I have come to a conclusion: I’m in need of a mandolin. Making chips without one means not being able to count on consistency, texture, or timing. That said, these turned out to be some rather yummy chips! It’s a simple process, they’re far healthier than your fried grocery-store chip, and really tasy. In the future I’m going to try onion and garlic, but perhaps not with sweet potato… that may be a more non-sweet-potato thing. I’m told these also go well with cinnamon :)

Sweet Potato Chips

Ingredients:

• 1 large yam/sweet potato (or more, if desired)
• about 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
• sea salt and freshly-ground black pepper

Process:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F
2. Rinse yam, then slice as thinly as possible using sharp knife or, preferably, a mandolin
3. Brush light coating of olive oil onto baking sheets- very thin, but enough so that the bottom of the chips won’t burn
4. Arrange yam slices packed in tightly but flat across baking sheets
5. Brush another very light coating of olive oil onto the tops of the slices
6. Sprinkle on salt and pepper (quantity as desired)
7. Bake yam slices for about 6 minutes, then rotate to even the baking process
8. Bake for an additional 6-8 minutes, until edges begin to curl slightly upward and the chips have reached your desired level of crunchiness
9. Place a paper towel over a cooling rack
10. Remove from baking sheet and arrange over paper towel-cooking rack, trying to have as much contact with the paper towel as possible
11. Allow to cool for 5 minutes; toss the chips over if desired to absorb more oil into the towel, allowing to cool for a few more minutes
12. Eat and enjoy! :) For something cool to counter the heat and pepper, dip chips in cold sour cream- or, instead of pepper, add cinnamon and some cloves for a sweeter (yet spiced) taste

It’s a rather quick process! The only downside is that if you used a gargantuan yam as I did, you’ll need more than two baking sheets- so it took me two batches of two sheets to just do one yam worth of chips. These things have a high yield! You may also want to arrange the chips by size- have one sheet of smaller slices and one of larger so that you can ensure more even timing for the lot.