Plantains FTW

Enhanced with a bite from Hungry Sam!

Ok – can’t rock a hiatus forever. I’ve found a new apartment, I’ve moved, I’m somewhat unpacked, work is busy but (for the moment) not unmanageable. In sum: I can take a deep breath, savor my food, and write up some of my awesome food adventures.

Tonight, we make baked fried plantains. Or fried baked plantains. No, I think the first one.

Obligatory backstory: I am a meat lover, but honestly, the best part of Brazilian churrascaria is the fried plantains. Doesn’t matter what absurd quantities of beef and lamb and chicken and pork I consume right of the sword from which it’s served – I ALWAYS have room for just one more sweet, browned, rich, earthy chunk of plaintain.

So when I saw some perfectly overripe, oversized plantains stacked high in my strange, wondrous/kinda smelly Latin grocery store in my new neighborhood, I knew it was time to try it myself.

"What are plantains?" a person might ask. "This is a plantain," I reply:

"Isn't that just a banana?" that same person might also ask. "NO DAMMIT," I calmly reply. Then I check Wikipedia, and see that a plantain is, in fact a banana. There is no "botanical distinction" between a banana and a plaintain; the former is smaller and sweeter due to specific environmental factors and not to a difference in genetics. The terms, then, are tied to more to usage than anything else -- a "plaintain" is a cooking banana.

Being a little adverse to fried food generally AND disliking the oil spatter burns I inevitably suffer whenever I fry things, I decided to coat the plantains with a little oil then bake them. The same general strategy works when I make my sweet potato fries, so hey, why not?

Several recipes I found online noted that overripe plantains are the best for this dish; these can be identified by their intense yellow color and black spots. I chopped off the ends, peeled the fruit, then sliced at a diagonal into 3/4 inch chunks.

For oil, vegetable would probably have been the right direction, but having just moved, all I happened to have on hand was olive. Using a spritz bottle, I coated everything lightly and evenly and spread the coins on a tray I'd also spritzed. Just for giggles, I used cinnamon and a little brown sugar on half, and set the whole shebang to bake at 450 degrees. 

As sometimes happens when trying a new technique, I didn't know quite the amount of time to bake the dish. I knew the general consistency I wanted (very tender, a slight browning crisp on the edges) -- trial and error, then, was the name of the game. I think I tried them at 10 minutes, 12 minutes, and 15 minutes; they were finally done to my liking at 18 minutes.

Tasting notes: Texture was close, about as close as I was going to get without actually frying. The edges were crispy but the interior never reached the silky, smooth, melt-on-your-tongue tenderness that you get from fried plantains. Flavor-wise, the cinnamon sugar side was delicious; the un-seasoned side was a little bland. Perhaps it was the fruit I purchased, but these babies benefited from a little extra sweetness. I thought the baked plantains were decent, but not as good as fried -- if I use this technique again in the future I intend to use significantly more oil.

On another note, I'm taking these pictures with my new camera. Learning the manual controls will take some time, but definitely better pictures, no?

Comments

[Suburban Sweetheart]

I LOVE PLANTAINS SO MUCH, I WANT THEEEEESE.

All caps required. My want is that strong.

[Hungry Sam]

They were really, absurdly easy. If you can cut things and push buttons, you can do this.

[Debs]

Hi Sam! Nice article. Rule of thumb Sam , if you are going to try to make something healthier, it's not gonna get tastier :).....well mostly.

[Hungry Sam]

Yeah. The goal is to hit that sweet spot where it's just as good or good in a slightly different way. Like, you can't "have your cake and eat it too," but maybe you can "have your cake and eat a wicked good raspberry trifle."

Or something.