How To Clean Banana Flower (Vazhaipoo)
In India, the banana or plantain tree is no less than the coconut tree, when it comes to the uses and benefits. From a healthy, nutritious and filling banana fruit and the leaves that are a significant part of cooking and serving food, to the banana flower, a delicacy in many Indian regional cuisines – the banana plant is also an overall winner. Cleaning banana flower takes time, as each floret has to be cleaned separately. This handy post on How To clean and cut Banana Flower will guide you and make it an easy process for you to prep up this edible flower for any dish.
Banana flower are the edible blossoms of the banana tree. It is a specialty, wherever the plant is grown in abundance. For instance, India, most of Asia, etc.
Occasionally I do make recipes with banana flower. Just that I have not added them yet on the website. I learnt cleaning banana flower from my mom and there were days when we both would clean banana flower together.
Since cleaning takes time, I generally do it in the afternoons when other household work is not there. I clean, chop and keep everything in the fridge. The next day I use the banana flowers in the recipes. They stay well for a couple of days in the fridge.
Banana flower is very healthy and can be used in myriad ways in making any recipe. I generally make a curry with black peas, Vazhaipoo Vadai and a simple banana flower bhaji with coconut.
I hope this post help you with the method of cleaning and cutting banana blossom easily.
How to Clean Banana Flower (Vazhaipoo)
1. Before beginning, rub some oil on your palms and chopping board as the hands as well the board gets stained when cleaning banana flower. In a bowl take 2 to 2.5 cups water and add 4 to 5 tablespoons curd in it. Mix well and keep aside.
This is the curd solution. You can also use buttermilk instead of curd solution. Now take the flower and lift the bracts or the large petals. Underneath you will see small florets attached on the top.
2. Remove these florets and collect them in a plate or bowl. You can collect some amount, clean them and again start collecting them. The bracts can be rinsed and then used to serve snacks made from banana flower.
3. Now take each floret and check for the two parts that need to be discarded.
1. Tepal – These are the outer papery like covers that protects the stamens and the stigma. These translucent cover need to be removed. You simply need to pluck these from the floret.
2. Style – This is a long sticky structure with a bulb like top. The top sticky bulb like structure is the stigma. The entire style and stigma needs to be discarded. Pluck it from the floret.
4. Remove the paper like cover and the style-stigma from each floret. Removing both these structures from each floret take a lot of time. They are removed as they are not digestible and also makes the dish bitter if added.
5. Keep on working each flower and discard the unwanted elements in a bowl or a plate.
5. Collect each cleaned flower in a bowl. Remove the bracts. Collect the flower and clean them. a point comes when the florets become smaller in size.
At this step you come across florets which are very tender and the tepal or outer cover is too tight. When you see such tender flowers, then just chop them.
6. Now take the cleaned florets in parts on a chopping board and then chop them.
7. Keep the chopped banana flowers in the curd solution or buttermilk. You can also add about ¼ teaspoon of turmeric powder in the solution.
8. This way keep on collecting and cleaning the flowers till you come to a point where the bracts cannot be opened. Take the banana heart.
You will see a whitish coloured structure and this is the banana heart. keep it in the curd solution or buttermilk so that it does not darken.
9. You can slice it in two parts if you want. First slice vertically.
9. then slice horizontally.
10. Add the chopped banana heart also in the buttermilk solution. If using immediately, then you can just add in a bowl.
But if you plan to use chopped banana flower after some hours, then do keep them soaked in the buttermilk solution so that they do not get darkened. Keep the cleaned and cut banana flower in the fridge.
11. Banana flower is very healthy and can be used to make various recipes. So do try to include it in your meals.
How To Clean Banana Flower (Vazhaipoo)
Materials
- 1 banana flower or banana blossom
- 2 to 2.5 cups water or add as required
- 4 to 5 tablespoons Curd or add as required
- oil as required
Instructions
preparation:
- Before beginning, rub some oil on your palms and chopping board as the hands as well the board gets stained when cleaning banana flower.
- In a bowl take 2 to 2.5 cups water and add 4 to 5 tablespoons curd in it. Mix well and keep aside. This is the curd solution. You can also use buttermilk instead of curd solution.
cleaning banana flower:
- Now take the banana flower and lift the bracts or the large petals. Underneath you will see small florets attached on the top.
- Remove these florets and collect them in a plate or bowl. You can collect some amount, clean them and again start collecting them. The bracts can be cleaned and used to serve snacks made from banana flower.
- Now take each floret and check for the two parts that need to be discarded. 1. Tepal – these are the outer papery like covers that protects the stamens and the stigma. These translucent cover needs to be removed. You just need to pluck it from the floret.
- 2. Style – this is a long sticky structure with a bulb like top. The bulb like top is the sticky stigma. Both style and stigma needs to be discarded. pluck it from the floret.
- Remove the paper like cover and the style-stigma from each flower. Removing both these structures from each banana flower take a lot of time. They are removed as they are not digestible and also makes the dish bitter if added.
- Keep on working on each flower and discard the unwanted elements in a bowl or a plate.
- Collect each cleaned flower in a bowl. Remove the bracts. Collect the flower and clean them.
- A point comes when the florets become smaller in size. At this step you come across florets which are very tender and the tepal or outer cover is too tight. When you see such tender flowers, then just chop them.
- This way keep on collecting and cleaning the flowers till you come to a point where the bracts cannot be opened. You will see a whitish colored structure and this is the banana heart. Keep it in the curd solution or buttermilk so that it does not darken.
- Now take the cleaned florets in parts on a chopping board and then chop them.
- Keep the chopped banana flowers in the curd solution or buttermilk.
- Take the banana heart. You can slice it in two parts if you want.
- Then chop finely.
- Add the chopped banana heart also in the buttermilk solution. If using immediately, then you can just add in a bowl. But if you plan to use chopped banana flower after some hours, then do keep them soaked in the buttermilk solution so that they do not get darkened. Keep them refrigerated.
- Later use the cleaned and cut banana flower in any recipe.
This How to clean Banana Flower post from the archives, first published on November 2017 has been republished and updated on November 2022.
Hello, if you see multiple websites and some scientific pages, perianth shouldn’t be removed from a banana flower. The stigma and the calyx should be. I think you have confused calyx with perianth. You can check out Google images for clarification too! Thanks for the recipe.
Thank you. The calyx which the multiple websites refer to is actually the free tepal. In the case of banana blossom this free and single tepal is a part of the perianth since the sepals and petals cannot be distinguished from each other as they appear to be similar. I have made minor changes.
A calyx refers to a group or collection of sepals in a flower. The term tepal is used when the sepals and petals cannot be differentiated from each other and thus can be referred to as a combined sepal and petal.
Perianth collectively refers to the outer parts of flower which includes both the sepals and petals and sometimes tepals when the sepals & petals cannot be distinguished. So the tepal part of the perianth is removed when prepping banana flower. I hope this helps.
Hi Dasana, thanks for sharing step by step method, I followed same and kept in buttermilk. For receipe saw another YouTube channel where they boiled it and later did tadka. But whole thing came out so bitter. .couldn’t eat that.
What can be reason for it?
Sometimes, the entire banana flower will be bitter. So no amount of soaking in buttermilk or boiling will get rid of that bitterness. But this happens very rarely. I have had a really bitter banana flower twice. Once I made a stir fry not knowing it was bitter. I had to discard the whole dish as it was so bitter that we could not eat it.