Overview
Patacones are the twice-fried green-plantain slice that appears at almost every Panamanian meal. A first round of frying cooks the disks through, then a quick smash with the bottom of a glass or mug flattens them into a rough ½ cm pancake, then a second round of frying crisps the surface. Salt goes on hot, hot oil.[1][2]
Same dish, three names: in Panama, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, and Peru the slices are called patacones; in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and most of the English-speaking Caribbean they are called tostones. The naming switch is purely regional; the technique is the same. The Wikipedia Tostones article maps the regional naming along with the canonical Panama-specific serving, patacones with fried corvina, captured in its lead image.[1]
How to Make Them
Patacones are easy to make correctly because the technique permits wide forgiveness. Both the Few for Change step-by-step and the Caribbean National Weekly recipe agree on the structure.[2][4]
- Pick firm green plantains. A ripe (yellow-black) plantain will caramelize and stick; a green or just-turning plantain holds together through the double fry. Look for plantains with no yellow showing yet on the skin.
- Trim, score the peel, slice ½ cm thick. A cut across the peel lengthwise pulls it back cleanly. Slice the peeled plantain into coins about ½ cm thick; too thin and they’ll absorb oil like a sponge, too thick and the second fry won’t crisp the middle.
- First fry at 325°F / 165°C for 3-4 minutes per side. The goal here is to cook the slice, not to crisp it. Pull when the disks are flexible but no longer raw inside.
- Drain briefly, smash between two pieces of parchment or in a pataconera (a press). A flat-bottomed glass works if you don’t own a press. Thickness should land around ½ cm, not paper thin.
- Second fry at 375°F / 190°C for 1-2 minutes per side. The disks crisp to a hard, dry golden disc; salt goes on hot from the oil.
Few for Change notes a Panamanian preparation that tops each crisp disc with a spoonful of tuna or grated queso blanco, served as an appetizer, not the canonical everyday version but worth knowing.[2]
How Panamanians Eat Them
A short matrix of how patacones function on the plate in Panama:
- With fried fish (the canonical serving). A whole fried corvina, two patacones, a wedge of lime, and a salad of cabbage. This is the working-class-plate fonda signature and the patacones con corvina frita you can find on virtually every Panama City waterfront menu. Wikipedia’s lead image is titled Patacones_and_fried_corvina.JPG.[1]
- With arroz con pollo. Caribbean National Weekly notes that patacones commonly accompany the Sunday arroz con pollo as a side.[4]
- With a sunny-side-up egg. The most popular breakfast-on-a-budget plate in many fondas.
- Street-style, Chorrillo neighborhood. The Panama Tourism Authority describes the Sabores del Chorrillo project, which reclaims the historic tradition of family cooks selling fried fish and patacones from their doorsteps, a fried-fish-and-patacones corridor along the Cinta Costera.[3]
The Chorrillo Tradition
The Chorrillo neighborhood of Panama City, between the old colonial Casco Viejo and the Avenida Balboa waterfront, hosts what the tourism authority now calls Sabores del Chorrillo, a project that revives the early-20th-century pattern of cocineras tradicionales (family-line cooks) selling corvina frita con patacones from a window or a doorstep.[3]
Two points are worth flagging. First, Chorrillo food is Pacific seafood fried with Caribbean technique, a confluence specific to the Panama City working-class coast. Second, “Sabores del Chorrillo” is the tourist-board’s framing of an older tradition; what the project formalizes is the ordering/serving platform, not the recipe. The canonical serving is still fried fish and patacones with lime.
Plantain Economics
Panama grows several plantain varieties domestically; for green-plantain patacones the varietal matter is mostly about hardiness and starch content. A 2018 figure for Panamanian agricultural production puts the crop within the broader country’s plantain/banana industry (over 400,000 tons of bananas plus plantains in 2018 per the Wikipedia Agriculture in Panama article cited in the PP-12 ledger); the everyday supply is domestic, meaning the green-plantain price is generally affordable year-round. PP-25 should source current INEC production data for any future editorial pass.
Dietary Notes
Patacones are: vegetarian/vegan if made with vegetable oil (the typical case); gluten-free by default; familiar to anyone who has eaten in the Caribbean; but heavy on oil. A fried-plantain snack has roughly the calorie cost of a serving of french fries of equivalent size.
Reading Further
For more on Panama food at large, see food-overview. For the Sunday-lunch dish patacones typically accompany, see sancocho. For the seafood side of the plate, see ceviche-in-panama.
