Incredible VEGAN PLANTAIN recipes

In today's video I'm gonna... sorry. Hello? Sorry, I don't know what I'm doing there. Today's video I'm going to show you three incredible plantain recipes. Plantain is one of my favorite ingredients. I use it all the time. I eat so much of it. Generally, I'll either caramelize it and just have it as a snack. But actually recently I've been experimenting more with it and I've come up with three incredible recipes for you to try. I'm gonna be making plantain lasagna, some fritters, and we're gonna whole fry them in some spices and drizzle over some coriander sauce. These recipes will honestly blow you away. And if you don't like plantain for whatever reason, if you try them in these ways you will love them, I promise. First up is the... First up is the plantain lasagna. And I thought I was the first person to ever do it, but then I realized that this isn't... This is nothing new. This is a famous dish in Puerto Rico. But I haven't studied their recipes at all. Mine's probably going to be totally different. Obviously, they're going to use meat. I'm using vegan mince, which honestly you won't even notice the difference. I'm going to flavor up. I'm going to get some vegan cheese in there. I'm going to put some tomato. This is the most decadent way to have plantains ever. So first up, what we need to do is make that layer of mince. And I'm going to be using meatless farm. Look at this. People say vegans eat grass. Look what's on offer these days. First up, what I'm going to do is finely chop some spring onions, some garlic, some scotch bonnet chili, pepper, and aubergine. And I'm going to chop up some ginger and get this sauteed in a pan. If you don't want to chop this by hand, throw it in a blender. Simple as that. All right, then. So preheat a large non-stick frying pan over a medium heat. Add a touch of oil. Then add your onion, garlic, ginger, chili, pepper, and aubergine. So fresh thyme in this is vital. Can use dried, but fresh is better. You can chop up the stalks too. Really fine. And it'll add this beautiful aroma. Bit of salt going in. Let's get our plantains. So whilst this is cooking down, I like to get some nice color on that. We're going to peel and slice our plantain into some nice sheets for the lasagna. This is replicating the pasta in the lasagna. So you want to top and tail it, score down the side, and peel. Voila. Did you know that they used to call me planting papi in the streets? Did you know? This smells absolutely beautiful. And look at the colors. So you want to cut these plantains into some nice thin strips, basically. So if you think this is flavorsome enough, we're going to add even more flavor. We're going to add some ground cumin, some allspice, and some ground cinnamon, and some tomato puree. So meatless farm time. This stuff blows my mind still. It gets really meaty and firms up when it goes in the pan. I know that like some level 7,000 vegans won't want to eat this, but for new vegans and non-vegans that want to cut down on meat, this stuff is perfect. And all the information about meatless farm is below this video. So I'm going to get one pack into this recipe. Oh, how can you? I'm recreating a meat. So we're just getting some lovely color. Just breaking up this mince, making sure it's coated in all that amazing flavor. I'm going to add some soy sauce and some maple syrup for that umami and that little bit of sweetness. So I'm going to turn the heat down very low now and start frying off the plantain. Place another large non-stick pan over a medium heat, and add a few tablespoons of vegetable oil. That's one of the most beautiful sights you'll ever see, especially this one here. Look at that. Getting a little bit excited here. So obviously for this recipe, I'm using some yellow plantain. This is as ripe as I like it personally. Any riper than this. When it gets really dark, it's too sweet for me and for this recipe in particular. But in the third recipe, I'm going to be using green plantain. And that's amazing for tostones, which is a dish where you twice fry it. And the sort of nutritional values between the sort of ripe and the non-ripe are so different. There's so much fiber in this ripe plantain. Pop the fried plantain onto a plate lined with kitchen paper to soak up any excess oil. Then continue to fry. Jeez, look at these. Mad. Absolutely mad. Oh, look at this plate. I'm actually surprised that I'm resisting eating this before I've made it into a lasagna. Because that is like my perfect plate. Just keep frying until you've fried all your plantain. It's beautiful. Beautiful. It's now time to build the plantain lasagna. We're going to do mince, cheese, plantain, tomato, spinach. Mince, cheese, plantain, tomato, spinach. Mince, cheese, tomato, spinach. Give me a beat. Mince. Mince, cheese, plantain. All right, here we go. Get a really good vegan cheese for this. Something that melts well. This is actually smoked vegan cheese. Applewoods is the brand. Make sure you get their vegan one. This is gonna be mad. Layer of flavor upon layers of flavor. Look at that there. So now we'll go with tomato. Bit of spinach for the greenery. They call me G to the A to the Z to the A to the D to the D to the B. Good even coverage of mince. Now cheese again. For the final layer, tomato first. Spinach. Plantain, one final layer. Make sure you get a good coverage on the top. No gaps. Fill it all in. Get a little bit of the remaining cheese on top. This now goes in the oven for about 35 minutes. Get in there, my baby. It's time to get