3 ways to make vegetable chips (that taste great)
Colorful, delicious and the ideal crowd-pleasing party snack to cater for almost everyone’s dietary needs - vegetable chips. Whether you are planning to use carrots, beets, turnips, zucchini or the traditional potato, it is easy to make them at home. Once you’ve set them out in front of your guests, your chips will be gone in no time! Here are three simple methods for making veggie chips: with the oven, the microwave or the air fryer. If you have the ingredients at home already, you could be eating homemade veggie chips within the hour. Tips for vegetable chips: Preparation (Takes about 20 minutes) There’s a good chance you already have everything you need for making veggie chips at home. If you have unused vegetables lying around, it’s time to turn them into something great. You can make chips out of sweet potatoes, carrots, parsnips, zucchini, beets or even kale. If you’re expecting guests, try making chips from a few different vegetables. It will not take much more work than just using one vegetable and it will make the result more colorful and interesting. It’s also a great conversation starter! Follow these tips for preparing different types of vegetable chips: • For beet chips, you’ll first need to remove excess moisture from the vegetable. After slicing, toss your beet chips in a small amount of salt and oil, to simultaneously season and draw out excess moisture. If you’d rather not use salt, you can layer your sliced beets between sheets of kitchen paper to soak up the moisture. • The methods for beet chips will also work for other root chips, such as sweet potato, russet potato, parsnips and carrots. If you’re making root chips or using other starchy vegetables, you can get your chips to turn out crispier by soaking the slices in ice water for twenty minutes. Rinse them thoroughly afterwards. This should get rid of some of the starch. • For zucchini chips, you’re likely to be dealing with more moisture. Squeeze as much as you can out of the slices with paper towels and leave them to dry for a bit longer between the sheets. • For kale chips, tear the kale into chip-sized chunks and wash thoroughly. To dry your kale chips, dab with kitchen paper or use a salad spinner.
If you want your chips to have some bite, you can use a little olive oil. It’ll make them crunchier without getting in the way of the taste. If you’d prefer not to use oil, though, you can still have delicious vegetable chips. Check out the air fryer method below. How to make veggie chips in the oven (Takes about forty minutes) It’s easy to make baked veggie chips. First, set the oven to heat up to 320F. Put your dried vegetable slices in a bowl, sprinkle with a little olive oil and mix well. Place the slices in one layer on a baking tray and put it into the preheated oven. It should take 10 to 20 minutes for your vegetable chips to turn crispy, depending on how much water was in the slices. As cooking times vary, you’ll need to keep an eye on them to make sure they don’t end up overbaked. Let them cool down and sprinkle them with the seasonings of your choice. Done! How to make veggie chips in the microwave (Takes about 5 minutes) It may come as a surprise, but vegetable chips can be done in the microwave too. Here’s how: Once you’ve sliced and dried your vegetables, mix them in a bowl with olive oil and spices. Cover a microwaveable dish with a paper towel and spread the vegetable slices in one layer on top. If your microwave isn’t large enough to cook them all in one layer, you’ll need to do multiple batches. Fortunately, they won’t take too long. As with the oven, cooking times can vary, so you’ll want to keep an eye on the cooking process. Microwave your chips for three minutes, then flip them over and microwave them for one minute. If they’re not crisp, flip them again and give them another minute. Repeat until they’ve crisped up. How to make veggie chips with the air fryer (Takes about 20 minutes)
Take your dried vegetable slices, season them and place them in the air fryer. You can layer them on top of each other, unlike with the oven or microwave, but don’t do more than three or four layers at once. Set the air fryer to 180F and fry the slices for about 20 minutes, flipping them occasionally so they don’t stick to each other. When they’ve dried out, increase the temperature to 400F and give them a few extra minutes to give your vegetable chips that final kick. They’ll be perfectly crunchy and tasty – just right to impress your party guests, or to snack on yourself!
