Fried Plantain Cups

Hi, I'm Daisy Martinez on eHow.com. Today, I'm going to take you through plantains 101. We're going to fix plantains, green plantains this time, two different ways, let's get started. A green plantain is really an unripe plantain. If you let this go, it will turn yellow with black spots, sometimes even all the way black. The starch that's in this plantain is going to convert to sugar and that's what a sweet plantain is. A sweet plantains are wonderful for breakfast, you can't eat them raw you really have to at least saute them, but they are absolutely delicious. To prep a green plantain we're going to top and tail and then we're just going to run our knife down the back, just like so, just to score the skin and then with the edge of the knife you're going to work the skin away from the plantain, all the way down. Okay, and then, once you do that you sneak your thumb down into that space and you just run it down the plantain and it will loosen the skin right off. So, I'm going to cut this plantain in half because I told you I'm going to do it two different ways. First I'm going to show you how to do plantain chips and then I'm going to show you how to make plantain cups so that you can fill it with your favorite filling. Okay so for the plantain cups we want to keep our plantains in fairly large pieces okay? And I'm going to put them in salted water well salted water, so again I want to avoid the plantains from turning dark and then for the plantain chips, we're going to cut them a little, I guess about, is that an inch, pretty close. We're going to be cooking this plantains at two different temperatures, kind of like you would cook a classic French fry. The first time at about 350 and you can, that's like a nice happy bubble, nothing crazy or furious, just a nice happy bubble. And I want to, of course if you're going to fry in oil, you want to make sure that these, the ones that you put in salted water to prevent the darkening, you want to make sure that they're completely dry to put them in. And we're going to go ahead and put our plantains in. We don't want them to get color but we do want to cook out that starch. Okay, I'm looking at my plantains and you want to make sure that they're cooked on the inside not just the outside because if they're not cooked on the inside they'll break when you smash them. So you just want to, see that, with a paring knife you can get through it like this. See? Okay, and then we'll just drain them on paper towels and let me take you through step number two. Okay, I'm going to show you one of my favorite kitchen toys, a totona, a tostone maker, and tostones are what we call these twice fried plantains in Puerto Rico and we're going to go ahead and just put our tostones in my fancy totona and we're just going to go ahead and smash. I like it. Okay, and now I'm just going to set these aside because I'm going to show you another trick. I'm going to flip my fancy totona over and I'm going to make tostone cups for you and this is basically the same idea. Again now you see the plantains are cut in bigger pieces, right? Okay, ready, here we go. I've got to put my weight into that and there we have beautiful little plantain cups and I'm going to use my fork to help me lift them out. Again if I hadn't cooked these through these would have just broken apart and I have a try full of these that I made beforehand and now I'm heating up the oil to that nice furious fry. So it would be like a 400 degree. If you break part of a cup while you're taking it out, it's soft enough that you can just, you know, pinch it together and it will hold its shape. Okay, again we're going to check to see how hot our oil is and we're just going to bring it up to speed in a second. We want those bubbles now really to dance. We'll put the cups in with the tostones and you see that beautiful furious bubble and then we'll just ease the cups in because we want to be careful that they don't lose their shape. Okay and you want them to get a beautiful golden brown. I don't want to put any more in because that oil is cha, cha, chaing in there. Okay, you can see we're getting some beautiful golden brown color as opposed to the pale first fry. That's what makes tostones so delicious, that extra fry. Okay and now I'm going to show you what we're going to do with these beautiful plantain cups. And I mean these are suggestions because I've made this today but you can feel free to fill these little cups up with pulled pork, with Latin peccavi, with a delicious citrusy ceviche, anything that is good for a bite is going to be amazing in these We happen to have a couple of fillings. I have some beautiful guacamole that I made, right in that cup and I have some delicious tomatillo salsa that I made, right in there and then I have some pretty, just you know, everyday peculica salsa, put those in there. How to impress your family and friends. I've got your answer right here, Daisy Martinez, doing plantains for eHow.