If you love to go camping, hiking, canoeing, or on long trips, having healthy, convenient snacks is incredibly important. If you don’t have a healthy snack on hand, it becomes all too easy to simply grab some fast food or a sugary soda to drink.
Baked banana chips are one popular go-to snack for anyone who likes to eat on-the-go, but unfortunately, store bought banana chips tend to be laden with sugar. (See Reference 1.) Rest assured that this doesn’t mean you have to give up banana chips. In fact, baking your own banana chips at home is not only easy, it’s also fun!
Preparation
Chop a banana into thin slices. Chop as many bananas as you’ll need for your adventures. Four bananas is about enough to fill a sandwich size plastic bag, so plan accordingly. Remember that baked banana chips will last quite awhile, so it’s generally better to bake too many than too little.
Once your banana chips are sliced, grab an orange. Slice it in half. If you have a small juicer, you can use that to create orange juice. If not, cut the orange again so that it’s in quarters. Hold up the quarter slices one-by-one and gently squeeze the juice out into a small bowl.
Pour the freshly squeezed orange juice over the bananas and toss them gently. The bananas should be completely coated with the orange juice, but should not be saturated.
Baking the Banana chips
Once you’ve prepared the bananas for baking, preheat your oven to 200 degrees. Grab a baking sheet or pan and line it with parchment paper. Parchment paper is available at most stores in the same aisle as aluminum foil and plastic bags. The parchment paper should completely cover the pan. Spray the parchment paper with non-stick cooking spray. This is also available at your local grocery store in the baking aisle. In a pinch, you can substitute non-stick cooking spray with butter or Crisco. Simply grab a small spoonful of butter or Crisco and rub it over the parchment paper until it is completely covered.
Line the banana slices on the parchment paper. Space the bananas so that they are not touching one another. Note that if you plan to bake more than a few bananas, you’ll either need multiple pans or to cook one pan at a time until you’ve baked all of your bananas. Do not try to speed up the cooking by piling your bananas on top of one another. This will backfire and result in undercooked, sticky bananas.
Bake the bananas at 200 degrees for thirty minutes and then gently flip the bananas over. Proceed to cook the bananas for another thirty minutes.
Remove the bananas from the oven and allow them to cool. Once the bananas have cooled, you can remove them from the pan and either place them in plastic bags or a solid container for storage.
Watch it in Action!
Do you want to learn even more about baking healthy banana chips? Sometimes reading how to do something isn’t quite enough. Take a look at this helpful, step-by-step video that demonstrates exactly how you can bake healthy banana chips at home in the comfort and convenience of your own kitchen.
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