Canoas de Plátano Maduro (Ripe Plantain Canoes with Beef)

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Whole ripe plantains rubbed with butter and baked until golden, then split lengthways, filled with ground beef cooked in tomato and onion, and covered with mozzarella. Forty-five minutes, four servings.

Prep Time10

Cook Time40

Total Time50

Course: Side Dish

Cuisine: Colombian

Keyword: ripe plantain canoes with beef

Servings:

Calories: 643kcal

Author: Angela Giraldo

Ingredients

4 ripe plantains
1 pound ground beef
½ onion finely chopped
2 tomatoes finely chopped
1 clove garlic finely chopped
100 gr mozzarella cheese grated
½ tablespoon butter for rubbing the plantains
1 tablespoon oil
Salt, ground oregano and pepper to taste

Instructions

Heat the oven to 180°C (350°F).
Peel the plantains, lay them on a baking sheet and rub them all over with the butter.
Bake them for 25 minutes, then turn them over and give them 15 minutes more, until they are golden.
While the plantains bake, heat the oil in a saucepan and cook the onion and garlic for two minutes. Add the tomato, then the ground beef, and cook for eight minutes more, stirring and seasoning with salt, oregano and pepper.
When the plantains are ready, cut each one lengthways down the middle, deep but not all the way through, and open it out like a boat. Fill with the ground beef and lay the mozzarella over the top. Five minutes back in the oven will melt it.
Serve the canoes hot.

Notes

The cut is the part that goes wrong. It runs the length of the plantain and it stops short of the bottom, so the two halves open like a boat and hold the filling. Cut all the way through and you have two pieces of plantain and nowhere to put the beef. Use plantains that are properly ripe, with skins mostly black. A yellow plantain is still starchy, will not sweeten in the oven and does not open cleanly. Forty minutes of baking, turning halfway, is what gets the sugars to caramelise. The five minutes at the end are only to melt the cheese, so keep an eye on it: the plantains are already cooked and more time in the oven only dries them.

Nutrition