Your response to my dear Little Sis when she was in a pickle over how to make easy, healthful pickles inspires me to share not my latest great idea or great find but my latest flop. Or perhaps I should say floppy.
I do love crispy, salty things. As does my 11 year old who feels unjustly deprived by the lack of Doritos in this house. So in trying to appease both of us I have attempted kale chips with mixed success and decided to branch out into have a go at some other veggie chips. The experiment also afforded me the opportunity to try another dehydrator recipe in the oven. Little Sis received a dehydrator as a gift but is wondering whether the counter space for the thing is well spent. What if you can do it all in the oven? I had good success with the Raw Nut loaf in the oven!….. maybe other things will work as well?
Don’t return that dehydrator just yet Little Sis!
I started by using my Mandoline to slice some zucchini, and what the heck, some beets, into very thin slices. I placed them in a bowl and tossed them in a little olive oil, vinegar and salt. I gently and lovingly laid those soon to be delectable, crunchy, PMS soothing, delights out on a parchment covered baking tray and popped them into my oven on the lowest setting possible, which in my case is 170 degrees. I checked them periodically and after about an hour when they started to look a bit wrinkled and flat I flipped them over. This is what the undersides looked like..
I was getting a little excited.
A bit later I tried one. Still a bit chewy. Put them back in.
See how much smaller the beets are from the juice spots?
Finally, after another 20 minutes or so, I tasted one and it was crispy and delicious! I ate a bunch of them right then and there warm out of the oven. Had I eaten them all right away that would have been the end of the story. I would now be humbly telling you how brilliant I am.
Enter ego check complete with blowing whistle sound.
About an hour later I came back for more yummy, crispy veggie chips. They had been sitting on a plate cooling and they were floppy. My son had no interest. I ate some more determined to make nutritional use of my time , but they were nothing I’d write home about… or blog about!
So I placed them outside on the metal baking tray in the hot sun. Still floppy.
That’s a sad state of affairs!
Okay, so I’d love to hear from those of you who have successfully used your ovens in place of a dehydrator and how you and what you did!
A few points about my attempt. It is possible that I used too much oil and vinegar, except that the chips were briefly crispy!
My house is currently air conditioned against the 100+ degrees temps we are enduring, so relatively dry.
I probably should have dried them on a rack not a plate – but the difference in crispiness was rather stark!
And last but not least, the experiment was not in vain as I did get a handful of delicious warm and crispy chips plus this incredible piece of parchment paper artwork. Next time I will lay out the chips in a more artistic fashion!
Almost flag-like for this 4th of July week
Please share your deeds of dessication!
I find if using an oven versus a dehydrator use a wire cooling rack over a baking sheet. It’ll get crispier faster. Save the parchment paper for items that will fall through (such as beans or small veggies) or for wet items. I have a section up on my business website on drying
http://www.trailcooking.com/dehydrating101
Thank you Sarah! I appreciate the help as it would be great to be able to do this in my oven.
Great idea!