For those of you who don't know, those strangely large and straight bananas are actually plantains. We love them in our house. There was a mutant double plantain (as in two of them stuck together in one peel) in our Bountiful Basket last weekend and we were excited! If you aren't familiar with them, you probably don't know what to do with them either. Our favorite way to eat them is fried. In fact, I don't think I've ever eaten them any other way. But fried plantains are so YUMMY that I have never looked for another way to eat them.
So here is how to prepare them:
Pour a layer of oil into a frying pan and heat the oil (we had our burner on high)
Cut the plantains at an angle so that you get ovals instead of circles
Then peel the slices and place them in the frying pan
When the bottoms begin to brown, flip them over to fry the other side. When both sides are browned, remove them from the pan and place them on a paper towel in a plate to remove excess grease.
Pretty simple, huh? Wondering what else to eat with them? We always eat them with refried black beans. Unfortunately, Walmart didn't have any, so we bought canned black beans instead.
To "refry" them, you need to drain them and dump them in a sauce pan. Heat them up on medium.
After some experimentation, we decided the best way to mash them up was with an egg beater. We did this intermittently as they cooked up and got softer. The finished product looked a lot like the refried beans you are familiar with but slightly darker.
This is seriously one of our favorite meals. The fried plantains are the perfect combination of sweet and crunchy and soft. Plantains are better for you than bananas. Yes, yes, we fried them...but use a healthy oil and remove excess grease and it is still not so bad. I promise, if you try fried plantains, you will NOT regret it. YUM!!
