Cora's Cottage

One of my favorite treats is sweet potato chips; however, it can be very hard to fine “clean” sweet potato chips on grocery store shelves. After trying several different brands, I came to the conclusion that it would probably be easiest to just make my own sweet potato chips.

This process was a bit of trial and error, but I was able to figure it out. In the process I learned that the humidity level in your area matters when trying to dry out the chips in the oven.

To prepare the sweet potatoes to become chips, first you will need to wash and peel the potatoes. I like to just scrub the sweet potatoes with a washcloth under cool running water. Once the sweet potatoes are washed and peeled, I use a vegetable slicer to slice the sweet potatoes thin.

It is important that the sweet potatoes are sliced thinly so that they will dry out when place in the oven. If the sweet potatoes are sliced too thickly, they will not dry out and will not keep in the cupboard. For this reason, I have use the vegetable slicer rather than a knife because I cannot get them thin enough with a knife.

To bake a sweet potato chips, it is easiest to place a cooling rack over top of a cookie sheet, spraying the rack lightly with olive oil or avocado oil. I like to use a Misto sprayer so that I can use regular olive oil or avocado oil as opposed to aerosolized oils.

After the rack is sprayed and ready, I lay out the sweet potatoes, single layer and close but not touching. I’ve then spray the chips again with oil and salt to taste. Learning how much to salt the sweet potatoes took a little bit of trial and error, but I found it better to error on the side of less salt rather than making the chips too salty.

The best temperature that I found for the oven when baking was 400° with the door cracked. Therefore, it is best to make sweet potatoes on a cool day when you want to warm your house anyway. Cracking the door can make a huge difference in how quickly the sweet potato chips dry out. As mentioned above, how long to bake the sweet potatoes, depends upon the humidity to some extent. I have found that on less humid days it take slightly less time than on more humid days.

As a general rule, it takes 30 minutes to an hour based on how thick you slice of the sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes that are sliced more thinly will bake and dry faster while thicker sliced potatoes will take longer to dry out completely. It is important that the sweet potatoes are completely dried through or they will not keep in the cupboard and instead will mold.

To store the sweet potatoes, I found that a regular zip log bag or glass jar works just fine. These sweet potato chips will keep for long periods of time, as long as they have been dried all the way through, so time is generally not an issue for storage. Therefore, larger batches can be beneficial since they will keep in the cupboard.