Homemade Potato Chips - Pt. I (Microwave)

This round of dumpstering, I made a mistake. I took WAY too many potatoes and onions. I thought I'd be able to give them away to friends and co-workers (which I did), but I was still left with far too many. Taking more than you can use is generally frowned-upon in the dumpstering world because other people may dive in your dumpster.

However, wasting food is also frowned upon, and I've never seen evidence of anyone diving in my preferred dumpster, so I don't feel TOO horrible about it. Plus, this was around Thanksgiving (prime dumpster season), so I didn't even go in the dumpster - just the overflow shopping carts around it. I think it's safe to say that no one went hungry as a result of my potatoes and onions.

Having a surplus of random or hard-to-use foods is a regular occurrence. So, you need to get inventive so that you're not stuck being bored by your meals.

After making a LOT of dishes with potatoes, I needed to figure out something else to do with them to preserve them. After craving chips one day, I decided that I needed to learn how to make them myself.


HOMEMADE POTATO CHIPS
(vegan, gluten-free)

Ingredients

0.5 bags Yukon Gold potatoes (approx. 4 potatoes)
1 tbsp (or less) of olive oil/veggie oil/cooking spray
Sea salt to taste (optional w/ lime juice, cayenne, garlic salt, pepper, sugar, etc.)

Peel potatoes, compost skins.
Thinly slice potatoes (2mm or thinner).
Pour oil/spray on plate.
Coat potatoes with oil (you can do this in a ziploc baggie, too).
Add salt, spices, juice, etc. to make your chips yummy.
Place in microwave until browned 5-9 min. (my microwave took 7-9 min. on average)
Place chips on a separate plate to dry (can put paper towel down to absorb oil).

Some advice:

1) Method - This process is VERY trial-and-error, and takes a lot of time for not a lot of chips. Patience is key. There are other methods of making potato chips (oven-crisped and deep frying are popular), but this was my first try, so I can't speak to other ways of production.

2) Toppings - I tried several toppings on my chips. Lime juice & cilantro turned out VERY sour, vinegar was nice (a little goes a long way), salt & pepper was best, sugar was good (but burns easily), garlic powder was okay, and cayenne pepper was great. Get creative!

3) Oils - Whatever oil you choose will determine how greasy your chips are and WILL effect the taste. Good olive oil was my favorite tasting, but it was hard to make the chips super-crispy. Spray olive oil and regular veggie oil made the chips lighter, but didn't taste as good.

4) Presentation - Your chips are going to look UGLY. They'll taste great, but they'll look ugly, burnt, or inedible. Be brave.

Makes about 1 small ziploc bag of chips. Properly wrapped, they'll last a few months.

Stay tuned for more potato chip experiments soon!

Ingredients not dumpstered or donated: olive oil, spices

Soup Month - Curried Pumpkin Potato Soup

Apparently, I mostly made large batches of soup in December with my dumpstered food. It's warm and comforting in the cold, and lasts awhile. So, forgive the copious number of soup posts coming up in the future. I promise this blog will not exclusively cover soup. December just turned out to be soup month. Also, I think I got a little overexcited about my new food processor/blender combo that my landlord gave me.

The cool thing about soup is that you can freeze it, elongating the meal's life while you use other ingredients from your fridge that may spoil sooner.

Right after Halloween and into November, there were a lot of un-carved pumpkins hanging around. My mom had two on her counter at Thanksgiving which she was going to throw out anyway, so I took them home. They stayed on my counter as decoration for about a week, but they screamed to be eaten. Then there was the challenge of using up my insane supply of potatoes. Something had to be done.

CURRIED PUMPKIN POTATO SOUP
(Vegan, Gluten-free)

Ingredients:
2 small-medium pumpkins
1.5 bags Yukon gold potatoes (approx. 8 potatoes)
2 cups of chicken or vegetable stock
1 tbsp butter or olive oil
3-4 cups of vanilla soy milk (you can also use milk or cream with a little vanilla extract)
3 tsp brown sugar
1/2 medium onion
1 stalk celery
1 carrot (optional)
3-4 cloves garlic (I used 6 in my original recipe, but it was SUPER garlicy)
Sprinkle of sage
1 tsp ground cumin
1.5 tsp cinnamon
1 tbsp salt (or more to taste)
1/2 tbsp ground pepper (or more to taste)
3 tbsp pondicherry curry powder (can substitute w/ curry paste too)
1 additional cup of water or stock
1 sprig parsley (from my window garden)

Step one: Roasting the pumpkins.
Remove the stems and leaves from the pumpkins.
Puncture with a knife a couple times.
Roast pumpkins at 375 degrees for 2 hours until the skin is brown and the pumpkins begin to cave in, like this:


Skin and seed your pumpkins. Put the seeds aside to make toasted pumpkin seeds to garnish the soup.

While you're roasting your pumpkin, when you have about 10 minutes left, quarter and boil your potatoes until tender (don't worry about skinning them).
Blend potatoes, butter, stock, and 1 cup soymilk in a food processor until smooth. Put in a pot and cook on ultra-low heat on the stove.
Blend pumpkin separately, then add to your potato mixture.
Blend raw onion, garlic, carrot, and celery together. Add to mixture.
Add spices, remaining soymilk, and water (or stock) to taste.
Warm everything up again.

TOASTED PUMPKIN SEEDS

So, the hardest part of toasting pumpkin seeds is cleaning them. This is especially hard if you've already roasted your pumpkin like I did. Pumpkin snot is the least attractive texture in the world to me. However, I did a batch of pumpkin seeds that were really well cleaned, and a batch that wasn't well cleaned. The difference is real. Clean your seeds. It's worth it.

Put about 1 tbsp of olive oil in the bottom of a pan with tinfoil on it.
Sprinkle your seeds on the pan.
Sprinkle water and salt on top of the seeds.
Put your seeds in the oven or toaster oven at 350 degrees for 10-15 min. until golden brown.
Shake the pan a few times while the seeds are toasting to make sure they aren't sticking together.

Once you've toasted your pumpkin seeds, use a homemade potato chip (recipe forthcoming), toasted pumpkin seeds, and parsley as your garnish so that your food is as nice to look at as it is to eat.


You can probably blend cooked lentils into the soup for protein if you want to bulk it up too.
Makes a HUGE pot of soup. I froze half my batch and broke it out around Christmas for a meal I cooked for my Dad and Stepmom. They loved it!

Items not dumpstered or donated: veggie stock, olive oil, brown sugar, soy milk, garlic, spices