Air-Fryer Tostones (Twice-Cooked Plantains)

Tostones (toh-STOH-nez) are the side dish that anyone who's spent time in Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, or Colombia considers a basic right of being alive. Green plantains — firm, starchy, not sweet like ripe yellow plantains — sliced thick, fried once to soften, smashed flat with a wooden mallet (or the bottom of a glass), then fried again to get the edges proper-crisp. Salted hot, eaten with a garlic dipping sauce, served as a side with basically every Caribbean meal.

The traditional version is deep-fried in lard or oil. The air-fryer version uses a tablespoon of oil total, and the result is genuinely indistinguishable in flavour from the deep-fried version (slightly less greasy, which some people prefer). The two-cook sequence is preserved: first a 6-minute soften, then the smash, then another 6 minutes for the final crisp.

The photo shows the platter: about 20 smashed plantains piled generously on a white plate, with a bowl of bright green guacamole/ avocado dip in the corner. The plantains have visible char marks on the edges and salt crystals on top. This is what weekday-dinner-with-personality looks like.

A note on the plantains: get them GREEN, not yellow. Yellow plantains are ripe and sweet; they make a different dish (plátanos maduros — sweet, soft, caramelised, also wonderful but not this). For tostones you want the skin to be green and the fruit firm inside.