Reasons #32 Why Colombia is Awesome: Patacones!

Barranquilla — By Ryan on May 30, 2010 8:17 am

Ah talk about life changing! It will be my mission to spread the deliciousness of patacones to the rest of the world from this moment onwards. This deceptively simple food is like the duck tape of Colombian cuisine. It’s versatility is not to be underestimated as I have used patacones with just salt, with the standard rice dish, to finish left over pasta, with raspeberry jam and even with Nutella.

A patagone is basically squished deep fried plantains. What you do is you take a green plantain and you cut it up into 3-4 chunks(depending on the size) and then take those chunks and lightly deep fry them so they are just browned on the outside.  After they are deep friend you squish them flat, usually with a plate covered by a plastic bag.   After they are squished flat you can put them away for use later or you can go to the next step which is to fill a bowl with water, add some garlic and then dip the flattened, partly deep fried plantains into the water and throw them back in the oil for their final bath and Viola!  All done.  In this state you want to salt them immediately when they come up and then use them to scoop up your rice, or you can top them off with a fresh salsa, or a cooked salsa.

The other option is to use a patagone device that creates mini-bowls instead of flattened pieces.  You can then fill these bowls with whatever you like for awesome goodness, which I have done with just about everything.

Patagones do such an amazing job at complimenting just about every piece of food I’ve eaten down here that it feels like something is missing out when I don’t have them handy.  It is also possible to bake them in the last step instead of frying them, which does work well when you make the bowl patagones, but it’s just not quite the same.

To top it all off you can even shake the plantain into very thin slices and then deep fry those for Plantain chips which are about 100x more delicious than potato chips. Finally if you want to use ripe plantains instead you can cut longer thicker slicers for a sweet deep fried treat

This delicious and very versatile fruit comes out on top as far as one of the best culinary inventions I have come across anywhere in the world and it’s the rest why we always have a pot of oil ready for frying sitting on the stove at all times because there is never more than a couple days where the smell and sound of sizzling patacones doesn’t fill the kitchen.. hmmmmmm!!

Tags: awesome, colombia, deep friend, delicious, dish, food, patacones, reason