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Pastelón De Plátano

A Puerto Rican layered plantain and meat casserole with olives, raisins, and parmesan cheese.

From the Recipes Wiki (Fandom) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Pastelón De Plátano

Oven350 degrees
Timeabout twenty minutes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the meat sauce

  1. Pour olive oil into a medium saucepan and heat over medium heat.

  2. Add the remaining ingredients included in (A) and saute for about five minutes.

  3. Warm the oil over medium-high heat, add the ground garlic and stir-fry for around a minute.

  4. Stir the ground meat into the ingredients already in the saucepan and cook for about ten minutes.

  5. Add the raisins and continue to cook for another ten minutes or until the meat is cooked but not dry.

  6. Remove the bay leaves at this time.

Fry the plantains

  1. Slice the plantains lengthwise.

  2. Use a separate saucepan to fry the plantain slices over medium heat in two tablespoonfuls of olive oil.

  3. Remove from the saucepan and wipe excess oil with paper napkins.

Assemble and bake

  1. Use a deep square baking pan and grease thoroughly with about half of the melted butter.

  2. Cover the bottom of the pan with a row of plantains.

  3. Add enough of the cooked meat to make a layer, following the style for preparing lasagna.

  4. Alternate rows of plantains and meat until both are used up.

  5. Pour the remaining melted butter over the pie and sprinkle with the parmesan cheese.

  6. Bake at 350 degrees for about twenty minutes.

Recipe from the Recipes Wiki (Fandom).

This recipe comes from the Recipes Wiki on Fandom and is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Our formatting and summaries are shared under the same licence.

Steps grouped into stages for easier reading; the method is the source's own.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Garlic + olivetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,665 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Olive + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Plantains
Ripe plantains are sliced and fried, forming the starchy, layered body of the lasagna.
Ground meat
Forms the savory filling layers that give the dish its substance and rich flavor.
Raisins
Add pockets of sweetness that contrast with the savory meat and garlic.
Green bell peppers
Contribute fresh, vegetal aroma and flavor to the meat base as they soften.
Parmesan cheese
Adds salty, savory flavor and browns on top as the dish bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top and pan surfaces brown during baking.

The step that matters

Cook the meat until cooked but not dry. Ground meat cooked too long loses moisture and becomes tough and crumbly, which dries out the layers once baked. Stop when it is just cooked through so the filling stays moist between the plantain layers.

Flavor stand-ins for the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (garlic, clove, olive, pepper, onion, wine, meat):

  1. Avocadobetter flavor fit
  2. Limebetter flavor fit
  3. Lemonbetter flavor fit
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against garlic, clove, olive, pepper, onion, wine, meat. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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