Potato Chips—Good Eats at the TEOTWAWKI Café

I harvested the last and best of the potatoes two weeks ago.  The itty-bitties and those a little bit larger will be oven-roasted.  The beautiful ones that are too big for a single person to eat as a baked potato entrée for dinner will be canned as French fries.  (These really are the best.  You should give them a try.)  Some will be eaten as baked potatoes.  And others will become mashed potatoes, especially for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and for paying homage to Breezy, the Freeze Dryer.  We love freeze-dried mashed potatoes. 

For a couple of years now, I’ve been thinking it would be a good idea to learn how to make potato chips.  Not because they were too expensive to buy (they weren’t a few years ago, but they sure are now!), but because I wanted to be able to serve my family some treats when life gets sporty.  A few months ago, I finally ordered a mandolin slicer.  And it sat on the shelf until last week when I broke it out to make these potato chips.  

Potato Chips

1 large potato

1 teaspoon salt

Oil, for frying

Fill a medium-sized bowl with cold water and add the salt.  Set aside.

Slice the potatoes very thinly.  Paper thin.  This is why you need a mandoline.  I bought this one on Amazon because it promised I would not chop my finger off.  As you slice, put the potato slices into the cold water.  Let the potato slices rest in the water for about 30 minutes.

Bring a pan of frying oil (it should be about 2” deep) to 375°F (190°C).  Dry the potato slices well on a flour sack towel. Working in several batches, carefully place the slices in the oil and fry until golden.  Drain on paper towels and season with salt. 

Family reviews:  These are potato chips!  Belle liked them better than Lay’s because she couldn’t detect any off-flavor to them.  No preservatives, nothing.  Everybody else said that if they were presented in a Lay’s bag, they’d never know the difference.  Five stars, even if the recipe did come from Food.com.  (That’s an inside joke here.)

It wasn’t in my plan, but I decided to see if I could quickly find a recipe for barbecue flavored potato chips.  My husband just adores those.  I refuse to buy them because of all the fake-y ingredients. 

Barbecue Seasoning

1 teaspoon paprika

½ teaspoon garlic salt

½ teaspoon sugar

¼ teaspoon onion powder

1/8 teaspoon chili powder

1/8 teaspoon dry mustard

1 dash cayenne pepper

Combine everything in a small bowl and sprinkle over potato chips.

Family reviews:  Quite delicious and very easy.  We finished off the chips lickety-split.  The seasoning of most commercial BBQ chips is extremely finely powdered, so you probably won’t fool anyone into thinking these are store-bought.  But they are really good.

My next step will be to purchase a mandoline that makes wavy potato chips for dipping.  Can you imagine what kind of a prepping coup that would be?  Not only to have potato chips that look just like store-bought, but to be able to dip them in onion soup mix dip (make that from onion soup mix and Media Crema).  That’s a grand slam home run right there.  You are now the GOAT (I first learned this acronym a couple of years ago—Greatest of All Time) of the prepping world (at least in your little corner of the world). 

Links to related posts:

Canned French Fries 

Onion Soup Mix  

Media Crema Sour Cream