How To Make Homemade Potato Chips With Flavors
Commercial Potato Chips: Are They Worth It?
Potato chips are one of the most popular snacks nowadays. Many brands offer their version and they can be found literally everywhere. No matter if you prefer them simply salted, with oregano, paprika, chili or other flavors, chips are an excellent addition to movie watching nights and are children favorites, too.
However, everyone knows it is not exactly the healthiest choice of snack, especially for children who cannot control themselves when allowed to have some and who tend to ignore important facts, such as dietary information and the ingredients of the product.
Commercially found potato chips are packed with calories and additives; most of them are not reflected on the ingredients tag with a recognizable way. Though potato chips really come from potatoes, they do not carry any useful nutrient with them to the final product due to being fried in low quality oils and processed with artificial flavorings and other additives.
Potato Chips And Calories Intake
What is reflected on the tag, though, is the calories intake which cannot be hidden; commonly, it is extremely high regardless of the fact that potato, as food is not really fatty. The problem actually lies within the oils and fats used. Those oils are actually the worse kind of fat someone could have in his diet, since most are trans fats, known to cause increasingly popular health conditions, for example high cholesterol and the effects that typically come with it, such as high blood pressure and others. It is actually well known that potato chips are not healthy snack, but none of us can resist them, right?
That's when you might find this article useful; simply because, you can cook your own potato chips, at the comfort of your home and right when you need them, in a matter of minutes and with ingredients you will choose.
A Potato Peeler
Homemade Chips: What You Will Need
The items you will need to cook your own potato chips at home are:
- Potatoes, the larger the better
- Vegetable peeler that allows very thin slices
- Spices and herbs for flavoring: possible choices are salt, pepper, paprika powder, curry powder, rosemary, thyme, oregano, crushed cumin
- Oil for frying
- Towel or paper to remove excess oil after frying
- Optionally: your preferred dip sauce for serving
Instructions
- Choose your potatoes carefully - big ones will be easier to turn into chips. Also check for possible areas with spots or discoloration, you would like to remove those parts.
- Peel the skin off the potatoes until all is gone and wash.
- Use the peeler, same as you did when you were peeling the skin off, but this time do it on the potato flesh. The peeler is able to produce very thin slices of potato which will turn into great potato chips. If you choose to do it with knife, there is no way you can make it as thin.
- Place the slices on a towel to absorb the water.
- Add your cooking oil in a large pan. The chips will be crunchier and more tasty if you choose a high quality oil, such as olive oil. However, any oil suitable for frying will do.
- Heat the cooking oil in high heat until ready. Try it by dropping inside it a potato slice; it should start frying at once. If it does not, remove and get rid of the slice and let the oil heat more.
- When oil is done, drop inside some potato slices but be careful not to put too many inside. You would like each frying batch to contain 10-15 chips and not more, because they could stick to each other and get fried only from one side.
- Lightly stir the chips until their color is golden brown. It does not take much time until they are ready, because they are just too thin.
- When done, remove from the pan and place on a tray with much paper, to allow it to absorb excess oils. Add the next batch for frying.
- Now is the time you would like to add your spices, because the chips are still hot and the spices will stick on them.
- Keep frying and spice each batch, until all slices are fried.
- Serve in large bowls at once (along the dip sauce, if you have one) and eat as soon as possible, because after some time they will not be as crunchy anymore.
Consume As Soon As Possible
Generally, homemade potato chips will not last crunchy for long, so it is not very convenient to fry them unless you are ready to consume them almost immediately. On the other hand, you will be satisfied because you made tasty, delicious potato chips with ingredients you chose yourself for a snack as healthy as possible.
You Can Bake Them Too!
If you do not want to fry the potato chips, you will have a similar result but with less "oily" taste if you bake them in medium heat for 6-7 minutes or until golden colored. Place the chips in a shallow baking pan or on special (silicone usually) baking sheet, sprinkle them (or spray if you can) with few olive oil and your spices and let bake until ready.
Other Versions Of Chips
You might be surprised to find out that with the previous method you can make other kinds of chips, rather unusual but still tasty. Serving such "special" chips to your visitors you will impress them and make them wonder what your initial ingredient was. Possible ingredients are:
- Eggplant
- Zucchini
- Beetroot
- Banana, very common in Asian cuisine
For all these ingredients you simply follow the same procedure. Some of them could require, for better result, cutting with knife. Banana chips, for example, tend to be a bit thicker.
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