you didn't manage to wrap your bananas in time and they've ripened more than you would like for eating, you can always use them for baking banana bread, or freeze them to thicken your smoothies in a pinch.