Taro Chips (deep-fried vs air-fried)

These Taro Chips are super crunchy and easy to make. I usually see these as part of a first course at higher-end restaurants, where they are typically served with a bowl of tuna tartare. For this recipe, I decided to only do the chips but I tested them in the air fryer as well.

Taro chips are one of my favorite "root vegetable" chips. I usually see them served at higher-end restaurants as a crunchy component for a first course. Recently, I bought a whole taro for making coconut taro soup and I had a bunch of leftovers so I decided to make these chips.

Compared to other "root vegetables" chips I've made, like beetroot or sweet potato chips, I find taro chips are much less likely to get burned. The reason is because taro contains much less sugar than other root vegetables, and sugar tends to darken very quickly when deep-frying.

Using a mandolin for slicing

For the most consistent slices, I recommend slicing the taro with a mandolin. You could use a knife if you want to, but it's much harder to get them into thin, even slices.

Do I need to soak in water?

The short answer is no. After reading a few recipes, I noticed a lot of people suggested soaking the taro slices in water so that they wouldn't burn. But no one really gave a concrete explanation as to why so I decided to make two batches, one that was soaked water, and one that was not.

As you can see from the picture above, there was barely a difference between the two. So save yourself some time and don't bother with soaking them.

Deep-frying vs air-frying

Here is the side-by-side comparison of the deep-fried vs air-fried chips:

Appearance-wise, they look very similar, but in my opinion, the deep-fried chips tasted way better. They were much more rich with the oil.

For the air-fried chips, I initially cooked them at 400°F, but the edges got really burnt, so I reduced the temperature to 350°F for my second batch. They turned out much better.

In terms of cooking time, deep-frying was much faster. It took me only about 5 minutes until they were very crunchy but air-frying took almost 15 minutes. In any case, I've included instructions for both in the recipe card below.