Breakfast Cart · Fried Plantain-Corn Ring
Mandoca
Photo: DamianFinol / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0
The dough mixes cornmeal with mashed ripe plantain and melted papelón, which is what makes mandoca taste distinctly sweeter than any other fried Venezuelan corn snack.
Cornmeal dough is blended with ripe plantain, panela, and shredded cheese, shaped into a small ring, and deep-fried until dark golden. Street carts around Maracaibo sell them hot in paper bags for breakfast, often alongside coffee.
Why it's made this way: Zulia's plantain and cane-sugar farms around Lake Maracaibo shaped a doughier, sweeter fried snack than the plainer arepas and empanadas found elsewhere in Venezuela.
More from Venezuela
Part of World of Street Food — 690 dishes from 118 countries.
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