"Guilt-Free" Homemade Potato Chips

Okay, to be clear, these potato chips are exactly as fatty and unhealthy as almost any other chip. They are only "guilt-free" because they're made by you and not a factory. But it's okay. You were going to eat them anyway, and at least these don't have chemicals.

Remember that time that Bean and I made potatoes? Well, we didn't either. So we had a giant bag of leftover potatoes that had been sitting around for we're not sure how long.

They looked kind a funky and felt distinctly soft.
So obviously, all systems go.

The only logical option to make snacks.

We must cook more ... dramatically.

PROCESS

We based our efforts off of those chronicled here, but as usual this experiment was necessarily conducted in our own particular idiom.

First we removed all of the eyes.
 They are a fun purple color.

Struggles with notions of uniformity have
always been a part of college life.
Also, dull knives.

Let 'em soak for 30 mins.

 At this point, you could try baking the chips. But either way you're slathering them in oil. So you might as well maximize your deliciousness potential and fry those suckers.

We don't have a kitchen thermometer, so there's a lot of guesswork from here on out. Bottom line, get your oil hot, but nothing should be smoking. You can test by flicking some water at it -- if it seethes and spits you're probably good.

You want things to kind of bubble and shimmer.

Scoop them out when they're a little brown and crispy.

Then you transfer your spuds to pans lined with paper towels. Try to blot some of the oil off and then season them while they're hot.

SEASONING

SALTY/SPICY

SWEET

We made two kinds of chips: cinnamon sugar and spicy. Cinnamon sugar is self-explanatory, but our spicy mixture was a combination of salt, paprika, and dark chili powder.

The difference between dark chili powder and regular chili powder? Color, obviously.

The spicy mixture took some trial and error to get the ratios right, so now we have extra. We plan on using it to season popcorn or maybe chicken.

We contemplated putting the chips into ziploc bags and shaking things around to coat them, but things were getting pretty steamy in there so we decided to sprinkle seasoning on instead, which worked well.

MISTAKES WE MADE SO YOU WON'T HAVE TO

1) Those thicker chips? Make sure you put some kind of savory seasoning on them. Their residual potatoeyness tastes super weird with cinnamon sugar. With the spicy seasoning, they were just awesome french fries.

2) Hot oil is hot. Even if there are no flames under it. So when you are trying to get rid of it like responsible adults by pouring it back into the plastic container before throwing it out, this will happen:

You just bottled cancer.

MORAL OF THE STORY

All that time we spent standing and chopping had to have counted for something. If you're going to eat potato chips, you might as well earn them.