It is hard to create zero waste in the kitchen, but many traditional dishes are designed specifically to utilize scraps in delicious ways. The sticky, sweet, soy-glazed side dish known as “tsukudani,” for one, incorporates pieces of kombu already used to make dashi as its key ingredient. The idea of adding banana peels to the dish is a novel one, but making use of these “scraps” will no doubt be as old as any indigenous culture that cultivates them.
On top of adding extra bulk, banana skins are a great source of dietary fiber for improved digestion and inflammation reduction. Banana peel also contains the amino acid tryptophan, which the body uses to create mood-boosting serotonin and sleep-regulating melatonin. It also has such a similar texture to kombu when cooked in this style that you might wonder why you didn’t start eating banana skins sooner.
This recipe assumes you have rehydrated kombu previously used to make dashi. If you don’t: For 1 liter of kombu dashi, I soak a 10-gram strip of dried kombu for 30 minutes or more in cold tap water. Then, I bring everything to the barest simmer and immediately remove and cool the kombu for the recipe below.
This should yield about 50 grams of rehydrated kombu. This recipe has some leeway, so don’t stress if you have slightly more or less. Use the dashi itself for miso soup or other dishes. The skins of yellow bananas, not too overripe, work best here.
I peeled bananas specifically for the recipe, then froze the flesh for summer breakfast smoothies. 75 milliliters honmirin (mirin with alcohol) Chiffonade your cooled kombu into thin strips. Discard the hard tops and tails of the bananas, then slice the skins into similar shapes to the kombu strips. Bring the kombu, banana peel, sliced chili and water to a boil.
Reduce the heat and simmer for five minutes. Add tamari, mirin and sugar and reduce to a sticky glaze (this should take about 15 minutes). The banana skin should gradually start to resemble kombu.
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