All About Plantains and How to Cook Them

By Sonia Gregor

Everyone’s heard of potatoes, a crop that originated in South America. We have endless ways of preparing this starchy vegetable, and they provide an important carbohydrate base for many cuisines. In tropical Latin American countries, plantains get a similar treatment.

They are a type of banana, but plantains are always cooked before they are eaten. When green, plantains are not sweet at all, and they are a staple source of starch in tropical cuisines. Throughout our travels in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, we ate plantains for snacks, soups and meals.  Whether boiled, fried, mashed, or dried, they are always delicious and filling.

Scientifically speaking, plantains and bananas are very closely related. They are in the same genus, Musa, which was first domesticated in Southeast Asia. Nowadays bananas are an important source of food and income throughout the tropics in the Americas, and in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific (Bioversity International). Technically bananas are not trees, but giant herbaceous plants, with a  stalk made strong by layers of leaf tissue (Tropical Permaculture). The history of banana cultivation in Latin America is a dark one, as foreign companies disregarded labor and environmental issues, even supporting coup d’etats to favor their own business (That’s how we got the phrase “banana republic”). Those who have read One Hundred Years of Solitude may remember Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s searing recount of how the American United Fruit Company crushed a worker’s uprising in Colombia in 1928 (Banco de La República). For better or for worse, bananas have become part of the cultural identity of Ecuador and Colombia, especially in low-lying regions where the warm climate and flat land facilitates banana cultivation.

We saw un-domesticated bananas at an eco-park in Manizales, Colombia, and were surprised to find them filled with large black seeds. Most commercial bananas are parthenocarpic fruit, meaning they don’t contain seeds because they were never fertilized (Scientific American). To plant commercial bananas, a sucker is cut from the base of an existing plant, and used to grow a new plant that will have the same DNA. Because they are clones, bananas are a crop that is especially susceptible to diseases. Before 1950, the most exported cultivar from Latin America to the US and Europe was a strain called Gros Michel. But the Big Mike was wiped out by a fungus in the species Fusarium, prompting growers to replace their plants with the resistant Cavendish cultivar (National Center for Biotechnology Info). Today this is the most commercially important banana, but a new strain of Fusarium has evolved to attack Cavendish cultivars as well. Scientists are scouring the banana genome for resistant traits.

The difference between bananas and plantains is easier to define as cultural. Generally speaking, plantains are cooked before they are eaten, and bananas are eaten raw. In North America we usually only see Cavendish bananas for sale, but in Latin America you can get all sorts of smaller, sweeter, fruitier varieties. Depending where you go, people may refer to both bananas and plantains as platanos, or they may call the sweet varieties bananos or guineos. 

Unripe green plantains (platano verde) are not at all sweet, but their starchiness and sturdy texture lend themselves to boiling and frying. If you let plantains ripen until their skin is black (maduro), they taste more fruity, with sugar that caramelizes when grilled or fried. Plantains show up everywhere. On the bus someone may be selling bags of fried plantain chips, either sweet or starchy. By the side of the road you can find ripe plantains being grilled, and then stuffed with cheese and guava jam. Along the Pacific coast of Ecuador, a popular breakfast is the bolon de verde – green plantains are boiled and mashed, mixed with cheese and/or pork belly bits, shaped into large balls, then deep fried. Or instead of frying, the ball can be boiled in chicken broth and served as soup. Many soups contain chunks of green plantain, giving body to the broth like potatoes do. One of the ways plantains are most likely to show up in your meal are as patacones, twice-fried rounds of green plantain. These go by different names in different countries (Wikipedia has the breakdown), but everyone agrees they are amazing. They are also easy to make – all you need is a bit of salt and oil to fry them. If you’re new to plantains completely, this is the best way to get acquainted with a new favorite starch:

Patacones

1. First, peel and cut the plantain into 1-inch sections. Optionally, soak these chunks in salt water for 15-30 minutes, then pat them dry.
2. Plop them in an inch or two of hot oil to fry. Scoop them out after 2 min or so.
3. Squash them using the bottom of a cup or bowl.
4. Then deep-fry these hockey pucks  until they are crispy but not too brown.
5. Sprinkle with salt and/or lime and eat them fresh. They make a delicious accompaniment to any saucy main dish.

Note: In Colombia we saw some patacones that were flattened even more, making them crisper and larger like fried corn tortillas. One restaurant offered this type of patacone made into nachos, with melted cheese and guacamole. Go crazy.

Caution: If you’re buying plantains in the US, be wary of green bananas that are mislabelled (Wegmans, we’re looking at you). Green plantains generally are larger, more ribbed and angular than bananas.