The Caribbean Naming Map
The patacones / tostones naming boundary is one of the clearest linguistic splits in Caribbean / Latin American cuisine. A short orientation:
- Patacones is the term used across Pacific-coast Spanish America (Panama, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru) and a few of the inland South American countries. The word descends from a Quechua / African loanword tradition layered onto Spanish; the patacón in classical Spanish also referred to a kind of pancake or flat-bread.
- Tostones is the term used across Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, most of the English-speaking Caribbean, and the U.S. diaspora market. The word descends from the Spanish tostar (to toast).
- Bannann peze (sometimes spelled bannann peze or pesi bannann) shows up in Haitian-Creole contexts for the same dish.
- Plantain chips (the thin, crisp, salted snacks sold in supermarkets) are a related but different preparation (typically sliced thin and fried once, never smashed).
For a traveler the practical implication is: in a Panama restaurant, ask for patacones; in a Cuban restaurant in Miami, ask for tostones; in a Puerto Rican lechonera outside Ponce, ask for tostones with garlic mojo on the side. The plate looks identical. The word changes by political border, not by technique.[1]
Buying Green Plantains
Green plantains look like overgrown bananas and feel like wood. A few buying notes:
- Color matters more than size. A green plantain with no yellow showing is the canonical patacón plantain. Once any yellow appears at the tips or around the ridges, the starch has begun converting to sugar and the slices will not flatten properly during the smash step.
- Firmness matters more than appearance. Press the plantain with your thumb near the middle. If it gives at all, it is too ripe for patacones; if it feels solid like a wooden dowel, you have the right stage. Plátano de seda (a softer commercial plantain variety common in Panama) is fine for patacones but slightly more forgiving in the smash step.
- Storage. Ripe plantains keep 3-5 days at room temperature; longer storage brings them to ripening. Do not refrigerate green plantains below 13°C / 55°F. Cold damage causes the peel to blacken and the flesh to lose structure.
- Yields. One plantain produces about six ½-cm patacón slices; a serving of four patacones requires about two-thirds of a plantain.
A useful Panama City supermarket practice is to buy a hand (the cluster a farmer brings to market, typically 6-12 plantains) and keep them in a paper bag at room temperature, peeling and slicing at the green stage over several days.
Oil, Salt, and the Panamanian Fry
A few working notes from Panama City fonda kitchens that are worth knowing for at-home preparation:
- Oil type. Most Panama City fondas fry patacones in a vegetable oil (sunflower or canola, sometimes palm). Peanut oil is occasionally used; olive oil is unsuitable for the high-heat fry. The choice matters for both flavor and stability: sunflower oil produces the cleanest taste; palm oil produces a faint buttery undertone that some Panamanian cooks prize.
- Salt timing. Salt should go on hot oil; if the patacones are salted cold, the salt draws out the surface moisture and the second fry takes longer.
- Oil temperature management. A heavy cast-iron or carbon-steel pan is preferred to maintain temperature through the second-fry round. Electric induction and infrared fryers work; thin aluminum pans lose temperature between rounds and produce oil-soaked patacones.
- Reuse. Most fondas filter and reuse their fry oil for one or two days; at home, filter and refrigerate the oil for a week. Discard if it foams or darkens.[2]
Beyond Panama: Patacones Outside Panama City
In Lima (Peru), patacones are typically served with ceviche (the lemon-cured fish of the day) and a slice of choclo (Andean corn). In Quito (Ecuador), they appear with hornado (roast pork) or fritada (fried pork). In Caracas (Venezuela), patacón can refer to a deep, flat sandwich of smashed plantain filled with shredded beef, chicken, or cheese, a substantially different dish from the slice served in Panama City. In Medellín and Cali (Colombia), patacones are often a side dish to bandeja paisa or sancocho (the Colombian chicken-and-root stew different from Panamanian sancocho).[5] In each of these regional settings the technique is recognizable; the accompaniments change with the local protein.
Why Green Plantains, Not Bananas
A reasonable question is why patacones are made from green plantains rather than the bananas common in temperate markets. Three answers:
- Starch content. Green plantains are roughly 75% starch by weight; ripe bananas are roughly 25%. The high starch content is what allows the slice to hold together through the smash and produce a solid patacón.
- Flavor neutrality. Ripe bananas are sweet. Green plantains are savory. Savory neutral starch is what the fried-slice format needs.
- Moisture. Ripe bananas have more sugar-water that boils out when fried. Plantains release less moisture because of their tighter cellular structure.
If you cannot find plantains at all, a starchy green banana cultivar (sometimes called a “cooking banana”) is the only acceptable substitute; sweet yellow dessert bananas will fail the smash step.
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