How to Cook Plantains for Plantain Crusted Snapper with Mango Salsa

Video Transcript

"What we're going to do now is fry our plantains for the crust. Just like a banana, peel the plantain just like so. Now what we'll do, cut them in half and slice them about a quarter of an inch like so. Sometimes it's easier when you slice it, slice it once and then flip it over. That way, it won't roll on you, just like so. Now that our plantains are sliced about a quarter-inch think, like so, we are going to go over to the burners here, and we're going to fry the plantains until they're crisp, nice golden brown. Start with my corn oil and a little bit of fire. Now you want about a half-inch of oil in there. You pretty much are deep-frying these. So we'll go with so much oil. Once you get the oil going, you want to heat it up almost to the smoke point, but be very careful. Once it's smoking, turn it down, and don't leave the stove while the oil is on. We don't want any fires. This will take about two minutes to heat up. Once that's done, we'll add our plantains. We'll cook them until golden brown, and then we will bread our snapper. Now we're going to set up our breading station. It's a basic breading system; consists of flour, egg wash, and whatever your final item is. Sometimes it's bread crumbs. In this case, it's plantains. This will be for the plantains. We have our flour. We will go with four eggs. And whip them up. Beat them with a fork. Little piece of a shell there, get rid of that. Some people prefer to add cream or milk to their egg wash. I don't. The reason being, with the straight eggs, it tends to stick to your product better. So when you fry it, you have a better crust. So we'll set this aside. We have our flour, our eggs. All we need now are the plantains. Be very careful placing these in the pan. You don't want a grease burn. Just drop one side in first and release. We're going to cook these until they're golden brown. Then we will let them cool, and we'll grind them up. And that will complete our breading system. OK, our plantains are ready. We're take these out. Put them on a plate with a couple sheets of paper towel to absorb the oil. This is just what we're looking for. Very good. This one might be a little dark. Once we grind them up, it should be good. Plantain crust is semi-sweet, but when you sauti the fish with this crust on there, it comes out nice and hard. It's crispy. You'll love it. So we'll let these cool."