What a weird couple of weeks I’ve been having: first my motorbike was stolen (twice…), then I cut my finger pretty badly (on my new food processor, literally after about 2 minutes of taking it out of the box), and now our oven exploded last night. That’s right – the glass door totally exploded and shot glass all over the place! I heard the loudest noise ever coming from the kitchen, so I raced out there only to find that the oven I had been preheating to make our Sunday roast chicken looked like a scene from an action movie. Jonathan wasn’t hurt thankfully, but it was pretty scary. We’ve been having some pretty questionable luck lately, so maybe now’s a good time to play the lottery, just in case my luck turns…!

So until the flat management company sorts us out with a new oven, my recipes will be 100% stovetop (or crockpot). However, I was lucky enough to have finished this lovely snack-food recipe earlier in the day (ie, prior to my kitchen turning into the set from Die Hard with a Vengeance). As I do sometimes on Sunday afternoons, I got a little over-zealous in my potato peeling for our mashed potatoes that I was prepping for dinner, and had a few extras than I needed for the mash.

Then the light bulb went off: I’ve been meaning to work on a few healthy snack recipes that are not sweet for me and J, and I’ve had this baked chip idea in the back of my mind for weeks. Now, I’ve tried baked potato chips before and they’ve all been gross (sorry, but it’s true!). For some reason, though, I got it in my head that I could do better than those cardboard pieces of I-don’t-even-know-what I was paying a fortune for (why do healthy snacks always cost so much more, and taste so much worse…?).

So out came my handy mandoline (these things are seriously amazing!) and I sliced up a potato in about 20 seconds and popped the slices in the oven – ready in about 5 minutes! These are surprisingly easy and taste like better than their fatty pre-bagged cousins that you find in your grocery store’s snack aisle.

Ingredients:

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 potato
• 1 teaspoon sea salt

Instructions:

1. Preheat your oven to around 400 °F / 200 °C
2. While your oven is pre-heating, wash and thinly slice (and peel if you prefer) a medium-sized potato, then rinse the slices under cold water in a colander until the water runs clear to get rid of that starchy residue.
3. Coat a large baking sheet with olive oil (or non-stick cooking spray), then evenly spread out your potato slices. I have a tiny baking sheet, so I do mine in batches.
4. Cook for around 5 minutes or until golden brown. Don’t walk away from the kitchen while making these because they go from whoa-totally-amazing to horribly-nasty-scorched in the blink of an eye. I should take my own advice, though, because I always burn the first batch…
5. Sprinkle them with the sea salt, throw them in a bowl and enjoy!

Servings: It’s roughly one potato per person, so adapt as you see fit!