Clear crisps

by Barry Lewis

Ingredients

6 vivaldi potatoes, washed and cut even size if needed

Flaked sea salt to season

few lugs Olive Oil

1 litre (4 cups) Water

4 Tbsp Potato Starch

 

Okey doke then, due to the success of the transparent lemon meringue pie, here are clear crisps aka glass potato chips. Yes, they are edible transparent delights! This was requested by several folks and the moment I saw it I knew that I needed to give this a try whether it succeeded or failed, well, as you will see in the video, it did actually work! Amazing. The inspiration for this came from instructables.com/id/Glass-Potato-Chips/ and i’ve just basically attempted to make this thing work.

First up take 6 large, washed potatoes, I used vivaldi ones but I am pretty sure it doesn’t matter. And coat them in olive oil with a good seasoning of salt, ensure the potatoes are fully coated and place them on a lined baking tray baking at 180c or equivalent (see temperature conversion chart) for around about 30 mins or until golden brown, allow to cool.

Fill up a mixing bowl with 1 litre (4 cups) of water that has been brought to just under a boil and place the potatoes into it. Cover with cling film and let sit for a couple of hours! I should have warned you this will take some time!

Next up remove the cling film wrap and pass the fluid through a fine sieve into a mixing bowl. The remaining potatoes are fine to eat and use for another recipe like bangers and mash. Now let the ‘potato stock’ be chilled, I put mine in the freezer for a few hours, then the fridge (unlike overnight as suggested in the source article) and it worked fine for me.

Pour the chilled stock into a large saucepan, add in the potato starch and heat over a medium flame whisking whilst it thickens, it will thicken considerably to a glue / gel like vibe. It’s now that you can pipe this onto a baking tray lined with parchment or a non slip mat and bake for at least 8 hours! Use a squeeze bottle with a nozzle if you can, but you could probably make crisp shapes with a teaspoon too. You bake it on a low temperature to dry out the gel, it will look like paper and curl up a bit by the end but this is critical! So the oven should be at 135f / 60c and just left for the whole time, open them to turn the tray half way through if needed. Remove any ones that catch early and store to one side.

Remove once dried out and it is time to fry them! Warm some vegetable oil in a wok and warm it up, but keep it quite low and steady, too hot and they will burn, watch how fast they cook in the video, the oil was not that warm! Dunk them using tongs until they just catch and then place on kitchen towel to rest. Season and serve your glass potato chips! Amazing.