Air Fryer Yam Fries (Dundun)

First, the thing that matters: this is not sweet potato. The orange tuber American supermarkets label "yam" is a different plant from a different continent. True yam — puna yam, white yam, Dioscorea — is a massive, bark-skinned staple that feeds hundreds of millions of people across West Africa, and Nigeria grows more of it than the rest of the world combined. It cooks up nothing like sweet potato either: drier, starchier, savory rather than sugary, closer to a russet potato with more spine.

Dundun is the street version — thick batons of that yam, fried golden, handed over hot with ata dindin, a rough fried-pepper sauce, or stacked next to fried plantain and eggs. It's roadside food, market food, food you eat standing up. Nothing about it is complicated, which is exactly why the quality of the yam and the crisp of the fry carry everything.

The honest trade: a deep fryer gives dundun an even, all-around golden crust that moving air can't perfectly match, especially on a starch this dense. Our fix is a short parboil — five minutes, no more — which jump-starts the interior so the air fryer can spend its twenty minutes on color instead of raw starch. What comes out is golden, blistered at the edges, fluffy in the middle, and made with a tablespoon and a half of oil instead of a pot. We put the batch next to a bowl of pepper sauce and it went the way street food should.

Finding puna yam means a trip to an African or Caribbean grocer, where it'll be sold whole or in cut, plastic-wrapped sections. Pick a piece that's firm and creamy-white inside. That trip is the recipe; the air fryer just finishes the job.