Coconut-Oil Fry · Salted Plantain Crisps
Kerala Banana Chips
Photo: Thamizhpparithi Maari / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
The traditional chips are cut from nendran, a large local plantain, and fried in coconut oil, which gives them their aroma; the jaggery-coated sharkara upperi is a fixed item on the Onam sadya leaf.
Thin slices of raw green plantain are fried in coconut oil until golden and crisp, salted, and sometimes finished with turmeric or a jaggery glaze called sharkara upperi. Roadside stalls and shopfronts across Kerala sell them by the bag, freshly fried in huge batches for both daily snacking and festival trays.
Why it's made this way: The chips are a fixed part of the traditional Onam and wedding feast known as sadya, and Kerala's abundance of plantains and coconut oil made them a defining regional snack rather than just a byproduct of surplus fruit.
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