Mesoamerica · Volume 09, The Isthmus, the Interior and the Congo Coast
Patacones
Panama, both coasts
Illustration
- Time
- 20 minutes
- Researched
- Researched from 56 sources in the brief
Plantain itself is Southeast Asian in origin, reaching West Africa via trade routes and the Americas with Spanish and Portuguese colonisation; enslaved Africans are widely credited with the frying technique that became the patacón, though this specific credit rests on secondary rather than primary Panamanian sourcing and is presented here as the best-supported account rather than settled fact.
As tradition built it
Patacones
Serves 4. About 20 minutes.
Ingredients
- 2 green plantains
- as needed oil, for frying
- to taste salt
Method
- Peel green plantains and slice into rounds roughly 3cm thick.
- Fry in oil at a moderate temperature until softened but not coloured, roughly 3 to 4 minutes.
- Remove, flatten each piece firmly between two flat surfaces or with the base of a jar.
- Return to hot oil for a second, shorter fry until golden and crisp.
- Drain, salt while still hot, and serve immediately.
Notes
No precise gram quantities were found in the sources gathered for this chapter; the process is documented and consistent across every source, the exact plantain-to-oil ratio is not.
What a modern chef changes
Two separated oil temperatures, and a diaspora rework
Rung 02
Method
- Hold two separate oil baths at two distinct, thermometer-checked temperatures, a lower one for the first fry, a markedly higher one for the second, rather than one compromise heat, following Rung 2's logic that the two fries are doing different jobs and deserve different conditions.
- Take the diaspora's own lead: José Olmedo Carles's Los Angeles restaurant Si!Mon serves “Green Banana Patacones,” a named rework of the dish for an audience outside Panama; in that spirit, offer a green-banana variant alongside the plantain version, cooked by the same two-stage method, as a genuine textural comparison rather than a substitution.
- Finish with a spice-ground salt, ají chombo dried and ground fine in a spice grinder and cut with flaked salt, applied the moment the patacones leave the second fry, rather than plain table salt.