For those who stroll previous plantains within the grocery retailer, you’d be forgiven for mistaking them for bananas. Visually they’re very related, with shiny yellow skins and elongated shapes. They belong to the identical household of crops, musaceae, although there’s fairly a definite distinction in taste between the 2.

Proof signifies that each bananas and plantains originated round Southeast Asia, however bananas at the moment are grown in lots of sunny areas of the world, together with India, Brazil, and the Philippines, whereas plantains are primarily standard in Africa, Central America, and the Caribbean. Plantains are the starchy cousins of bananas, and do not share a candy taste when underripe — nevertheless, a really ripe plantain may be mushy and candy, too. Plantains are typically greater and have a harder pores and skin than bananas, and a knife is normally required to disclose the flesh inside. 

The most important distinction between bananas and plantains is how they’re ready. With a view to take pleasure in plantains at their greatest, they have to be cooked first, quite than eaten uncooked like bananas. Which means that plantains ought to occupy an identical place in your cooking plans as yams or potatoes, needing to be ready and cooked as a part of a meal, quite than loved as a ready-to-eat snack. However the subsequent time you mistakenly seize a plantain as an alternative of a banana on the grocery store, do not put it again. Deal with it as a chance to discover a flexible ingredient, and see what it has to supply.