Get the Caribbean into your kitchen! Outside it is cold and autumn. And traveling far away is not an option either, due to some virus. Then just cook with exotic ingredients in your kitchen! This simple Cuban green plantain soup is tasty , healthy and surprising. Try it and love it!
Cuban green plantain soup
Ingredients
- 2 plantains green
- 1 onion yellow
- 2 cloves garlic
- 250 gram carrots grated
- 1 ribbon celery
- 1,5 liter vegetable broth
- 1,5 teaspoon cumin seeds
- 2 bay leaves
- salt up to taste
- pepper up to taste
- cilantro fresh, for garnishing
Instructions
Preparation
- Prepare the vegetables: cut the onion into slices. Peel and grate the carrots. Cut the celery ribbon into fine pieces. And finally remove the skin from the garlic cloves.
- Cut the ends of the plantains and halve them. Then make an incision into the skin over the length and remove it. Cut the plantains into pieces of app. 1 cm.
Making the soup
- Heat some oil in a big pot and fry the onion in it for a few minutes.
- Then crush the garlic and add it together with the celery. Bake for one more minute while stirring all the time.
- Add the grated carrots.
- When the carrots get tender, add the vegetable broth. Turn up the heat and add the plantains, the bay leaves and the cumin seeds.
- Bring everything to a boil. Then reduce the heat and let the broth simmer for 35 minutes.
- The plantains are ready when the fall apart when you press them.
- Mix the soup shortly with the mixer or in the blender. Only shortly, it doesn't matter when there are still some bites left. On the contrary. You could even do it manually with the masher.
- After mixing reduce the soup for a few minutes. Meanwhile add pepper and salt up to taste. Give the starch some time to integrate with the broth and form the typical consistency of the soup.
- Traditionally the soup is served with freshly chopped cilantro.
Nutrition
About plantains and other bananas
Plantains are also often called cooking bananas. This refers to the method you will most probably use when making them. Like normal bananas, they are very starchy when still green and unripe. During the ripening the starch transitions into sugar. You can find more information about the ripening process for bananas in my article about banana peel curry. For using plantains, you can better think of potato recipes, but use cooking bananas instead. The taste is neutral and the starch will create the same consistency as potatoes.
In total, there are 300 different kinds of bananas. Only 20 of them can be eaten. The best known are of course the Cavendish type. These are the traditional bananas that you will find in any supermarket. Williams bananas are giant Cavendish bananas.
Much smaller are the ladyfinger bananas. They taste very mildly and are often used in snacks and kids like them a lot. In Indonesia pisang raja are very popular. They are traditionally used in fritters.
Did you know that there are also red bananas? I did not. But they look amazing and should be very sweet. Finally apple bananas are a typical fruit in Hawaï. They are very sweet and used in snacks and desserts.
You can find everything you always wanted to know about bananas in this article from thespruceeats or in the article from homestratosphere.
How to prepare plantains?
When you hold a plantain or cooking banana in your hands, you will immediately notice that the skin is very differently. It is much harder and you cannot peel it like you would normally do with a banana.
You should cut off both ends and then cut it into two or three chunks. Then slice off the skin with a knife. Then slice the fruit in parts of approximately 1 cm that you can use for further baking or cooking. You can fry them like chips in coconut oil. Or you can bake them in the oven. Did you ever think of banana fries? Try it! Or you can mash them like potatoes after cooking them. One last idea I saw on a Dutch website: make vegetarian burgers with them.
More recipes with plantains on BBCgoodfood or culy.nl in Dutch.
More surprising.banana
Are you looking for more surprising.recipes with banana? We collected some nice ideas over the years that you can check here:
- banana peel curry (never throw the peel away anymore!)
- banana omelette for breakfast (between omelette and pancake)
- healthy banana split for breakfast
- pistachio chocolate banana sushi for dessert
- Dutch mini buckwheat pancakes with banana for breakfast
- delicious banana canapés as an appetizer
- papaya coconut parfait
- healthy breakfast cake with fruits, nuts and oatmeal
- traditional whole wheat pancakes topped with banana
- kolak pisang and ubi jalar (sweet Indonesian banana dessert)
If you speak Dutch, you can find the Dutch version of this recipe on gerechtenweb.blog.
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