I wanted to tell you a bit about our fantastic chip experiment.
The land we bought is thick Alabama clay (and swamp). In order to amend the garden soil, we have a plan of rotating raised beds to different plots each year. These raised beds are filled with good soil, compost, whatever we can find. We grow potatoes in the beds, then till under the looser soil at the end of the year. Then we move the wood frames to a different part of the garden to help amend the soil for next year.
I love to grow potatoes :). It is such a treasure hunt to find them in the dirt. I feel like I am digging for gold. Plus I love how long potatoes keep. I wish I had a root cellar, but the aforementioned swamp means that holes generally fill up with water. In fact, when they dug the pond out, they hit ELEVEN springs.
Anyway, last year we harvested potatoes when it was about to turn cold. My poor fingers were numb and the potatoes were pretty sad--bug et and weird.
This year TWS and I noticed that the potato plants started looking like something was bedding down in them at night. Since our garden has a 6' tall fence, I knew it wasn't deer, and nothing that is small enough to get in would make that big of a bed in the potatoes. TWS checked the beds and the potatoes were ready! The plants were just falling over, done!
So in June we harvested our fabulous potatoes. This year we planted German Butterball, Kennebec, Purple Viking, and Mountain Rose. (We also have planted sweet potatoes, but those aren't ready yet).
These are crates that a guy just gave to us in the parking lot of Sams. He owns a food truck called Strap's Roasted Corn and Grill (Locals, look him up :) ).
Fast forward to the 4th of July. TWS made some fabulous hamburgers and we made potato chips out of some of our potatoes. I will spare you the debacle of trying to find something to cut them into suitable slices (a potato grater that only slices UP, a mandolin that does not slice reliably, and a vegetable peeler that slices GREAT as long as you were not particularly fond of the skin on your fingers. We found out that the best thing is definitely the kitchenaid attachment for slicing. Worked like a breeze!).
TWS had been told that if you soak the potato slices in salt water, they will not stick as much. It worked fairly well, but you still need to sort of separate the slices with your fingers when you put them in the oil.
They cooked in a matter of a couple of minutes. I found out that you really want the slices thin. I sprinkled them with popcorn salt (a much finer grained salt) when they came out of the oil EXCEPT for my own personal batch that were sprinkled with lime salt--goodness I love that stuff!
Soaking the Slices....
Here are mountain rose, kennebec, and german butterball chips.
Look how pretty the mountain rose potato chips turned out! Like flowers!
Let's approach the incredible Crispy Utopia, visually savoring the numminess slowly....
A little bit closer...
Closer Still....
Ahhhh.....Salty. Crunchy. :)
A jar of happy, right there :)
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