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When you want the flavors of sweet plantain, savory beef picadillo and cheese, try making Puerto Rican Piononos. These bite sizes treats are a cute cousin to the Pastelon, that are shaped like mini cups.

Piononos – Stuffed Plantain Cups

The key to mastering Puerto Rican Piononos is making sure your plantains are extra ripe. Don’t confuse this recipe for a toston style plantain cup.

Piononos are all about a savory and sweet combo. You won’t need green plantain (even though the idea sounds delicious).

Look for sweet plantains that are mostly yellowish in color with several black marks.

Ingredients

Now that we covered the importance of ripe plantains for piononos. You are also going to need:

Homemade picadillo
Large eggs
Shredded mozzarella cheese (optional)
Cilantro for garnish

Make sure your beef picadillo mixture is well seasoned. It’s literally one of the stars of this dish.

It’s savory component to the sweet maduros. My picadillo recipe includes fresh sofrito, tomato sauce, ground cumin, sazon, garlic powder, dried oregano, olives and some potatoes (which are optional).

Preparing Piononos

To make these stuffed sweet plantains into cups, you first have to peel and slice your plantains into long strips.

The key is to slice the plantains horizontally, following the natural shape of the plantain. Depending on how thick the plantains are you can expect 4-5 strips from one plantain.

stuffed sweet plantain cups from puerto rico

Next, fry the sweet plantains until a golden, caramel color. Traditionally these bite sized treats are fried twice. But to simplify this recipe, I opted to assemble the piononos in a cupcake baking pan.

It’s super easy to construct. Just wrap one plantain strip inside the cupcake mold.

Then, tear a small piece of plantain and place it in the center – as a base. Repeat and now you’re done! Just fill, top and bake.