Fried ngaku chips are one of the most common and popular of Chinese New Year "goodies". Almost every home will stock at least a bottle or two during the season.
I love it too.
They look like potato chips but as arrowhead is denser than potatoes, they can be sliced thinner.
Compared to potato chips which almost everyone is familiar with, ngaku chips are lighter, crispier, crunchier, feels less oil saturated. It has a very mild sweetish flavour, similar but milder than potato chips. So it takes on sauce flavours (e.g. chili sauce) easily though I always enjoyed them neat.
Ngaku is known as arrowhead in English (scientific name Sagittaria trifolia variant edulis) because its leaves look like arrowheads.
The ngaku chips are made from the sprouting bulb of the arrowhead plant.
In China's Guangxi province where they are imported from, they are known as 塘菇 literally "pond mushroom" (though it is not a mushroom or fungus).
In Cantonese, 塘菇 sounds like 钱菇 "chiku" which means "money mushroom" with all its desirable connotations. A heap of golden fried 钱菇 chips looks like a pile of gold coins - what more can people wish for in the new year, right?
Another Cantonese name is 慈菇 which again sounds like "chiku" where 慈 in Cantonese means charity or beneficence - a highly desired and admired personality trait.
We also call it ngaku, nga 芽 meaning "sprout" in Cantonese.
Sprouts 芽 has auspicious connotations of spring, new life, new start, new beginning, renewal, hope.
That's great!
The ngaku sprouts are manually peeled one by one, one at a time.
Tedious, time consuming work.
The cleaned bulb is shaved and slices allowed to fall / fly directly into the wok of boiling hot oil.
So much joy at work 👍
Remove from the hot oil when the chips are a nice light golden brown colour and let the oil drain.
So nice 🙂
Fresh off the hot oil.
Packing the fried ngaku chips into plastic bottles after they cooled down.
People are so nice here. Makcik didn't even bat an eyelid when little girl couldn't stop helping herself, trying out, munching the freshly fried ngaku chips ❤️
Addictively tasty and with so many auspicious reasons going for it, no wonder then that ngaku chips are such hot cakes during Chinese New Year.
Do you like ngaku 芽菇 / 钱菇 chips too?
What is your favourite Chinese New Year goodie?
Written by Tony Boey on 5 Feb 2026
Who is Tony Johor Kaki?
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