Micro-Chips

Hey, did you know that you could make chips in the microwave?

Yes, I just said that.

I came upon this recipe in Chatelaine Magazine Online-ok, it was more of a blogged food science experiment in Chatelaine (man, do I love Chatelaine).  I get twice-a-week emails from them with ideas and recipes and articles on everything about life in general.  I should really think about getting an actual subscription--but why bother killing all those trees when they already send me the emailed recipes?

Of course, I'm not eating potato chips.

But the possibilities..........

Butternut squash chips!

So I wanted to make squash fries.  I LOVE squash fries.  I love them better than sweet potato fries.  And they're lower in carbs.  Double-bonus!!  Now, being lower in starch than potatoes, squash fries tend to be soft on the inside, and crispy on the outside sometimes.  It's hard to keep them crispy for long.  I am continuously experimenting with ways to make them stay crispier.

So I took a small butternut squash and peeled it.  I ran it through the middle thickness blade on my mandolin. 

I brushed a bunch of slices down with olive oil.  I washed and then brushed down the microwave tray with oil, too.  I laid the slices out flat on the tray and microwaved for about 7 minutes.  I flipped some of them over.  I added a minute of time here and there until they were dry and beginning to brown.  I salted them and set them on paper towels and started again. 

It was time-intensive, I'm not going to lie.  But it was dead simple.  Any chips that didn't crisp up just kept going back in for another minute.  The best part was that they continued to crisp up once they were out.  Many of the chips were as crispy as real potato chips.

This was so simple, a teen could do it for an after school snack.  If you sliced a bunch of squash or sweet potatoes in advance.  That mandolin is scary.  I keep shaving my fingertips with it.

And if this recipe works with the high water content of squash, how awesome would it be with sweet potato?  And what about kale?  Can you make kale chips this way?  What if you had those stacking perforated microwave trays, and could put several layers in at once?  Oh, there will be some science going on in my household, I tell ya.

Now, I have no idea what this does to the nutrition content of the squash.  Microwaving veggies is often the best way to preserve the nutrients in them.  This method appears to be just dehydrating the vegetable, which isn't bad for the food at all.

To make these chips over-the-top awesome, mix some dip for them by combining home made garlic-basil mayo recipe here with a few dashes of hot sauce.  Seriously the best multi-purpose dip I've ever had.  I don't know how I lived so long without it.  I just devoured all the home made mayo in my house.  Damn.