Tracey's Test Kitchen

At least once a week I work on a new recipe.  I am always trying to find ways to make food at home versus buying it in the store.  I'm talking packaged foods - even when it's good ingredients - I like feeding my family homemade food.  Today I worked on plantain chips and sweet potato chips.  I first tried the plantains in the microwave - FAIL!  Too hard and crunchy.  I even have a Pampered Chef 'dryer' rack for the microwave but it didn't work.  I then tried them in the oven.  I think they would have been fine had not the garage door guy come right as I put them in.  I forgot about them and burned half the batch...grrrrrrrrr.


Now I've got sweet potatoes in there.  My kids love the Terra brand sweet potato chips.  I want to perfect these recipes so I can cut down on costs and provide my children especially with homemade treats.


I am also trying the sweet potatoes in the microwave on the same silicone dryer mats.  For more info on them, click here.  I also use the mandoline from PC, and found that the best thickness is #2 for both sweet potatoes and plantains.  No, I am not a Pampered Chef consultant, but I do love their products!  I decided that the silicone mats worked best for the sweet potatoes but not the plantains.  Not sure why one works better than the other, but that's my two cents.  The margin for error with the sweet potatoes was much greater using the mats...less likely to burn!  We all love that now, don't we?


The trick to doing these chips right is to watch them very closely.  I peek in on them every 5 minutes when they are in the oven.  In the microwave, I put them in for 1 - 1.5 minutes at a time.  As soon as they look dry I pull them out.  Be careful so that they don't brown too much.  They will continue to cook even after you pull them out.  remove them from the pan immediately to a cool tray until room temperature and then...ENJOY!  Here are a couple of my favorite recipes:

This Mama Cooks!  Plantain recipe

Sweet Potato Recipe