Have you tried making your own delicious crisps from different vegetables? They’re easy to make and all the rage!
Whether served as nibbles with vermouth, at a cocktail night at home with friends, as an accompaniment to lunch or as an afternoon snack, vegetable crisps are a sure hit at any time of day with young and old alike! And more and more fashionable restaurants are adding them to their menus to great acclaim.
Pumpkins, carrots, beetroots, courgettes, turnips, bananas and apples are ideal fruit and vegetables to turn into crisps that will go down a treat with a cold beer. Original, brightly coloured and delicious, they are a great way of getting even the fussiest eaters to come back for second helpings of fruit and vegetables.
Making them at home couldn’t be easier, although you need to have a few tricks up your sleeve. Once you’ve got the knack, though, you’ll be hooked! Vegetables crisps are a fantastic way of using up any vegetables at the back of the fridge before they go off.
It’s important to choose fruit and vegetables similar in texture to potatoes (such as pumpkins, carrots or bananas) and avoid those with lots of water, as you want them to withstand very high temperatures and come out with a crispy finish.
First, wait until just before you want to fry them before cutting the vegetables into very thin slices, or else they will start to go brown.
You also want them to shed water, so you can either bake them in the oven for half an hour or sprinkle salt over them and place them on kitchen paper for 20 minutes. Next, wash them carefully with lots of water and, above all, dry them thoroughly before frying.
Now all you have to do is put them carefully into plenty of very hot extra-virgin olive oil and fry them until they are nice and crispy, at which point you should take them out, drain them on a rack to avoid any excess of extra-virgin olive oil and place them in a cool, dry place before serving.
Et voilà! A simple yet impressive snack, appetiser or even accompaniment for meat or fish. The possibilities are endless and the results… spectacular! But watch out: they’re highly addictive.
