Breadfruit Chips

If you’ve ever wondered how people cook and enjoy breadfruit, give my Breadfruit Chips recipe a try! These oddball fruits are mildly flavoured, starchy, and just perfect for frying. They pair beautifully with a spicy Caribbean dipping sauce.

Yield: Equal to one large bag of chips ○ Active Time: 40 minutes ○ Total Time: 100 minutes

Generally, breadruit is a hassle to prepare. I don’t know if you’ve worked with breadfruit before, but it can’t be eaten raw. To reach ‘edible’ you need to cook it for ages. This has always been a turn off for me. Once I tried cooking breadfruit over an open flame, à la, this Youtube recipe. It was a huge disaster. Embers flew around my face while I patiently rotated this big ball of starch; blackening the skin as best I could. The end result was so bland and underwhelming I threw it out in defeat. Fast forward a year and my frustration has subsided… but not my curiosity. I kept passing them in the produce aisle; clearly there were people out there enjoying them. There had to be a better way to prepare them!

They are a staple food in many parts of the world, but especially beloved in the Caribbean. When I found some breadfruit chip recipes online, I decided to give the fruit another try. I modelled my recipe after the Trinidadian recipes that inspired me. Because this recipe requires flash frying instead of slow roasting, the cooking time is pretty fast. You’ll find breadfruit available for purchase at Caribbean, African, South American, and Asian grocery stores. Fry up a batch and impress your friends who’ve never heard of breadfruit before.

Ingredients

1 breadfruit

3 cups of cooking oil

bunch of washed cilantro leaves (stems removed)

fine sea salt

Instructions

Cut off the ends of the breadfruit and remove the skin with a sharp paring knife. Slice the breadfruit in half from stem to base. Slice each new segment in half again so you have 4 segments. With your paring knife, remove the hard centres with the tiny dark seeds.

Now this is where a mandolin comes in handy. If you have one, set it up. If not, slice the segments as thinly as possible.

After thinly slicing the breadfruit flesh, soak the slices in cool salted water for 20 minutes (you want to get off any sap/gum and start seasoning the chips).

Pulverize the cilantro with a splash of water using an immersion/hand blender or mortar and pestle.

Lightly toss the breadfruit slices in the cilantro paste. Set aside in the refrigerator for 1 hour to absorb the marinade.

Bring cooking oil to 160C. Flash fry the chips in small batches. During this first fry you just want to cook the chips thoroughly. Remove them from the oil when they just start to colour. After all the chips have had their first fry, raise the heat to 190C. Fry them again until they reach a light caramel colour and are good and crispy.

Set them aside to drain in a colander. Immediately toss with salt, as per your preference. Allow them to cool and enjoy!