Listen to Jesse. When you make banana pudding, you must use ripe bananas. If the fruit has even the merest tinge of green on the ribs, it will be firm and bitter, which is not what you want.
If you find ripe bananas in the grocery, they’ll be severely marked down; I think the public has been conditioned by years of buying green bananas that any banana with a dark spot is spurned. So most often, you have to buy them a bit green. Fortunately, bananas are climacteric, ripening after picking. My daddy, who was stationed in the Pacific during WWII, knew quite well how a ripe banana tasted, and put bunches on top of the refrigerator–where as an added plus his children couldn’t reach them–to ripen.
Put green grocery bananas in a paper sack–plastic doesn’t let the fruit breathe–and give it a good twist to keep out fruit flies. In two or three days, when the fruit is soft and aromatic you’re ready to make banana pudding. Or banana pound cake. Or peel and eat.
