The Ingredient That Adds A Unique, Savory Spin To Banana Bread

Remember during the pandemic when everyone was baking banana bread? CNN declared it the unofficial snack of the lockdown, and everyone was turning to the ultimate comfort food to calm their nerves. You don't need a worldwide crisis to bake a loaf of banana bread, of course. It's so easy to make that you can have one ready in as little as 30 minutes, and it's the perfect way to use up any overripe bananas that are attracting fruit flies on your counter. You probably already have most of the ingredients in the pantry, but there's one unexpected item you can add to the mix for a little added richness: miso paste.

Bananas are unabashedly sweet, but they play well with salty, earthy flavors. Miso is a salty, umami-rich ingredient that can balance a loaf of banana bread. The way sea salt tastes good with caramel and chocolate chip cookies, banana bread made with miso is salty and sweet, an irresistible combination. If you have some miso in the fridge, you only need a few tablespoons to take your banana bread to the next level.

If you're not yet hip to the miso trend, there's no better way to get on board than doctoring grandma's banana bread recipe with a little bit of the salty paste. It's made from fermented soybeans and is most commonly used to make soup with a little tofu and dried seaweed. Miso is incredibly versatile, however, and lately, it's been turning up in everything from salad dressing to roasted Brussels sprouts, pasta, soups, and baked goods, according to the New York Times. Banana bread is the perfect vehicle for miso because it already has rich, ripe, earthy flavors from the fruit and caramel notes from the baking process. Add a little miso, and you'll get all those flavors plus some salty, umami characteristics.

If you want to experiment with adding miso to your banana bread recipe, the key is to balance out the sweetness of the batter with the saltiness of the miso. Try adding around two tablespoons of miso to any standard-sized banana bread recipe, which is usually around 6 cups of batter to make a one-pound loaf. It's a good idea to also add an extra tablespoon or two of sugar to your batter to counteract the saltiness.

Many people make the mistake of thinking that perfect banana bread is made with only sweet ingredients; however, even cake recipes call for a little bit of salt to balance out the flavor. All you're doing when you add miso is punching up the saltiness to the point where you can actually taste it.

Banana bread batter is not complicated to make; you just mix wet and dry ingredients separately and then fold them together. You can easily add miso paste to the wet ingredients without worrying about the loaf's structure. In these small quantities, you shouldn't have any trouble getting your loaf to rise; it'll just add a flavor difference. Try mixing it in with the butter, especially if it's melted, so that it will get distributed throughout the batter.

You can even mix a little extra miso butter while you're at it, which is a great condiment to have around for making toast, scrambling eggs, or tossing with roasted vegetables. It will also, of course, taste great spread on a warm slice of banana bread right out of the oven.