The Great Sweet Potato Chip Challenge
Funny enough, I actually don’t love sweet potatoes. I wish I did. I’ve tried to. I’m just not a fan. Unless they are turned into chips. Then it’s on. As a self-proclaimed chip-aholic and chip connoisseur and someone who generally tries to eat well, you might imagine that I have experimented with making my own sweet potato chips. That would be an understatement. In fact, I have tried a multitude of different options and recipes to perfect my methodology. But, which works best? The scientist in me decided to perform a side-by-side comparison of three methods: Traditional Oven vs. NuWave Oven vs. Pampered Chef Microwave Chip Maker.
For thin slicing your sweet potato I highly recommend investing in a good mandolin slicer. It’s handy for lots of kitchen slicing, is a lot faster than slicing by hand, and it gets you thinner slices which are preferable when making chips. Just be careful not to slice your fingers- use the guards provided. Check this one out from Sur La Table: https://www.surlatable.com/product/PRO-2093433/. Also, just so you know, 1 medium sweet potato makes a surprising amount of chips- enough to completely cover a large baking sheet.
The winner:
Traditional oven chips came out the best, but it was close! I sprayed a bit of coconut oil to non-stick the baking sheet. I then laid out the sweet potato slices in a single layer and added some salt and freshly ground black pepper. Into the pre-heated 350 degree oven they went until they started to brown (about 30 minutes). I then pulled out the baking sheet and flipped then all over (removing the smaller ones that were already brown and crispy). Back into the oven for just about 5 minutes until they were all starting to get brown and crispy. Note: some will get very brown and some will stay a bit soft, but most will be crispy and all of them end up tasting pretty darn good.
The fastest:
Microwaving your chips on the Pampered Chef Chip Maker is fast, easy, and surprisingly effective. My friend Heather told me about this product and she’s a trustworthy resource, so I had to give it a shot. It will definitely be my go-to when I’m short on time. You can follow the directions that come with the trays, except that it takes a lot longer than they say in the instructions. I tell you this from my experience and from reading almost every comment on their website. Still, it tookabout 10 minutes to get my double stack of chips crispy, and that’s a lot faster than using the oven. https://www.pamperedchef.com/shop/Cookware/Microwave+Cookware/Microwave+Chip+Maker+Set/1241
Also good, but not quite as tasty as the oven baked chips and took about as long:
NuWave Oven. You may have seen the infomercials about this masterpiece? Well, it is a pretty cool kitchen tool and I have had fun experimenting with it, but this was my first go at making chips in it. I will admit that it might have been user error since I did two racks of chips and put some on the bottom level- it might have worked better with fewer chips… but they ended up needing to be rearranged a few times (the top row was cooking faster so I had to switch the chips to different racks- not ideal). The NuWave cooks most things faster than a traditional oven, butthese took about 30 minutes including my time moving them around. I also think that the oven chips came out a tiny bit crispier. I might try this again with fewer chips at some point. Regardless of the chip fail, the NuWave oven is a pretty cool gadget if you want to check it out: http://www.nuwaveoven.com/.
Dinner is Served!
I hope that if you are a fellow chip lover this might inspire you to give one of these options a try. It’s amazing how many chips you can eat for the calories of one medium sweet potato when they aren’t deep-fried! It’s always good to have an extra truly healthy snack option in your arsenal.