Lekker: Sweet Potato Chippies

In my pursuit for ANY excuse to use my lovely new mandolin (I do so love new kitchen toys...oh, classic orange Le Creuset, how I lust after you...) and after a bumper crop of massive sweet potatoes in the back garden over the weekend, sweet potato chips seemed like the logical answer. I was pleased at the fact that there's no oil or fat of any kind involved, so these ACTUALLY ARE healthy and delicious. How's about them apples?

Or, you know, sweet potatoes. Whatever.

You don't need a mandolin to make these of course, you can just focus on slicing them as thinly and evenly as possible. If you do use a mandolin, I used mine on the thinnest setting at 1.5 mm. 

Sweet Potato Chippies
makes enough for 1 person to snack on; scale up as desired

What You Need:
 2 medium sweet potatoes--that's it!

Optional, to make Salt & Vinegar Sweet Potato Chips:
Rice vinegar
Sea salt

Yes, I made these into salt-and-vinegar sweet potato chips. You could just salt them if you like, or do salt and dried rosemary, or play around with cinnamon instead. Feel free to experiment!

What You Do
1. Preheat your oven to 425. Peel and slice up your sweet potatoes. Lay out on a baking sheet lined with foil with no overlap but squeeze as many as you can on there. They'll shrink down in cooking.

2. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until crisp. I had them go to I think 18 minutes, and that was a little long because a few of them turned purple in spots, which later became black--and as I discovered to my misfortune, those spots are really bitter and gross. So! Probably stick closer to 15-16 minutes and check every minute.

3. Remove from the oven, and don't touch them! Let them cool for a few minutes so they can unstick themselves from the foil. If you try to pick them up right away they won't release properly and you'll be sad.

4. Optional step: If you want to flavour them, once they're cool throw them in a paper bag and shake 'em up with whatever seasonings you're interested in. I sprinkled rice vinegar over them and salted to taste, then shook them up until lightly coated and then laid them back on the baking sheets to dry out.

I threw these into a bowl and sat down to watch the Lightning-Devils hockey game (*sob* my Lightning lost, though) whilst snacking...and then suddenly, two giant sweet potatoes had disappeared into my belly. Nom nom those complex carbs, bitches!