Fried Plantains & Plantain Chips

I lived for a time in La Fortuna, Costa Rica, a small to medium-sized tourist town next to a volcano (volcan Arenal), a very large lake, and a very famous waterfall. I was there fulfilling my near lifelong dream of working in the rain forest as a zipline canopy tour guide. My life there ended up being much less and much more than I had initially imagined. I lived in a small boarding house room with concrete walls and a tin roof. I loved eating in town since the open air "kitchen" in the boarding house was comprised of a sink, a propane stove that got stolen when one of the other tenants skipped town about half way through my stay, and a refrigerator that was never plugged in, therefore serving as a place to store food away from bugs, but not really a place to keep food cold. Needless to say, it was hard to cook food in that kitchen.

Many of the restaurants in town were expensive tourist traps, but my two favorites were called "sodas." Basically, a soda is the Costa Rican equivalent of a soul food joint. It serves good local food for cheap. One of the sodas (pictured above) was on my way to work in the jungle and served the best hamburger I've had in my entire life (the man pointed to a cow in the field and basically said "you're eating one of those. we killed it a few days ago"). The other was on the main street going through town, right on the plaza (town square). It was here that I ate my first plantain, fried up as a side dish with some beef tongue and rice.

To say I love fried plantains would be understating the truth. Every time I think about, let alone eat fried plantains, I'm transported back to the Soda a la Parada in the heart of La Fortuna, looking out onto the street, trying to overhear and translate conversations at neighboring tables, enjoying the humidity, and missing home.

This was the first time I ever dumpstered plantains, so I was obviously pretty elated.


FRIED PLANTAINS or PLANTAIN CHIPS

Ingredients:
- 1 plantain
- 1/2 cup(ish) cooking oil - I used safflower because I had it leftover from an old roommate, but I'd probably use veggie oil normally. Olive oil or canola is fine, but it will make the taste a little heavier.

Heat your oil in a pan.
Peel your plantain - the browner the plantain skin, the sweeter it will taste when fried up. If the skin is green at all, it will taste a little starchier.
Cut slices a little thinner than 1". (If you want crispy chips, slice them SUPER thin).
When the oil is hot enough that it spits at you when you sprinkle water on it, add your plantain slices. The oil should come about half way up your plantains.
After a few minutes, flip them over. They should have browned but not burned. This will make the outsides nice and crispy.
When both sides are browned, move your slices to a paper towel to drain some of the oil off.
Enjoy!

Items not dumpstered or donated: ZERO!