Super easy and absurdly delicious: make your own chips

Say wine, snacks or haute cuisine and the food lovers of online food magazine FavorFlav know where to drink, how to eat and what to cook. This time our chefs serve you making chips yourself: fun, easy and absurdly delicious.

Of course, for a few bucks you can grab a bag from the store, but few things are as fun and tasty to make yourself as chips. As simple or as fancy flavored as you want, and we believe that the labor and effort you put into it exactly cancels out the unhealthy aspect. And you have never felt so strongly that you are eating vegetables as with these chips.

You can go all out with the potatoes you choose: are you going for sweet potato, just a nice even waxy one, or are you making nice little chips from red-skinned Roseval types? All equally delicious, and especially make sure to have the flavorings ready. The Japanese spice mix furikake is great on it, but a little mix of some smoked paprika, garlic, and onion powder works too. Try a nice earthy variant with mushroom powder and thyme, or an exotic one with Indian garam masala. And if you feel like something simple and pure, just a sprinkle of some nice salt like Maldon or Camargue salt will suffice. Enjoy!

This is how you make the tastiest chips yourself

• Scrub the potatoes well or peel them: whatever you prefer. If you leave them unpeeled, it will yield a slightly rustic result. Just make sure to remove any dirt and imperfections well.
• Slice them into thin slices. You can use a mandoline, but don’t worry if the slices aren’t all paper-thin. Come on, if you pull a chip from a bag that is twice as thick as the rest, aren’t you just thrilled? What is important is that they are all roughly the same thickness so that one part doesn’t burn while the rest still needs to cook. But by hand (and with some patience and precision and a good sharp knife) this can also be done.
• Rinse them under the tap and then let them sit for half an hour in a large bowl of cold water. This is an important step that extracts some starch, allowing the chips to bake extra crispy later on.
• Now dry the slices very well. Really take them apart one by one and lay them on a tea towel and pat them dry. You want to minimize splattering in that hot oil later on.
• Take a large pot with a heavy bottom and high sides and add a layer of sunflower or rapeseed oil (in any case, an oil type that can be heated well) of about 2 centimeters.
• Heat over medium heat to about 175 degrees. If you don’t have a kitchen thermometer, test it with one well-dried slice. If it starts to bubble and sizzle gently right away, the temperature is good.
• If you hardly see or hear any sizzling, the oil is still too cold; if there are too big bubbles and noise, it’s too hot.
• Carefully scoop a layer of potato slices into the oil with a metal slotted spoon, turn them over if necessary after a short time, and fry them until golden brown.
• After about three minutes, scoop them out of the oil onto a layer of kitchen paper or a rack over a baking sheet to drain.
• Sprinkle immediately with salt and/or the spice mix while the oil hasn’t completely soaked in or drained yet.
• Repeat with the rest of the slices, checking the oil temperature with each batch first.
• Let them cool completely; this is essential for crispiness, even though it’s ridiculously hard to stay away from them.

Ideally, eat them the same day and store them for at most a day or two. They will have lost some of their crispiness, so better reward your hard work by just taking those chips to the couch as soon as they’ve cooled down (yes, of course, that also includes a bottle of wine or a beer) and eating them.