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Yield: 12 Fritters
An easy dessert recipe to make, Plantain Fritter are almost like eating sugar coatd donuts. They're a great alternative to the same old desserts that you might be serving.
These are pretty easy to do, but need to be served warm. So, make up the batter ahead of time, and fry them just before you want to serve them. These ended up a little creamy on the inside, so if you would like them a little drier, all you'll have to do is double up on the flour. And, their texture was more like a donut than a fritter, I know you'll love the way these turn out.
What happens when you go shopping and are hungry? You buy way too much stuff, of course!
I went to a Farmer's Market 2 weeks ago, and bought all kinds of strange fruits and vegetables I haven't tried in the past. These Plantains were part of that purchase, and were planned to be made into Plantain Chips.
Well, a week went by, and I hadn't used them yet, and they were beginning to turn yellow, the beginning of the ripening process. When making Plantain Chips, the Plantains should be Green and very hard. You even need to boil them for 5 minutes or so just to get the skins off.
Now I've got Plantains that are begining to ripen, so I went looking for ways to use them. After thoroughly looking around the internet for ideas, I on making these Plantain Fritters.
Now the Plantains should be almost black in order for them to be soft enough to mash them up. That was the hardest part. Watching them turn from green to yellow, then from yellow to black took about 2 weeks. Never having worked with Plantains before, I figured that I might have screwed up this time, and that they were really turning rotten on me. They weren't, and ended up the perfect consistancy.
O.K., it's a lazy Sunday afternoon, and time to cook them. I again Googled Plantain Fritters, and found that all of the recipes were pretty similar, so I got away from the computer, and just went at it. This recipe is the result.
Not a difficult recipe at all and it's another dessert using Blacken, Who woulda Thunk that spice blends like mine could be used in a dessert?
2 Large, Plantains, yellow with 50% or more black spotting
1. Quite often, plantains available at the supermarket are bright yellow, or green,like bananas. Although they look like bananas, they're not. Green plantains are good for making Plantain Chips. You've got to let them sit on the counter, flipping them over each day until they're almost black. This is the ripening process that will make them soft and a little sweet tasting. So, don't be alarmed as they begin to turn black, it O.K.
2. Peel the plantains by slicing the skin, lengthwise into 3 strips. This will make the skins easy to get off.
3. Place the plantains in a bowl, and mash with a fork. Having let the Plantains turn almost black, has a side benefit of making them soft.
4. Mince the onion into a real tiny, 1/6" dice, and add it to the mashed plantains.
5. Add the Jerk, Salt, Flour, Baking Powder, Egg, Milk, Vanilla Extract, and Light Brown Sugar to the mashed Plantain and Onion mix. Mix it all together.
6. Place about 1/2" of vegetable oil in a fry pan, and turn the heat to medium high. Once the oil's hot, turn the temperature down a little bit. You'll have to fry these at a lower than normal temperature, 300 degrees, or the fritters will burn, and they'll end up raw in the middle.
I fried these 3 different ways: 1. I placed a serving spoon sized dollop into the fry pan. Cooked them until they were brown, then flipped them.
2. I placed the large dollop into the pan, and smoothed them out, to make them thinner.
3. I also tried them in a dry, Teflon pan, like a pancake, that didn't work too well at all!
The best method for cooking these was to thin them out a little after placing them into the pan of hot oil. The insides got cooked, and the outside was nice and brown.
7. Mix up the Sugar and Cinnamon:
As you take the Plantain Fritters out of the fryer, place them on a grate over a sheet pan while you get the next batch cooking.
Then, immediately coat them with the cinnamon / sugar mixture.
Ron's Note:
Normally anything fried should be seasoned as soon as it comes out of the frying pan. I tried it on the first one, and the fritters tasted greasy. Letting them sit for the minute, or so that it takes to place the next batch into the frying pan is enough time for a little of the oil to drain off.
8. Set them back on the rack to let them cool a little bit before eating.
9. I served these, warm, with just the coating of Cinnamon Sugar on them, the were terrific. However, I let a few of them sit for about an hour, then tried them. They definitely something that you want to serve warm.
This recipe prints as a shortened version, with only 1 Picture, Ingredients, and Directions.
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This recipe prints as a shortened version, with only 1 Picture, Ingredients, and Directions.
By Cap'n Ron
