
Plantain Chips
Green plantain sliced paper-thin and fried until crisp. It is a snack made across West Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America, and no single country is claimed for it. **One correction to the source, and it matters.** It says plantain chips are "also known as alloco, dodo, or chicharritas". Chicharritas is right, that is the Cuban and Puerto Rican name for exactly this. But alloco and dodo are not chips. Both are the West African dish of *ripe* plantain cut into thick pieces and fried soft: sweet, tender and yielding, the opposite of a crisp. Alloco is the Ivorian name and dodo the Nigerian one, and both have their own pages on this site. Conflating them with chips confuses two quite different foods. The distinction comes down to ripeness. Green plantain is starchy and barely sweet, and sliced thin it dries and crisps. Ripe plantain is full of sugar and moisture; sliced thin it burns before it crisps, and cut thick it fries soft. The source's own instructions are good, do not salt before frying, do not use overripe fruit, season while hot, but they are written as a list of tips rather than as a method. A method has been constructed.
35 minNympha






















