BBQ "Potato" Chips

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These crispy little chips came out so close to BBQ potato chips, the only thing I might do next time is crumble up a tiny bit of a tomato bouillon cube into the spice mix.  Check in both the Mexican Food area and the soup/bouillon area of your grocery store for Knorr or Goya tomato seasoning cubes).    But I don’t have any in the house at present, so this batch doesn’t have it.  They were still very good.  I feel a hint of tomato seasoning will enhance them, if not overdone.  These chips are an Induction friendly snack.

I have often wondered if you could deep fry jicama, but I honestly just didn’t believe you could hide the sweet quality of jicama enough to even want to try it.  I also didn’t think I could ever slice it thin enough to work for something like this.  Well, I recently bought a little folding Rival slicer recently and tried jicama on it today.  I finally got the hang of it and made these today to have with my bunless burger.  You could also use a mandiline set on thin slice if you have one of those.

I’d eat these ANY time by themselves as a snack food.  They were FANTASTIC with our burgers!  Tasted like real potato chips!   And 8 net carbs for this entire batch isn’t bad, either!  Didn’t try them with any dip, just by themselves.  They would probably hold up to softer sour cream or yogurt dips.  They would probably break apart if you tried to dip them into stiffer cheese dips or bean dips.

INGREDIENTS:

6 oz. peeled jicama

Oil of your choice 1″ deep or more for frying (only 1T. absorbed is calculated into nutritional info below, but I suspect less than that is actually absorbed)

Dash sea salt

¼ tsp. my Seafood Spice Blend: 
http://buttoni.wordpress.com/2009/08/20/my-seafood-spice-blend/

DIRECTIONS:  Mix seasoning (and the crumbled tomato powder if using) into a paper plate (I poured mine into an empty salt shaker I keep for such purposes).  Set some papertoweling on newspaper  by your stovetop for draining purposes.  Next, peel and slice jicama VERY thin.  I used a Rival fold-up slicer set on the thinnest setting, but a mandoline set on the thinnest blade setting would also work.  It will take a very adept slicer to get it thin enough slicing with a knife by hand……not sure you can really.  My food processor doesn’t slice this thin with either of the blades I have, but maybe you have a thinner blade than I.  But if knife in hand is all you’ve got to work with, slice it as uniformly thin as you can.  Bear in mind you will have to cook it much longer to get thicker slices to brown enough to get them truly crispy.  You’re aiming for 1/16″ thick.  Heat oil in a deep skillet or deep fryer.  Drop about half the slices in so as not to crowd or cool off the oil too much.  The bottoms will begin to brown first, so I flipped mine over several times to get the most even browning.  You want these quite brown, but of course, not burned.  Any white areas in the center will NOT be crispy, but rather chewy.  But if these are browned well, they will be crisp even after they cool off!  I was most impressed with that fact.  When brown, lift out of oil with slotted spoon onto awaiting paper towels. While still hot and oily, sprinkle with salt/cheese/corn bran seasoning on both sides.  Fry the second half of the chips, drain and season.  Best served hot, but will stay somewhat crisp even when cool, if they are browned properly.

NUTRITIONAL INFO:   Makes about 20-25 chips (depends on how yours are cut).  Entire batch contains:

190 calories

13.7 g  fat

16.7 g carbs, 8.4 g  fiber, 8.3 NET CARBS  (for the entire batch)

1.3 g  protein

196 mg sodium

266 mg potassium

46 % RDA Vitamin C and 13% iron

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