I’m so excited to share these crispy baked tostones with you! I discovered tostones a few years ago when I visited Costa Rica with my grandmother. Traditional tostones are fried green plantains, flattened and fried again until they’re golden and crispy. You could almost call them Caribbean French fries, and I couldn’t get enough on that trip. I got a hankering for some tostones a few months ago and decided to learn how to make them. As I was typing up my perfected skillet-fried tostones technique to share with you, a little voice in my head asked, “Why didn’t you try baking them?”
I hit pause on my post and fired up the oven. As it turns out, baked tostones are great. Compared to fried tostones, they’re easier to make, use less oil, and yield a crisp result that tastes more like plantains and less like oil. Hooray! These baked tostones are a fun little project. Make them for game days, afternoon snacks, or of course, serve them as a side dish with Caribbean meals. They’re especially wonderful with a bold and creamy dipping sauce, like this Aji Verde. Please try them and let me know what you think.
What are plantains?
Plantains are a type of banana. Like bananas, they grow in tropical regions around the world. Compared to regular bananas, plantains are larger in size, more starchy and less sweet. To make tostones, you’ll need to find unripe, green plantains. Unripe plantains are more firm and less sweet than their ripe counterparts. You can’t make tostones with ripe plantains—you’d end up with caramelized, soft, maduros (fried sweet plantains) instead.
Baked vs. Fried Tostones
However you make them, tostones are delicious. I’m partial to the baked method, and here’s why: Baked tostones are easier to make. They’re more of a passive project, since they bake in the oven during two fifteen-minute intervals (the perfect time to prepare your dipping sauce). Baked tostones require 75 percent less oil. Baked tostones are crisp yet a little chewy, and the plantain flavor shines through. Fried tostones require more babysitting, since you should never leave a skillet of oil unattended. Pan-fried tostones require a significant amount of oil (about one cup for just a few plantains), and leave behind about half that much oil in the pan. Fried plantains are extra crispy, but they taste less like plantains and more like ambiguously fried tasty things.
How to Make Baked Tostones
You’ll find the full recipe below, but here’s the gist:
Oil Notes
Avocado oil has a high smoking point and is generally considered the healthiest of the high-heat oils, so that’s what I used. Safflower or grapeseed oils would work, too. I also tried using extra-virgin olive oil, which is my go-to for roasted vegetables. My nose told me that the oil overheated when baking plantains, though, so that’s why I’m recommending a higher heat oil.
Serving Suggestions for Tostones
These fried plantains make a fun snack or side dish. They’re especially nice with a creamy dipping sauce like Aji Verde (shown here) or Creamy Chipotle Sauce or mayonnaise mixed with gochujang (Korean red chili sauce), to taste. Serve plantains on the side with Caribbean or Latin American meals. I don’t have many authentic Caribbean recipes on the blog, but here are some ideas:
10-Minute Quesadillas Black Beans (From Scratch!) or Fresh Black Bean Burrito Bowl Easy Black Bean Tacos: Use the same creamy sauce on the tacos. Spicy Black Bean Soup Vegetarian Stuffed Peppers
Please let me know how your tostones turn out in the comments! I love hearing from you.
