Re-imagining Nigerian Cuisine: Cassava Chips

The truth is when I happen upon a new ingredient, I like to explore as much as I can.

So I’ve done the soup and the salad and this time, it’s the deep-fried chips. I figured that would work better than roasted but that’ll be explored as well.

Here, I deep-fried the chips for a few minutes till golden. And seasoned with salt, chili and black pepper.

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And simply served with scent leaf sauce which is so dopeeeeeeeeeee. That recipe is coming soon. 

And? Hmmm, not the best turn out. Edible but… not crispy, crunchy. 

The thing is, the cassava already has a chewy, bendy texture which does not change with frying.

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Though par-cooked starches – yam, potatoes take well to frying, this particular batch of cassava did not. Maybe because of the way it was processed – cooked, soaked, fermented and all. Anyhow, for all the reasons in the world, it didn’t yield delicate, crisp chips.

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But it was an experiment worth trying.

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Have you had delicious fried cassava chips? What do you recommend for success?

3 Comments

  1. Growing up on the Kenyan coast (Mombasa) fried cassava in two forms was an everyday snack. The vendors would slice them lengthwise into very thick chunks fry and serve with ground chillies and tamarind sauce. Fried cassava crisps or chips are sliced into thin round slices fried until crisp, drained and then packed into clear bags for sale. These two forms of fried cassava are very popular street food in Mombasa you will find them almost everywhere you go on the island.

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