The Banana We Cook Green, Yellow and Black

Every week, somewhere in Britain, somebody buys a plantain because it looks like a big banana. They wait for it to turn yellow, peel it, take a bite standing at the kitchen counter, and decide they do not like plantain.

I understand. Nobody told them. A plantain is a banana that does not want to be eaten out of your hand.

Back home in Guadeloupe, “what is plantain?” is not a question anybody asks. There is always some in the kitchen, often three or four at different stages, and what matters is how ripe they are, because that decides what goes on the plate tonight. Green means one dinner. Black means another. The same fruit gets cooked from the day it is bought until the day the skin goes dark.

So let me explain it the way I learned it: by colour.

What is plantain?

The short answer: plantain is a cooking banana. It belongs to the same genus as the banana in your fruit bowl, Musa, but it is bigger, it has a thicker skin, and it carries much more starch and much less sugar. That is why it is almost always cooked.

Green, it behaves like a potato. Firm and savoury, with nothing sweet about it. As it ripens, the starch turns to sugar and the flesh softens, and by the time the skin is black it is sweet enough to caramelise in a pan.

That one change, starch into sugar, is the whole story of plantain. Everything else follows from it.

Is plantain a banana?

Almost all the bananas and plantains people eat today come from two wild species, Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana, and from crosses between them. True plantains are one group of those crosses, which botanists label AAB: two parts acuminata to one part balbisiana.

When Carl Linnaeus first named them, he split them into two species based purely on how people ate them: Musa paradisiaca for plantains, Musa sapientum for dessert bananas. Botanists later showed that both are cultivated plants descended from the same two wild species, so that neat split does not really hold.

So the line between a banana and a plantain is drawn in the kitchen, not in the botany. English and French both make the distinction. Many Southeast Asian languages, spoken close to where bananas were first domesticated, do not bother at all.

Plantain vs banana: what actually differs

Here is what matters when you are standing at the shelf:

• Size and skin. A plantain is longer and heavier, and its skin is thick. When it is green, that skin will not come off without a knife.
• Starch and sugar. Plantain has more starch and less sugar than a dessert banana at the same stage.
• When it is ready. A banana is ready when it is yellow, and you eat it raw. A plantain is useful from green all the way to black, and you almost always cook it.
• Where it sits on the plate. Banana is a snack or a pudding. Plantain is a side, next to a stew, a piece of fish or a pot of rice, doing the job a potato does here.

Where it came from

Bananas were first domesticated in New Guinea thousands of years ago, and spread through Asia and into Africa long before any European ship reached the Caribbean. In the sixteenth century European ships carried them across the Atlantic, from West Africa and the islands off its coast, and within a few decades they were growing right across the Caribbean.

That route matters. Plantain came to our islands as an African food as much as an Asian one, and many of the people cooking it in the Caribbean had been taken from West Africa too, where plantain was already a staple. You can see that in how we treat it in Guadeloupe: boiled, fried, set down beside whatever is in the pot. I have written more about those African foundations in my guide to Guadeloupean food.

Green vs ripe plantain: how to read the skin

Green. Hard as a stick, the skin tight and stubborn. The flesh is pale and starchy. This is plantain at its most savoury, and it is how we use it most at home, boiled or fried.

Yellow, with a few black spots. Halfway. The starch is turning, there is a little sweetness, but it is still firm enough to slice cleanly and hold its shape in hot oil. This is the classic fried plantain stage.

Black, or nearly. It looks finished. It is not. Press it and it gives under your thumb, and the flesh inside is deep yellow and sweet. This is the plantain that goes dark and sticky at the edges in the pan. In the French Antilles plantain itself often goes by banane jaune, yellow banana, and gratin de banane jaune, ripe plantain baked in a sweet and savoury gratin, is one of the classic sides of the islands.

Black skin on its own does not mean it has gone off. Peel it and look. Mould on the flesh, a sour or boozy fermented smell, or flesh that has collapsed into liquid: those mean the bin. A dark skin over firm, sweet-smelling flesh means dinner.

Plantain ripens on the counter. From green to black takes roughly one to two weeks at room temperature, quicker in a warm kitchen or a paper bag. Do not put green plantain in the fridge, because the cold stops it ripening. Once it reaches the stage you want, the fridge will hold it a few more days, even if the skin keeps darkening.

How to peel a green plantain

This is where most people give up. A green plantain will not peel like a banana, and if you try, you end up with a broken plantain and skin under your fingernails.

