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Sweet potato balls
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Sweet potato balls

Fried sweet potato balls

Queue at almost any Taiwanese night market, from Shilin in Taipei to Tainan's Flower Market, and you'll see a vendor pressing a basket of golden balls against the bottom of a wok again and again until they swell up like ping-pong balls. That pressing is the trick: it pushes out air and stretches the tapioca dough, so each ball turns hollow, with a thin, crackly shell and a bouncy, chewy wall. They come in a paper bag, sometimes dusted with plum powder. The big mistake is dropping them into hot oil, which sets the crust before they can expand, so they stay small and solid; start them in warm oil. Chef's tip: steam the sweet potato rather than boiling it, as wet mash makes a sticky dough that never puffs.

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