5 Ways to Use Overripe Plantains

If you buy plantains regularly, it’s inevitable that you will eventually find yourself with an overripe plantain dilemma: what to do with the plantains that are too ripe even for maduros?

Fortunately, overripe plantains open up a whole new range of possibilities for this member of the banana family. In fact, you can take almost any recipe that features overripe bananas and replace the bananas with plantains. Often, the resulting dish is even better than the original– the sugar content of plantains is lower than bananas, so the cloying sweetness that can sometimes cling to a bread, batida, or budin made with banana is absent when the cook substitutes plantains. We’ve been testing plantains-for-bananas in some favorite recipes that feature overripe bananas, here are our favorites.

Plantain Bread or Muffins

Banana bread… it’s the classic “What do I do with these overripe bananas?” recipe. Whether made in time for breakfast to serve with cafe con leche or baked as a dessert and served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and dusted with a little cinnamon, banana bread is quick and easy to prepare and makes for a versatile any-time-of-day snack.

Take your favorite classic banana bread recipe and modify it just a bit. Two overripe plantains will yield one large or two small loaf pans of bread. If your recipe doesn’t already call for it, we’ve found a dash of nutmeg, another of cinnamon, and a small splash of vanilla extract really bumps up the flavor. To cut down on cooking time or making portion control versions, bake off your batter in a muffin pan.

Cream of Plantain Puree

There aren’t nearly as many good recipes for a silky, sweet, crema de platano as you might think, though the preparation is simple, the basic dish can bear lots of improvisation, and the result is a satisfying comfort food for kids and adults alike.

For our crema, we took Maricel Presilla’s sweet ripe plantain puree recipe, in her epic, award-winning cookbook, Gran Cocina Latina, as our point of departure. If you choose, you can experiment with this recipe by substituting coconut milk for the chicken broth. The crema is best served in small portions as an appetizer.

If you want to turn the crema into a pureé that’s perfect for a baby who’s just starting solid foods, tone down the spices a bit (but don’t eliminate them completely) and make sure the puree is processed well enough so that the crema doesn’t have chunks of plantain, garlic, or bacon that the baby can neither chew nor digest.

Next, three more ways to use up overripe plantains…

Plantain Smoothie

Like banana bread, the plantain smoothie makes for a good breakfast accompaniment, a dessert, or snack, and allows lots of improvisation. For our recipe, we experimented straight out of our own imagination, based on ingredients we happened to have on hand: an overripe plantain, fresh nutmeg, whole milk, and chocolate chips. They all got tossed in a blender and pureed to perfection. The result was a slightly-but not overly-sweet smoothie that was a perfect afternoon pick-me-up.

Plantain and Root Vegetable Mash

The name may not be fancy, but this is incredibly versatile recipe-a Latin-Caribbean variation on mashed potatoes– allows cooks to use whatever root vegetables they have on hand to create a satisfying side dish to accompany a meat-based entree. Steam your root vegetables–carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, for example–and then mash them up in a mixing bowl with your overripe plantains, a glug of milk, a generous knob of butter, and salt and pepper to taste. Then, put the mix into a baking pan and broil for a crispy, slightly crunch top. The interior of the mash will be smooth and sweet.

Steamed Plantain Pudding

The steamed banana pudding recipe in Florence Fabricant’s The New York Times Dessert Cookbook doesn’t have Latin roots, nor does it suggest the “very ripe bananas” needed for the pudding could be substituted with very ripe plantains. But in our test kitchen, the plantain substitution worked marvelously, and the key ingredients that add sabor to this dessert are very familiar to the Latin palate: nutmeg, cinnamon, and dark brown sugar. The recipe also calls for whipped cream or a caramel sauce to be drizzled on top before serving, and that sounded–and tasted–just right to us. Can’t get your hands on the book? Use your favorite banana pudding recipe and sub in the same amount of plantains for bananas.