Plantain Chips

After my trip to Africa, from time to time I crave for plantain chips, since maybe some don’t know what that is, I took some photos of parts of the process.

This is the unripe plantains, looks like green banana, but not same, they have lot of starch, and are not good to eat like this. When they get ripe, they have an different sweetness than bananas, and because of the amount of starch, you can easily get an mouthful of these.

The skin is very thick, and strong, so to peel them, cut into the skin along lengthwise of the plantain, and then use your thumb to split it open and peel it off.

Then I use the fantastic Norwegian invention called Cheese Slicer, normally used for hard cheese, but it is perfect for this job. :)

After slicing, put them on some greaseproof paper, toss some salt on them (careful), and heat some oil. Preferably use groundnut oil. (Alternatively you can use sunflower or corn oil, but do not use olive oil.. ). Make sure the oil is good and hot, to see if the oil is hot enough, you can stick an wooden utensil into the oil, and if it fizz a little, then the oil is about right.

Toss them in the hot oil, careful, the salt will extract some water, so it will splatter a bit, so lower them easily down into the pot, or get burned. Your choice.

Do not fill the pot, you only will cool down the oil to much, thus, boiling instead of frying, which will make the plantain to such the oil into it instead of getting fried.

Leave the computer, TV, or whatever, the chips will be ready fairly fast. I have too often burned thing because of other distractions.. Always when using oil, pay attention!

After they get nice tan color, take them out, using some mesh-spoon or the like, and put them on some greaseproof paper again, spread them out on the paper, making the oil drip off. After a bit, turn, and move them, so they don’t soak into the oil.

Then, take them of the paper, collect into an bowl, or whatever, and eat.

Do I need to tell you that you should not eat too much of this? :)