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Recipes with coarse sweet potato starch

3 recipes that use coarse sweet potato starch, with photos, step-by-step instructions and cook times. The quickest, Taiwanese popcorn chicken, takes 40 minutes. It is most often cooked with five-spice powder, garlic and sugar.

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Jitui fan

In every Taiwanese town, the biandang shop at lunchtime sells jitui fan: a whole chicken leg marinated in soy, garlic and five-spice, coated in coarse sweet potato starch and fried crisp, laid over rice with three small vegetable sides and a scoop of minced-pork sauce if you ask. Office workers and students carry the paper boxes back to their desks. The common mistake is frying in oil that is too hot, so the coating browns while the meat by the bone stays raw; fry gently, then crisp it at the end. Chef's tip: let the starch-coated legs sit for 5 minutes until the coating looks damp, so it fries into crunchy little pebbles.

55 minTaiwaneseChicken
by KrazyBadal 0 views

Taiwanese fried chicken cutlet

Shilin night market's queues are longest at the stands frying these cutlets, each as big as a face, handed over in a paper bag and eaten while walking between stalls. A whole chicken breast is butterflied and flattened, marinated with garlic, soy and five-spice, then pressed into coarse sweet potato starch, which fries into a pale, shattering, craggy crust; a shake of pepper salt and chilli powder finishes it. Kids love it, and it is just as good as a weeknight dinner with rice and cucumber salad. A frequent error is frying in oil that is too hot: the crust browns long before the thick part of the breast is cooked. Chef's tip: let the starch-coated cutlet rest for 5 minutes before frying, until damp patches appear; that hydrated starch is what gives the rough, crunchy texture.

45 minTaiwaneseChicken
by KrazyBadal 0 views

Taiwanese popcorn chicken

Every night market in Taiwan, from Shilin in Taipei to Tainan's Garden Night Market, has a yan su ji stall with a queue, selling paper bags of bite-size fried chicken. Thigh pieces are marinated in soy, garlic and five-spice, coated in coarse sweet potato starch for a craggy, extra-crunchy shell, double-fried and tossed with fried Thai basil and a salt-and-white-pepper seasoning. The marinade traditionally includes rice wine, which contains alcohol; leave it out or use 1 tbsp water instead. Chef's tip: let the coated chicken rest for 5 minutes until the starch looks damp; it will then stay on in the oil.

40 minTaiwaneseChicken
by KrazyBadal 0 views

Goes well with coarse sweet potato starch