Home Made Oven Chips | Community Recipes | Nigella's Recipes (2024)

FAQs

Why are my homemade oven chips soggy? ›

Give your chips an ice bath, and leave for 15-20 minutes if you have the time. This will wash off some of the starch – you'll see as the water goes cloudy. Starch on the surface of the chips locks in moisture and causes them to go soggy. Drain the chips and rinse under cold water, then dry thoroughly before cooking.

Take some potatoes, cut them up, add a little olive oil, sprinkle some garlic powder, some salt and pepper, and put them in the oven until crispy. That's just about all there is to it. No need to peel so we have perfect skin on fries awaiting.

Use a floury (also called mealy) potato such as Russet or Shepody for your chips and you'll have better success.

Having hot oil is key to getting the potatoes not to stick to the tray and getting a perfect crisp skin. Toss the chips in the hot oil, salt, and place back into the oven. Cook for 20-25 minutes until golden. That's it – there isn't anything more to it.

Add herbs and spices for extra flavor.

"Add a bit of gourmet flair to your fries by sprinkling them with some garlic powder, fresh rosemary, seasoned salt, or fresh virgin-olive [oil] or truffle oil," Koeppe said. As well as adding flavor, a drizzle of oil can also help keep fries from sticking together in the oven.

The trick to getting the chips to taste like they are straight from the chip shop is to fry them twice in the hot oil. The first fry is at a lower temperature and softens the potato; the second turn in the hot oil is at a higher temp and achieves that signature crispy exterior.

Both oven-baking and air-frying your chips limit the amount of oil you're using, so these are healthier ways to cook chips. '' Deep-fried chips are generally considered tastier because they contain more fat (more on that below), but if you're going to deep-fry food, it's worth being wary of the oil you're using.

Put oven chips on a large baking tray. Drizzle over vegetable oil and sprinkle over smoked paprika, smoked or regular sea sealt flakes, dried rosemary, a small pinch of cayenne pepper and garlic granules; toss well to coat. Bake the chips to pack instructions until golden and crisp.

Yes! You absolutely can freeze potatoes, and you should if you have an excess of spuds. But there's one important thing to remember: You should really only freeze cooked or partially cooked potatoes, as raw potatoes contain a lot of water. This water freezes and, when thawed, makes the potatoes mushy and grainy.

Soak the potatoes in cold water after cutting for at least half an hour. This will remove a lot of the starch and result in crispier potatoes. It also prevents the sugars from browning before the potatoes are cooked. Dry them thoroughly after soaking them so they don't steam and get soft in the oven.

Is it better to fry or bake potato chips? ›

In most cases, baked potato chips have more sodium than fried ones, because manufacturers try to use salt to replace the flavor of fat. Anyway, when you consider the calories and fat content, you may want to choose baked potato chips.

Why are my homemade chips not crispy? It's likely that too many chips were cooked at once (a crowded pan is never a good thing) and doing so means the temperature of the oil decreases, resulting in soggy, greasy chips.

The key to the perfectly crisp oven chip is to save the seasoning until the end of cooking. This is because salt draws out water – in lots of other dishes this intensifies the flavour of each ingredient, but with chips, it can make them turn soggy as they cook.

If the oven isn't hot enough to brown the chips on the 'air-side', or if there's not space for the heat to circulate around each chip, they'll be unevenly crisp. Deep-frying also means the oil can penetrate the craggy, broken edges on all sides to make an extra crisp surface.

If your potato chips aren't crispy, it's likely because your potatoes were not completely dry before you started cooking, or you did not soak and rinse them long enough. Using too much oil could also make your potato chips less crispy.

If the oil isn't hot enough, this sealing process takes longer. Meanwhile, the moisture that's meant to stay in the body of the chip is excreted, making what is supposed to be a crispy outer layer, damp and steeped.

If you wash potatoes and don't give them enough time to dry, the excess moisture on their surfaces will lead to the fries steaming rather than browning and crisping. Many fry recipes will also call for soaking the cut potatoes in water to remove extra starches, which can help you get the crispiest fries possible.