Plantain vs banana: the difference and how to cook plantain

A plantain is a cooking banana: larger, thicker and starchier than the sweet banana you eat raw. It is almost always eaten cooked, whether fried, boiled or baked. Green plantain tastes like potato, while ripe yellow or black plantain is sweet and caramelises in the pan. In Polish it is called plantan or banan warzywny (vegetable banana), and Spanish speakers call it plátano.

Plantain vs banana: the differences

Plantains and dessert bananas are close relatives in the same plant genus, but in the kitchen they behave very differently:

In West Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, plantain is a vegetable for the main meal, not a fruit for dessert. It plays much the same role there as potatoes do in Poland.

Plantain ripeness stages

Plantain changes a lot as it ripens, and each stage suits different dishes:

• Green (plátano verde). Hard, not sweet, very starchy. Good for tostones, chips, soups and boiling like potatoes.
• Yellow with black spots. Sweeter and softer. At this stage plantain is good for frying in slices.
• Almost black. Very sweet and soft, but it still holds its shape. Good for frying, baking and desserts.

A green plantain ripens at room temperature in a few days to a week. Do not put it in the fridge if you want it to ripen.

How to peel a plantain

You cannot peel a plantain like a banana, especially when it is green.

1. Cut off both ends.
2. Cut the plantain into 2 or 3 pieces.
3. Score the skin along the ridges, shallowly, so you do not cut the flesh.
4. Lift the skin with your thumb or the tip of a knife and pull it off in strips.

Green plantain can stain your hands a little; rubbing them with oil first helps. Ripe plantain peels much more easily.

How to cook plantain: tostones, dodo, kelewele

Tostones (patacones). A dish from the Caribbean and Latin America, made with green plantain:

1. Peel a green plantain and cut it into slices about 2 to 3 cm thick.
2. Fry in oil over medium heat for a few minutes, until slightly soft but not brown.
3. Take them out and flatten each slice into a disc with the flat bottom of a glass.
4. Fry again over higher heat until golden and crisp.
5. Salt them as soon as they come out of the oil. Serve with a garlic sauce.

Maduros and dodo. Ripe yellow-black plantain is cut into rounds or on the diagonal and fried until golden. In Latin America these are maduros; in Nigeria, dodo, served with jollof rice, beans or eggs.

Kelewele. A Ghanaian snack of ripe plantain. Cubes of plantain are mixed with ginger, chilli, garlic and salt, then fried until crisp.

Boiled plantain. Green or yellow plantain is boiled in salted water and served with stews and soups. In West Africa boiled plantain, often together with cassava, is pounded into fufu.

Chips. Very thin slices of green plantain are deep-fried. You can also buy plantain chips ready-made in packets.

What to use instead of plantain

In savoury dishes, green plantain can be replaced with potato or cassava, though the taste will differ. A ripe plantain for frying cannot be replaced with an ordinary banana, which falls apart in the pan. If you have no choice, pick the firmest, least ripe bananas you can find.

Where to buy plantain in Poland

Look for fresh green and ripe plantains in the fresh vegetables section of the Little India shop. There are also ready-made Coexito plantain chips, Maduritos chips from ripe plantain and an AliBaba plantain fufu mix. Little India has shops in Warsaw, Kraków, Wrocław and Gdańsk and ships orders across Poland.

How to make fufu is explained in fufu and egusi. The other starchy tropical root is covered in our guide to cassava.