the one and only. All the way from Puerto Rico via London. Weighing in at approximately one kilogram. Lined with mince. Vegan mince and vegan cheese. The plantain lasagna. It's time to cut a slice. Here it goes. Wow, look at that. Plantain lasagna. A little bit of this on the side. Some slaw. I'll put the written recipe on my website. Guys, I'm feeling tired, all right? I need this now. I need this to give me some energy. This plantain lasagna, aka a pastelon. I think that's the right pronunciation. I mean, it's nothing like it because I haven't even studied the recipe. All I know is something similar to a plantain lasagna. But let's give this a try. I put a lot of horse. I put a lot of hot sauce on this plate. Which is going to wake me up for sure. Horse. The next two recipes are very simple. So that's good. And this is the big one. This is the evening meal. And the next two are nice light sort of lunches or snacks or whatnot. Here it goes. Spectacular. It tastes beautiful. Let's try it with a bit of the cold slaw. That just cools the heat down a little bit. But the spice isn't too hot. It's just subtly there and it's so tasty. The mince is amazing. Meatless Farm, thank you for making your mince. It's epic in this. And the plantain, the sweetness, the caramelization just works so good. So that means I have to add Puerto Rico to my list. Because if they're making food like this, I gotta try. And there must be some good vegan food there. If you're from Puerto Rico, let me know. Put something in the comments. Tell me what I should try. Next dish I'm going to be making is the whole fried plantain. A very, very simple one. I'm going to coat them in some spices. Get them caramelized up in the pan. And also make a jalapeno dressing, like a salsa on top, which is very simple. And then finally, we'll do the fritters, which stay around for. They are incredible. That was fine, wasn't it? All right. So the next dish is the whole fried plantain with the jalapeno sort of salsary sauce. Salsary sauce. A sauce is a salsa. So why am I saying sauce? So first up, what we're going to do is finely chop some jalapenos and some spring onions. And get them lightly fried off in my frying pan. So next up into the blender. I'm just going to cut this beef tomato in quarters. Into the blender she goes. Big handful of coriander now. Fresh coriander, including the stalks. And in. Lime. So add some of the zest first. And then the juice. So a little bit of maple syrup for the sweetness. And white wine vinegar. And these can go in. Usually you would use dried chilies in a salsa. But this is just something that I just quickly threw together. And it tasted really good with the fried plantain. So I'm going to get this blitzed up now with some extra virgin, really good quality olive oil. Oh, and it smells good. Lovely color to it as well. So this sauce can actually be bottled up or put in an airtight container. And stored in the fridge for about three weeks. Flavor may get more intense as it's kept in there. Just needs a little bit of salt. And then I'm going to set it aside until I need it to drizzle over the top. Of our incredibly fried plantains. Incredibly fried. Sorry, I can't say that. That was my actual reaction. So for this recipe, I'm just going to peel the ripe plantain. And cut it just lengthways down the middle. So I want some nice chunks for this. This is the perfect dish to serve with salad. Or just to have it as a side dish actually. It's really nice too. The key here to get ultimate caramelization is the large surface area. This surface is going to have maximum exposure on the hot surface of the pan. Resulting in a crisp yet satisfying caramelization. All right, so we're going to get these into the pan now. I'm going to turn the pan quite low. The reason I have the pan quite low is because these are quite thick. And I don't want them to burn on the outside before the center's had enough time to cook. So what makes this caramelized plantain different you may ask? Well, I'm going to add, I'm going to make a little spice concoction. With some ground ginger, some cayenne pepper, some ground cumin and some paprika. And this is the sweet smoked paprika, so it's not going to be that spicy. And also I'm going to throw in some coconut sugar too. And that sprinkled over the top is going to take this to the next level. How are we looking? That's all right, that's a good start. So over we go with the old spicy mix like this. And look guys, if you go like this, you're only going to get a little bit of the plantain. But if you go like this, you're going to get it all. Don't worry if it goes on your surface, you're going to wipe down after. I hate it when I see people seasoning like this. You can tell a cook from a chef when they do this. Get some height on there and get it well distributed. Flip this over now just so that seasoning is going to have a chance to have a nice cook up in the pan. I get passionate about this plantain, I do. Right, look at this now. All of that coconut sugar is caramelized, it's formed a layer. Look at that! That is beautiful. That's just, oh my god. Oh my god. I'm sorry, I'm getting really excited over this. Onto my tray, just try and shake off any excess oil. And we can go straight in with the next lot. So there's my tray of fried, spiced, caramelized plantain. Just going to do a couple more things, slice up some tomato really fine. I've got some cashew cheese that I got from a vegan supermarket. That's going to be nice on top of this and some cress. So we're just going to garnish this