Chips Hi-jacked

Recipe: Homemade Jackfruit Chips / Chakka Varuthathu

This is a favourite crunchy snack amongst Keralites.



Yes, it is another jackfruit dish for today's post :) The foodie in me feels that I just have to share my love of this fruit with you and thereby post one more of the yummy ways to use it in cooking.

This is the last jackfruit post. I promise! (At least till I get my hands on more jackfruit)

If you want to check out the other dish that I had made with jackfruit, click here (it has pics of the tree and the whole fruit as well) and to read more about this wonderful fruit click here.

If there is such a title as the King of Chips then homemade jackfruit chips will win hands down. Potato chips, banana chips or any other chips pale in comparison to this awesome chip.





On seeing the jackfruit tree in the backyard of our house in Kerala, I just murmured something about making jackfruit chips and Suja chechi (our help) brought out a big, sharp knife and with one slash brought down a low-hanging raw jackfruit with a thud. (A word of caution: stand away from a jackfruit tree when someone is cutting down the jackfruits from it lest parts of your body become flattened due to the impact of 4-6kgs fruits falling on them :) )

Before long, we were chopping our way into the hard spiky outer skin of the raw jackfruit, plucking and seperating the segments and the seeds from it.

The seeds would later be washed, dried, scraped, sliced and cooked with onions and spices into a yummy side-dish along with rice.

The segments were carefully sliced into more-or-less equal slices and then deep-fried till it is cooked throughout and crispy.

There isn't much of a recipe to making chips. Just 3 ingredients - raw jackfruit segments sliced, oil for deep-frying and salt. That's it!

But there is a lot of technique involved - from the choosing of the right kind of jackfruit for frying, the slicing of the segments and to the right amount of frying.

I had 3 enthusiatic teachers to teach me the techniques of making the perfect jackfruit chips - MIL, Suja chechi (who was also a first-timer in jackfruit-chip-making though she knew about the techniques involved by watching her mom do it) and our neighbour D who had a lot of experience in making these chips.

HOMEMADE JACKFRUIT CHIPS / CHAKKA VARUTHATHU

Ingredients:

Raw Jackfruit Segments (sliced evenly) - While choosing the jackfruit for frying, it is important to choose the variety of jackfruit  whose segments do not have a thick flesh. The Jackfruit variety with thick fleshed segments do not fry well and get soggy soon after.

Oil for Deep-frying (I prefer using coconut oil)

Salt to taste

When slicing the jackfruit segments, it is a good idea to chop off about 1/2 a centimeter or so from the top and the bottom of each segment and not use them for the chip-making as the top and bottom of the segments are thick and do not fry well. (Dont worry, these pieces are not wasted. These top and bottom pieces can be cooked with spices and coconut and made into another fabulous and yummy dish for the next meal).

Heat the oil for deep-frying. Put in the jackfruit slices (as many as that remain submerged in the hot oil) and stir occasionally.

Fry till the jackfruit slices become crisp. When the really thin edges become slightly brown, you can check if the chips are done by fishing out one of the bigger slices from the hot oil and biting off a piece. Ensure that even the center of the slice is also nice and crispy. 

If the tester chip is even slightly soft in the center, you need to give that batch of chips a few more seconds in the hot oil. Else the chips will quickly soften after they cool off. 

After they have been fished out of the oil, sprinkle some salt on them and give them a light mix when they are still hot. 



Once the chips have cooled, store them in an airtight container. These chips maintain their crispness for weeks if stored away from moisture.

These crunchy chips are off to the Kerala Kitchen for May 2011, hosted by me here :)

Comments

Behind the Scenes

All the dishes posted in this blog have been cooked by me. Some of the recipes are mine and some of them adapted / borrowed in which case, the link to the original source is provided.

I am also the photographer and the author behind this blog.

If you would like to borrow any of my recipes or photographs, please do let me know and link back to the original post on this blog.

Popular Posts