Plantain Chips

I have very limited experience with plantains. It is a cousin of the banana, my favourite fruit, so I figured I should experiment with it out of respect. I can only remember two occasions where I actually have had plantain: 1. In Dominican Republic, I believe it was mashed, and 2. at Margarita's in Waterloo, as a chip to dip into guacamole. Now since avocados are my new best friend, I thought this would be a great thing to do with a plantain.

So I purchased a plantain. It was green. I waited and I waited for it to turn ripe. Finally a few days later it was ripe. Once it was ripe I did some research and found that there are lots of uses for green plantains as well. Aparantly it is best to make baked plantain chips with a green plantain, and to make fried or mashed plantain with ripe plantains. So since I had a ripe plantain on my hand, I had to resort to frying the plantain chips. Of course, my version of frying is merely using about a tbsp of oil in the pan, not really "frying".

Plantain Chips

1 plantain
1 tbsp olive oil

serves 2

So I peeled and sliced up the plantain into 1/2 cm slices. I heated the olive oil on medium-high. I then placed the slices on the pan without crowding. After about 5 minutes, flip the slices and heat for another 3 to 5 minutes. You have to watch these carefully becuase they burn quickly.

These went great with the guacamole that I made, based off of the Avocado Salsa Verde from my Mexican Fiesta post. It is my mom's new favourite.

I have since had a new found love for plantains and bought another one the other day. I thought about making plantain tortillas and found a recipe online. The tortillas didn't really turn out (they kind of crumbled), but still tasted good with some spicy quinoa, tomatoes and cottage cheese.

I really like the idea of making tortillas out of plantains and will hopefully get it to work in the future.

Up next: 2 delicious ways to use up all those Ontario peaches!