1. Cut off both ends.
2. Run the tip of a knife down the length of the skin, two or three times around the plantain, just deep enough to go through the skin and no further.
3. Push your thumb under one edge and lever the skin away in strips.

The sap in the skin is sticky, and it stains hands and clothes. Rub a little oil on your fingers before you start and it wipes straight off. If the skin is really fighting you, a few minutes in warm water softens it.

A yellow plantain peels more easily. A black one almost peels itself.

How to cook plantain at every stage

Green, boiled. Peel it, cut it into chunks, and boil it in salted water for 15 to 25 minutes depending on size, until a knife slides in with no resistance. It comes out dense and savoury, like a firm potato. At home it goes next to anything with a sauce.

Green, fried twice. This is bananes pesées: thick chunks fried until soft, pressed flat, dipped in salted garlic water, then fried again, hotter, until the edges shatter. It is the plantain dish everybody should learn first, and I have written out exactly how I make bananes pesées, with the green dip of Fresh Herbal Sauce, garlic and lime that we always serve beside them.

Yellow, fried. Slice it on a long diagonal, about 1cm thick, and fry in a shallow layer of oil over a medium heat for two or three minutes a side, until golden. Salt the slices the second they come out, while they still shine. This is the fried plantain that sits next to a poulet colombo or a fish court-bouillon back home.

Black, caramelised. Cut thicker slices, use a gentler heat than you think and stay at the stove, because the sugar colours before the middle is hot. You want edges that go dark and sticky and a centre as soft as jam. Or bake it whole: slit the skin along the top, put it on a tray at 180°C fan for about 30 minutes, and eat it when the flesh is soft right through.

Cook for the plantain you have. Green plantain will not go sweet in the pan, however long you leave it. Ripe plantain will not go crisp. Buy for the dish, or choose the dish for the plantain on your counter.

What to put on it

Plantain and chilli belong together. On my table, a plate of black-ripe fried plantain gets a few drops of Caribbean Hot Sauce: heat against caramel, salt against sweet, and every piece tastes different from the last. If you want to push it further, a spoon of my hot honey over the slices while they are still hot from the pan turns a side dish into the thing everybody reaches for first.

Green plantain wants something sharp and green, which is why bananes pesées come with the herb dip. Different stage, different partner.

Plantain is not the green banana in saltfish

At home there is a second green banana, and it confuses people in Britain even more than plantain does.

It goes by two names. Poyo is the usual Guadeloupe word and ti-nain the Martinique one, but in Guadeloupe Creole one variety is called pòyò ti-nain, so on our island you hear both. Either way it is a sweet banana picked green, before it has had the chance to turn yellow, and cooked as a vegetable, usually boiled in its skin. It is shorter than a plantain and softer once cooked. Plantain we cook at every stage. Poyo we cook green.

That is the banana in green banana and saltfish, one of the plates I grew up on. You can make that dish with green plantain if you cannot find the smaller bananas, but it makes a heavier plate. Give the plantain a little longer in the pot and cut it thicker.

Where to buy plantain in the UK

Easier than it used to be. Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda all sell loose plantain, though not every branch has it and stock comes and goes.

Caribbean, African and Asian grocers are the better bet, and so are the markets in towns and cities with Caribbean and West African communities. They usually carry more of it, at more stages of ripeness, so you can buy green for tonight and black for the weekend.

My advice: buy green. A green plantain can become any plantain you want if you are patient. A black one only goes one way.

FAQ

Can you eat plantain raw?

Not green. It is not poisonous, but raw green plantain is hard and chalky, and it is full of a kind of starch your body struggles to break down, so it sits heavily and can upset your stomach. A fully black, soft plantain can be eaten raw, much like a very ripe banana. But it is cooking that makes plantain worth eating, at any stage.

Is plantain a fruit or a vegetable?

Botanically, a fruit. In the kitchen, green plantain is a vegetable and ripe plantain is something in between. Nobody in Guadeloupe loses sleep over it.

What does plantain taste like?

Green, it is mild and starchy, closer to a potato than to any banana you know. Ripe, it is sweet, with a deeper and more cooked flavour than a dessert banana. Fried when it is black, it tastes of caramel.

Why won’t my plantain go crispy?

It is too ripe. Once the starch has turned to sugar, plantain goes soft and sticky in hot oil instead of crisp. For crisp, buy green. For soft and sweet, wait for black.

One small thing to try this week

Buy two plantains, both green. Cook one tonight, boiled or fried twice. Leave the other on the counter and forget about it until the skin is almost completely black, then fry it slowly in a little oil.

Same fruit. Two completely different dinners. That is plantain.

JP