Blue Java: the blue banana that tastes like vanilla ice cream

The Blue Java are a banana variety decidedly different from the one we are normally used to in the West. When it is unripe this type of banana takes on a characteristic blue color, but when it is ripe it has a very sweet pulp with the consistency similar to that of an ice cream so much that it is also called ice cream banana.

When we talk about bananas the vast majority of us immediately think of that fruit with green-yellow peel that is commonly found in shops, but actually that is only a variety of banana called Cavendish, which is certainly the most widespread but certainly not the sweetest. The primacy in this sense belongs to this other variety, the Blue Java which owes its name to the characteristic blue color of the peel when it is unripe. However, there is no genetic modification, it is all natural. Its peculiarity is not so much in the color that becomes straw-yellow when it is ripened, but precisely in its sweet taste that is said to have the consistency of an ice cream and the flavor that recalls vanilla. Features that earned it also the name of ice cream banana among the many names that distinguish it like Hawaiian banana, Ney Mannan, Krie or Cenizo.

The Blue Java banana plant is characteristic of the countries of Central America, in those of Southeast Asia, in Hawaii and in the Fiji islands, where everyone has renamed it in its own way, it needs constant light but does not fear the cold since it can withstand even sub-zero temperatures. The plant can reach a height between four and six meters and a width of about three meters and produces a shorter fruit than the common Cavendish bananas that has that characteristic silvery blue color when it is unripe. The ripened fruits, however, take on a yellow color and have a white pulp with a creamy consistency and a decidedly sweet taste.