I Made Dried Banana Blossoms

Do you use dried banana blossom?  I always do for adobo, braised beef, Pata Tim,  arroz caldo and all other congee.  

I often sauté banana heart in salt and vinegar with a little sugar and pepper; actually it's like pickled banana heart.  This is a great appetizer and my sister's favorite.  When she visits, I always serve this for any meal. 

But I have to remove a lot of the outer covering and only use the inner tender portion and end up throwing away the outer blossoms as shown below:

These are what I usually throw away.  

When we harvested two banana hearts last week, I thought I would not waste the outer blossoms.

I need to remove the plastic looking part in each blossom as well as the part looking like a match stick as shown 

Once this is done, the blossoms are blanched for 20 minutes in water with a tablespoon of salt.

Once drained, I made a mixture of equal parts of soy and sugar 

I soaked the blossoms in a soy and sugar mixture overnight.  

I drained again and sun dried. 

 I placed these in ziplock in the refrigerator and these will last for a long time for future use.