Grow – Harvest – Prepare – Recipes
Frying ʻUala
Instead of steaming or cooking, you can fry ʻuala like chips. This is a bit tedious, but is a simple process that ends with a very yummy finished product.
Clean the ʻuala to your comfort. If you don’t know how or where they were grown, you might want to peel the skin off with a potato peeler to remove any possible pesticide residue.
Cut the sweet potato into 1/4″~ slices. The thicker they are the longer you need to fry them. The thinner they are, the faster they cook. It’s often helpful to cut the ʻuala down the middle so you have a flat side to it more stable as you cut.
Put a few tablespoons of oil in a pan. I use avocado oil and cast iron. The oil helps conduct heat into the sweet potato. If you put the chips in a dry pan, they won’t cook evenly or at all. Make sure there’s at least enough oil to cover the bottom of the pan in a film.
Heat the pan on medium/high and add the ʻuala chips in a single layer. Fry them until they’re brown/light brown and then flip with a spatula. Once the second side is done, scoop them out on a plate. I like to drain the oil off each chip before I take it out of the pan. This saves oil and makes the chips less greasy.
The chip should be soft and chewy in the center. If the center is still crunchy and starchy, it needs to cook longer.
You’ll have to add oil occasionally if you’re doing several batches. The ʻuala absorbs the oil as it cooks – part of why it’s nice to use a healthy oil.