Root Chips
An Original Recipe by Not Quite Nigella
Preparation time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: up to 30 minutes
- 1 lotus root
- 1 purple sweet potato
- 1 orange sweet potato
- 1 beetroot (not too big)
- A few tablespoons of oil
- You will also need a mandolin and two baking sheets
Step 1 - Preheat the oven to 200C/400F and line two baking sheets with parchment or a rack if you have a couple of racks. Peel the vegetables and set the mandolin on #2 setting. Carefully slice the lotus root, purple sweet potato and orange sweet potato. Place in a bowl and drizzle with oil - you don't need much just enough to coat it lightly (don't drive yourself too crazy coating each piece or you'll wish you had just bought them).
Step 2 - For beetroot, reduce setting to #1 on the mandolin (thinner) and slice the beetroot. You want half moon chips for the beetroot as it is much more moist (sorry :P) than the other vegetables so thinner fragments are the best way to get crisp beetroot chips.
Step 3 - Spread them out onto the lined baking sheets but separating them according to the vegetables (not like I've done them in the picture above). Each vegetable cooks slightly differently and I find the lotus root and purple sweet potatoes crisp up the easiest, fastest and best. You may have to do in two lots. Bake for 15 minutes and then check the chips - some of the smaller fragments will already be finished. Sometimes they can take as long as 30 minutes to bake depending on how thick they're sliced. They crisp up even further upon cooling. I don't add any salt to these but add it if you want to. They're best eaten on the day as they get a bit soft with time.