up now. Plenty of that salsa and we'll give it a taste. Just putting this in the center of your dinner table for everyone to dig into would be a real treat. Some of the tomatoes. So just put my sort of cashew cheese on, dotted around. Then we got some of the cress, dotted around like this. And some crispy onions over the top there. And there we go. Very simple, perfect side dish. Trust me. Oh, look at that. I got a bit of everything there. Here it goes. The sweet notes of the plantain is just unbelievable. But adding that savory boom with those spices. That cumin is so subtle and nicely toasted on the tip of my tongue. The salsa, that vinegary-ness. My mouth is salivating. I can't really explain it. But it's hitting all the spots basically. It's got that sweetness. It's got that acidity. It's got that richness from the plantain. It's so beautiful. So that's that dish. That's number two. I'm going to power through now and make the third and final dish. But one of my favorites as well. We're actually going to be using the green plantain, the young. The under-ripe plantain next. And it's very interesting, especially the way I prepare it. Let's go. So for my fritters, we are going to grate. Yes, we are going to grate the green plantain. Look at this. You won't be able to peel the skin off this with the knife like I did with the ripe plantain. You're going to have to use a peeler. So peel off the skin. It's very tough until you get down to the flesh. So many ways you can cook green plantain. As I said, the tostones is one of my favorite, but that's a fried version of it. You can boil it. But what I'm going to do now, because it's quite tough, you want to just do things to break it down. So I'm going to use this grater and just grate it in. Look at this. And the good thing about these fritters is that just from two green plantains, you get about 10, maybe 12 fritters. And they're very filling too, because this is almost like potato. There's a lot of starch in this. So we're going to mix some flavorings into this now and get them frying. It's such a simple recipe. Finely chop three spring onions and add them to the bowl. Handful of fresh coriander. Stalks and all. Into the bowl it goes. I like to add some garlic powder just because it just easily disperses itself throughout the fritter. When I say words like that, it just makes me laugh. So a lot of that in there. Good pinch of salt next. Some chipotle paste and some zest of a lime. That's for the heat. And the smells right now are so fresh, so vibrant. All my fave things. And who's impressed that I managed to keep my white top white? I think. Pretty good. Don't forget my book, Plants Only Kitchen, full of simple recipes. Protein packed recipes is on my website. Signed copies can be sent all around the world. And some buckwheat flour. This is just going to help this bind together. It's also gluten-free, so it's good for the celiacs out there. And a sprinkling of thyme as well, because it's my fave herb at the moment. Mix that up with your hands then. It will naturally come together. And it almost wants to be formed into fritters, fried and then eaten, honestly. So you just want to form it into a little bowl. So you just want to form it into a little ball. It doesn't have to be perfect. These fritters are rustic as hell. So form it into a ball, flatten it down, and we get them fried up. If you have slightly damp hands, that helps you form these. So you're going to go for about that thin. You want to hear a nice little sizzle as they go in. And we're going to cook these for about three to four minutes on both sides until they're nice and golden and cooked through to the centre. Don't have your pan too hot. They'll burn on the outside before they're cooked in the centre. So all those flavours are mingling. They're getting to know each other. They're having a little party together. They're holding hands and just having a merry time. Meanwhile, the planting is cooking up. It's binding together. The starches are coming out and it's forming this beautiful fritter that we're all going to know and love when we taste it. So look at this colour. That's what we want. Imagine actually this. A gluten-free person doesn't want bread on their burger. Make two big ones of these and use this as the bun. That'll be a mazza. Beautiful. So they're done. They're very rustic. I usually make them a little bit neater, but they're going to taste amazing. Promise you. So a bit of my slaw on the plate. A few pomegranates on the top. Oh, a bit of pomegranate. Now we're talking. Jewels of flavour. Just put a coriander on top. Beautiful, beautiful stuff. And we're going to just serve up a few of these. And what would be beautiful with these fritters, just to finish it off, is that amazing salsa that I made for the fried planting just over the top. Look at this. Stunning. And there we go. Here's how to make a couple of plantings taste phenomenal and look phenomenal. Feels absolutely delightful to sit down after a long day of filming with this in front of me, my planting fritters. That is really, really, really good. The way I describe this is a very, very posh potato rosti with a lovely spice to it. This is amazing. Don't forget, all three written recipes are on my website. Click the link below. Don't forget Meatless Farm as well. Their mince that I use for the planting lasagna. All the details for that is below this video too. My book, you can get it. Like, share and subscribe. Thank you for watching. Sorry, I've been a bit tired today, but the food's been a joy to eat.