Preparing a Banana Heart for Cooking

Preparing the banana heart is easy. I actually didn't know how to prepare it properly the first few times I have used it and ended up with a lot of the tough pistil in the dish.

You start by peeling off the tough outer part of the banana heart (only the outermost should be enough as we will still cook it so we don't have to worry if the succeeding layers is still a bit tough). You can peel the heart layer by layer and fully submerge the pieces in a bowl of water with a little salt and vinegar to prevent them from oxidizing too much (not that it really matters much but too much oxidation will give the banana heart a dark hue).

Inside the heart you will notice a row of flowers nestled in between the layers. Remove the flowers and place them in a separate bowl (also with the vinegar salt mixture to prevent discoloration). You can prepare these flowers by discarding the matchstick like pistils in the middle. These are very tough and are inedible.

A cross section of the banana heart

Continue to go in layer by layer until you reach the tender innermost core which will look a lot lighter than the rest. Roughly cut the banana heart sheaths and cut the remaining heart core into half an inch thick pieces.