Sweet potato chips!

(serves 2)

My weakness is chips. It always has been, ever since high school - my only form of a diet was to cut down on chips to once per week, and that's not even that healthy, or that easy! When we reached our senior high school years, we had the great privilege of being able to leave the school grounds at lunch time ~ and guess what one of our most popular food choices was?! The sweet potato chips from Cafe Eighty-ate, these crunchy-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside, juicy and sweet, yet salty Yam/sweet potato chips were always such a treat! 

So the other part of this story is that my sister got a deep fryer for her 21st. I was totally against this initially, as i don't actually like deep fried food in general (other than chips, ironic yes, but true), however... then i was staring at the sweet potato and thinking about all the times i've tried to recreate sweet potato chips by shallow-frying, pan-frying, or baking and they've never really been the same. So, in a moment of weakness, i consented to trying the deep fryer. I hate to admit it, but it was pretty awesome :P

Prep time: 10 min

Cooking time: 15 min

Ingredients:

1 large sweet potato (approx 1kg)

Himalayan pink salt

Special equipment: deep fryer

Method:

1. Preheat the deep fryer at 180˚C.

2. Peel and thinly slice the sweet potato (approximately 0.5cm thick). Place half or a third of the batch in the frying tray and cook for 5-8 minutes, until golden brown and floating. 

NB. The heat tends to cause the skin to inflate and makes the chips float! This shrinks again once you take it so don't worry!

3. Drain, remove from the fryer, and place on paper towels to drain the oil. Fry the remaining batches.

4. Toss with salt and they're ready!

We did try both round and skinny chip shapes, but i prefer the round ones as you get more sweet potato and less oily crunch! Could just be personal preference though :)

Showing off mum's awesome new old-school 'chips' bowl