Sweet · In Afrikaans: Braaibanane
Braai bananas
Bananas in their skins, split lengthways and filled with chocolate, twelve minutes in the last of the coals. They cook in the last of the coals while the table is being cleared.
Braai bananas are not an old recipe but a practical invention: once the meat is off, there is still half an hour of heat sitting there, and a banana brings its own baking dish.
- Prep
- 5 min
- On the fire
- 12 min
- Serves
- 6
- Effort
- easy
How hot
Gentle
You can hold your hand over the grid for 8 seconds · ≈ 150–175 °C
Every coal stage explained →When it goes on
Right at the end
Pudding in the last of the heat — or something that needs no fire at all.
Equipment: Grid · Foil
This line
The hinged grid as a baking tin, the packet product as an ingredient, the vegetarian main course at a meat fire.
Method
-
Split them
Cut each banana lengthways through the skin, not right to the bottom and not through the underside. The skin is the dish — keep it whole and the filling stays in.
-
Fill them
Ease the split open and push the chocolate in. Sprinkle with brown sugar and a pinch of cinnamon, then press the skin closed again.
-
Wrap them
Wrap each banana individually in foil. You can skip the foil — then melted chocolate runs into the coals and the skin goes pitch black.
-
Into the last coals
Lay them on the grid over weak coals, eight seconds on the hand test. Ten to twelve minutes, turned once halfway.
-
Open and eat
Unwrap carefully — there is steam in there. The banana has turned into a soft, warm compote you eat out of the skin with a spoon. A scoop of ice cream on top and that is it.
Tips
- Children like doing this themselves. An adult does the cutting; the filling and wrapping they can have.
- Without chocolate and with a spoon of fruit chutney instead of sugar, it turns into a side dish for meat rather than a pudding.
- A black skin is not a mistake. It is proof it was in there long enough.
There are desserts you plan, and there are braai bananas. Five minutes of preparation, no bowl, no oven, and they use exactly the heat that would otherwise go out unused.
What happens is more than warming up. The fire does not make the banana sweeter — its starch turned to sugar while ripening, long before it reached the coals. Over the heat that sugar caramelises at the edges, the cell walls give way, the flesh collapses and goes creamy — a compote in its own container. The chocolate melts into it and binds it.
Which is why this recipe sits at stage five, in the residual heat: it belongs at the end of a braai, not over full coals. Too much heat splits the skin, and then the dish is gone.
Goes with this
Bread
Braaibroodjies
Side · Mielies
Mielies off the fire
Sweet · Malvapoeding
Malva pudding
Snack
Braaipastei
Medium
Snack · Braaipastei