cheap eats [tostones]

My brother married into a wonderful Puerto Rican/Ecuadorian family this past year. Combine his love of cooking with his wife's heritage, and you've got a slammin' recipe for tostones (fried plantains). R made these for the family when we were in Boston, and I wanted to share the recipe here.

Fill a skillet with oil, like canola or vegetable. Slice up your plantains into 1" pieces- they should be close-to-green. I typically wait until my plantains are black, then fry them up and eat them with rice and black beans, but for tostones, you want them to be much firmer.  Heat the oil to hot hot hot and drop those babies in for about 6 minutes (3 minutes each side if they aren't submerged). Once-fried plantains are on the left:

And on the right  are the flattened plantains. Use a flat surface (a plate would do) to squash your once-fried plantains. Then we'll make them twice-fried plantains, like so:

Double frying, though suggestive of a heart-attack, really gives them that perfect crisp. This dip in the hot oil is much shorter, maybe 1 or 2 minutes each side. I read online that some people dip the squashed once-fried plantains in water before their second dunk, but we didn't.

If you're thinking what I'm thinking, you're thinking "plantains are a fruit, which means their healthy, which means we should add butter". Good idea. Slather on a small pad and watch it melt into the fried crunchy goodness. Add salt, too!

Ta-da! Crunch on the outside, a bit of chew on the inside, and a wonderful flavor (not at all like bananas). And no, there is no healthier way to make these. I asked. I think these would be good with more of a sear using coconut oil, but it wouldn't be considered tostones if they weren't fried. Or maybe leave the butter off, but if you're going to go twice-fried, you might as well make it buttery. Our diet starts tomorrow.