But let's face it... we all crave a little something sometimes. For poor Journey (who gets very little junk food), it was potato chips this weekend. She asked me to make some. I could not turn her down. While potatoes aren't exactly a green leafy vegetable, they are not the spawn of the devil either. Potatoes are not twinkies... they are a root vegetable with nourishment in them, especially right under the skin. I think they are ok in smaller quantities.
That brings us to fat... deep fried food kind of grosses me out anymore. It didn't used to but I just know too much now and have come so far that I really don't want to eat anything that has to be deep fried. But even saying that, I believe that a bit of fat in the diet is healthy and, in fact, imperative. Fats are a natural part of every cell in our body and necessary in order for us to absorb and utilize many of the vitamins we need, like A, D, E, and Vitamin K. I have blogged before about healthy fats. Coconut oil and olive oil being 2 of my favorites!
So back to the potato chips. That is what you wanted to know, right? Well this is the second time I tried them and they were actually really good this time so let me tell you the secrets.
Wash your potatoes. I washed about 6 of them. Really scrub them clean so you don't have to peel them. Most of the nutrition is in the skin!
Then find a way to slice them thin. I mean thin. My new food processor with an adjustable slicer did a great job of slicing them on the thinnest setting.. LOVE it. Last time I tried, I did not get them cut thin enough and so they were a bit of a flop.
Now take your slices in a bowl and pour in some olive oil.. mix that around so that most of your slices are mostly coated a bit with oil. Then pour some olive oil on a flat baking sheet and spread it around to coat the sheet good.. this is critical or your potatoes will stick!
Did I mention to preheat the oven to about 350? Do that as you are slicing the potatoes.
Spread the potatoes on the greased baking sheet in a single layer. Add salt. Don't be afraid to salt them quite a bit. Mine overlapped some but not much and I ended up using 3 baking sheets. 2 were metal cookie sheets and one was a pampered chef stoneware sheet. The stoneware sheet gave me much better results and the poatoes did not stick as much to that one.
Pop your potatoes in the oven for about 15 minutes. Watch them and when they are turning brown, take them out and stir and turn them.. some will stick. I used a rigid metal spatula to kind of scrape them off the pan and turn them and popped them back in the oven for 10 - 15 more minutes. I might have done this one more time for a few minutes before I decided that some of them were brown enough.
At this point I pulled the brown crispy ones off of the pans and put them in a bowl (adding more salt) but popped back in the ones that were still a bit undercooked. This went on a few more minutes .. I kept cooking them until they were all browned to my liking.
Now as with almost everything I make from scratch, it never LOOKS like store-bought. I consider that a good sign actually. My potato chips were brown but crunchy and tasty, tasty, tasty. We couldn't keep out of them! Most of my family visited today and they got to taste the fresh chips and everyone loved them. So I made some dip.
Dip... yummm... what is chips without dip? I haven't had chips and dip in my house for a long time! So tonight before Journey got home I made her dip to go with her chips. I had leftover plain yogurt and 1/2 a brick of cream cheese in the refrigerator so I softened and combined them and threw in a generous helping of garlic powder and onion powder... DELICIOUS! Journey loved the dip even when she found out I put yogurt in it... she is a picky kid so when it passes her taste test, it is good!
Here is what is left of our chips. I wanted to show you a picture of how they look ( these are not burned.. just crisp). The 6 potatoes almost filled this plastic container when they were first done but several of us were into this container of chips before the picture got taken.
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