Plantains!!

[cups123]

I just bought two plantains for the first time and trying to figure out what to make:) One is ripe and the other is green. Any exotic or just plain yummy recipes? :)

[lilgi]

If I'm not mistaken I think I remember having plain boiled green plantains with green bananas and pernil. I thought the combination was delicious because of the plain boiled plantains bananas and the very seasoned roasted pork. The dish that Bushwickgirl mentions (sancocho) sounds very familiar to me as well. Great, now I'm hungry....

[Cheese Boy]

The maduros (ripe) one, let it get completely black, slice it up on the bias, and fry it. The tostones (unripe) one, go get some more and try your hand at some mangu with scrambled eggs.

[monpetitescargot]

i like to braise them too. sometimes in chicken dishes. i add them like 30 minutes out when im braising legs or thighs. especially in a broth made of tomato sauce and chicken stock, wilted onions. a little mace, cinnamon, basil, ginger. they get puffy and custard-like and are a great addition.

also, sometimes i mash them and serve them sweet or savoury. sometimes i mash them and fry them into patties coated in bread crumbs.

[italia84]

I like to make mangu with green plaintains. A lot of Dominicans eat it with breakfast, but I like it any time of day. Boil the plaintain till fork tender. While it's boiling, cook a bunch of onions in some oil. Add some limes (vinegar will work in a pinch) to the onions. Mash the plaintains. Add some water to it to make it softer, and also salt and pepper. Serve the plaintains with the onions on top, and I like extra lime with mine.

[bushwickgirl]

Yes, that's tasty stuff. I like mofongo also, it's a bit different and very tasty as well.

[italia84]

I loooove mofongo. Have never made it, but damn, tasty stuff!

[krisrishere]

I actually love to use ripe plantains for pastelon. Think of it as a Puerto Rican shepherds pie.

Saute ground beef with minced onion, garlic and sazon seasoning. Add a little tomato sauce, capers, spanish olives and salt/pepper to taste; simmer until reduced and thickened. Next, lightly fry up some sliced ripe (really ripe) plantains until soft and mash into a mashed potato-like consistency; season to taste. Lay the meat in a casserole dish and top with the mashed plantains. Some people top with cheese, I'm not really a fan. Bake for about 20 minutes until the topping is golden.

[JungMann]

Fry up some onions, garlic and tomatoes with ground beef. Add peas and raisins, maybe a little cumin and chili if you want a kick. Pour over a bowl of white rice. Drape with a fried egg and top with fried plantain strips.

[Veggo]

Fried plantains are frequently included with breakfast dishes in the Yucatan, esp. huevos rancheros and huevos motulenos.

[paulj]

These fried plantains strips probably use ones that quite ripe.

[mariacarmen]

Cubans, puerto rican, guatamalans, bolivians... everyone's doing it!

I loev when they're very very ripe, very caramelized, so, very sweet, and then served with black beans and mexican crema. and a fried egg. perfect or bistec a la palomilla. i don't like the green ones, don't get tostones, personally, as they have very little flavor and are too starchy to me (tho i love fried yucca!)

[mariacarmen]

oh god, you did it again, i'm drooling, JungMann!

[luckyfatima]

I love to cut a green plantain into coin thin slices (about as thick as two quarters pressed together), deep fry, and sprinkle with chaat masala and a dash of salt. I feed this to my kids all the time. It's a great snack.

[Veggo]

They are customarily split lengthwise and fried in butter & oil on a low heat, served with rice and black beans and any meat dish, platanos maduros.
Fry them a little longer until they carmelize a bit, and serve warm with vanilla ice cream. The black flecked ones are perfectly ready. They go from flecked to black pretty quickly. The black are fine, and sweet, but soft and harder to work with.

[paulj]

If you have to cut the skin off, it is still 'green'.

My favorite is a very ripe one, sliced about 1/4" thick, and carefully fried. I say careful, because the riper it is, the easier it is too burn.

Tostones, which are twice fried, is one of the better things to do with the harder green ones.

Green ones can also be cut into large pieces and cooked in soup like potato.

[cups123]

any spices to add to them? The green one, I made fries out of and while I loved the texture I really felt like they were bland. I seasoned with salt and pepper..a good amount of salt and it still felt underseasoned...

[bushwickgirl]

Tostones need an aggressive seasoning and/or a mojo to dip them in, finely minced garlic, white vinegar, a little lime juice, salt and olive oil. The yellow plantain, either amarillos or maduros, depending on the drgree of ripeness, can be fried, as other posters have described, and served with a brown mole or just with hot sauce and salt.

I use the green plantains in Sancocho, a mixed meat (beef, chiken, pork) stew with plantains, white sweet potatoes, carrots, yuca, slices of corn on the cob and lots of cilantro in a thickened stock.

I used to have a Dominican roommate that made me "Dominican" breakfast sometimes, that's what he called it, boiled green plantains, plain boiled rice, fried eggs and fried salami, yes, salami. I found the meal needed hot sauce.

[Cheese Boy]

Bushwickgirl, not to hijack this thread by any means,
but do you have any recs for making yautia? The smaller white yautia specifically, NOT the big malanga with the purplish specs. Thanks.

[bushwickgirl]

Use yautia in beef, pork or fish stews with yucca for the double starch effect. We used to get tripe soup, Mondongo, from our local Spanish supermarket that did take out. I refuse to cook tripe at home, it's the, um, aroma. The soup had bits of pork, tripe, yautia, yucca and other porky parts, ears and tail. Interesting. It was tasty but didn't have a very agreeable smell, imo. I'm not saying to get out there and make some tripe soup, but yautia will work in any good stew as a sub for potatoes. You can also make alcapurrias with grated yautia or malanga and green plantains, of course. Enjoy!

[Cheese Boy]

Mondongo can be *very* good when it's prepared well. I like your idea to include the yautia as a primary or secondary starch and I also agree that a smelly mondongo can be a definite appetite suppressor. I rarely order it out for just this reason.

I have a Caribbean place near me that makes AWESOME soups. The varieties I like most are their beef, goat, chicken, and red pea soups. Almost every soup served to me had this huge [2" by 2"] chunk of golden yellow colored root vegetable in it. I have no idea what it is, but it resembled a yukon gold potato but with a less creamy consistency. This veg had a firmer texture to it. I will have to ask them if they'll part with the recipe.

[Philly Ray]

For the green one, cut it into pieces about an inch to an inch and a half thick and fry those in oil. Once they get a little golden, take them out of the pan and smash them down into rounds, then return them to the pan and fry again until crispy. These are called tostones.

Another easy one for the green one is to shred it (with a box grater or the grater attachment of your food processor) and then make little round piles of the shredded plantain (kind of like potato pancakes, but don't flatten them). Fry the piles in oil until crispy. These are called aranitas.

[paulj]

What color is the ripe one? yellow, somewhat black, or very black?

[cups123]

its yellow with some small areas of black?