This is how the best croquette in Malaga is made in 2025: the recipe from 'Los Pablos' with a 'Plato de los Montes' flavor

Chefs Pablo Vega and Pablo Domínguez are not exactly close to the Montes de Málaga from their usual base, the restaurant Ménade. It is there that, for the past four years, they have been devising and creating some of their new dishes, including what has recently become the best croquette you can try in Málaga this 2025, their unique croquette flavored with Plato de los Montes. "Every dish can be turned into a croquette," they understand, a notion that this pair of young chefs, who have been making waves with their creativity and their approach to Malaga and Andalusian cuisine, both respectful and eager to innovate and impress.

"If there's a dish you really like, it's definitely 'croquetable,' you can make a croquette that tastes like it," says Pablo Vega, aware that "there are croquettes everywhere, just like 'ensaladilla rusa' and 'patatas bravas'," but he is convinced that he can put a twist on even the most traditional dish: "I think putting that stamp on it or giving more thought to that dish, until you get a product that makes you say, damn, this is it, this is ours."

And so was born the croquette flavored with Plato de los Montes, capturing all the richness and breadth of this dish, condensed into the size of a croquette. A challenge that Los Pablos, as they are known, tackled with relish, in every sense of the word. "It's what we like, what we believe is that romantic, beautiful part of hospitality, that's what we apply to this croquette," they explain, before giving the guidelines and key points on how they make the croquette that captivated the judges of the II Málaga Croquette Championship.

"We cook the pork loin in lard, with colored lard. And there we already have two main ingredients in our croquette," they comment about the loin and the colored lard, two of the products that shape the winner: "On one hand, the colored lard resulting from cooking the loin, and on the other, the loin itself. We make a béchamel, but instead of using only butter, we also use some of the colored lard. Here the croquette already has that flavor, that aroma."

The next step, once the béchamel is cooked, which they clarify is made "with broth, which hardly contains any milk," with the aim that "the flavor is still a bit more potent," is to add "everything that a Plato de los Montes has." "What's inside?" they ask before answering: "It contains fried eggs with baby squid, the same loin in which we cooked the colored lard, some chorizo, and the same spices that are in the loin in lard. The same ones inside are the same ones we add to enhance the mass a bit more." After this, they bread it with Panko and finish with a fried pepper mayonnaise that makes you feel like you're chewing it: "The fried green pepper, which would have been left out of the equation, we fry it a lot and make a very concentrated mayonnaise with those peppers and the same oil used to fry them."

Finally, they finish "with a little sprout and use a bit of Himalayan black salt, which is a volcanic salt, highly used because it is a trompe l'oeil, because it tastes like fried egg, due to the volcanic and sulfurous part it has. We put it on top to enhance even more that memory of the Plato de los Montes." Los Pablos recall that the breadcrumbs, which they do not overlook, are represented with the panko: "It's the crust of the croquettes, which we, instead of using regular breadcrumbs, use Japanese breadcrumbs, called panko, which are like little flakes. And of course, if the croquette is well fried and is crispy, then it already has all the ingredients inside a croquette."

This is how they finish their croquette de Plato de los Montes, reinforcing their own idea that "everything is croquetable," achieving that, from Vélez-Málaga, "in one bite it can transport us to the Montes de Málaga, which is a bit far from the Axarquía, although in one bite you can perfectly be there."