Leaving taste, smell and nutritional value aside, the sweet potato stands out for one particular reason -- "it's shaped a bit like the island," says Peter Lin, founder of local tour company Topology.
One of their local tours allows travelers to volunteer to sell potatoes with local vendors. Taiwan-grown sweet potatoes are added to soup, with ginger, then roasted in ovens converted from oil drums. They're then ground to a flour and added to other dishes to give them texture, or fried into sweet potato chips.
As long as the beloved root vegetable is in it, Taiwanese love it.
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