How to clean the banana flower?

Banana flower is otherwise called banana blossom or plantain flower or banana heart .The tamil name is Vaazhai poo (vaalai poo).In addition to the fruit, the flower of the banana plant is used in Southeast Asian, Tamil, Bengali and Kerala (India) cuisine, either served raw with dips or cooked in soups and curries.
Cleaning the banana blossom is a challenging task for every beginner.
So I am explaining it with images.



Wash the entire flower under running water.Apply some oil on your hands to avoid discoloration of skin.
Remove and discard the red bracts.
Gather all the small flowers inside. If not used they would have grown into individual sweet bananas.
You can peel up blossom to certain limit only, then leave the cone as it is.
carefully open each white blossom. You may see a plastic textured petal and a hard stamen. Just remove both.






Discard the above and collect the soft flowers.




Take 2 cups of water and mix 1 tablespoon of yogurt to it.
Immerse the cleaned banana flowers in to the solution.,
This is done to prevent the oxidation of the flower.
Chop the cleaned plantain flowers and the inner cone.
This chopped banana flower can be used to make curry, fry, vazhai poo vadai, soup etc.


Image shows the typical Indian style Plantain flower poriyal