Potato Chips with Chicken and Thyme Seasoning

Ingredients:

Lots of potatoes
vegetable oil
chicken boullion cube
chilli powder
some dried thyme
a little onion salt

The first problem is how to slice the potato thin enough. The answer is with The Cheese Plane. Not only is it an indispensible tool for the cheese enthusiast, it makes perfectly thin potato slices!

In case you've never seen a cheese plane, here it is - excuse the potatojuice.

Step 1:

You can either hold the potato in your hand and slice along the top of it (what I did for the first few batches) but this has a nasty habit of also slicing your fingers when the potato half gets a bit small. The painfully obvious solution is to flip the plane over and set it down - then just push the potato against the blade. No more wastage and no more blood.

Step 2:

Throw the slices into water to prevent them blackening, and give them about 5-10 minutes to rest. Then put them onto paper towels to drain.

Making alot is a little time consuming but you know how quickly you can eat all the chips so just keep slicing. I ended up having to slice up another 3 small potatos because it became really obvious I hadn't done enough. Prepare them in batches, don't try and fry them all at once (unless you've got some kind of huge deep fat fryer, or a massive pot of oil).

The amount below was about what I'd put in at one time, and while they were cooking I'd be slicing up more potatoes.

Step 3:

Throw the sliced potatoes into hot vegetable oil.

Step 4:

When they get to this stage, start fishing out the obviously done ones. Nobody likes burnt potato chips, and the time it took to slice the things you don't really want to waste any.

Use a slotted spoon to remove them from the oil and shake off any excess, then place onto paper towels to blot up the rest of the oil.

Step 5:

Put in a big bowl and prepare to season.

Of course you can season the potato chips with whatever you wish, but for these I wanted to try and recreate the chicken & thyme flavour crisps which I love so much.

Where do you obtain chicken flavouring? easy - stock (boullion) cubes! Strangely this tastes almost identical to the chicken flavoured crisps I can buy in a store. I just crushed down a cube, added some hot chilli powder, some dried thyme and a little onion salt. Of course you could just keep it old school and add salt, but you're pretty much only limited by your imagination here.

Just put all your cooked potato chips into a big bowl and use a spoon to add the desired amount of flavouring. How much depends on how much you like the flavour being added, toss the chips around a bit and shake the bowl to get the excess to settle to the bottom. Take a sample chip every now and then to judge if you've got the right amount.

Step 6:

I transferred them to a big food bag, weighed (110g) sealed it up and vowed to not touch them again until tomorrow. They taste very good, so fresh and crispy - they're similar in texture to the premium kettle chip style chips.

Enjoy!