Cast Iron Bananas Foster

Why This Recipe Works

Although the classic New Orleans dessert bananas Foster is quick and simple, with just a few ingredients (butter, brown sugar, rum, and bananas), things can easily go wrong in the execution. The bananas are frequently overcooked and mushy, and the sauce can be too thin, or overly sweet, or taste too strongly of alcohol. We wanted to develop a foolproof way to make a quick, reliable version of this dessert with tender bananas and a flavorful but not boozy sauce. First, we kept the amounts of butter and brown sugar in check—most recipes use a high ratio of butter to brown sugar, which makes for a thin, greasy sauce. For the rum, we found that a small amount was enough to impart recognizable rum flavor without turning the dessert into a cocktail. We also enhanced the sauce with a little cinnamon and lemon juice, which added some complexity. We made the sauce in our skillet and then cooked the bananas in the sauce until soft, flipping them over halfway through cooking so they turned out tender, not mushy. Traditionally, bananas Foster is flambéed to burn off the raw alcohol flavor and create a rounder, better-tasting dish. But our version of bananas Foster struck the perfect balance of sweetness from the brown sugar, rich depth of flavor from golden rum, toasted notes from one cinnamon stick, and a splash of acidity from lemon juice for a sophisticated dish that made fussy flambéing entirely unnecessary.