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

FAQs

What is the secret to the best chips? ›

Use older potatoes

Generally, older potatoes are the best for making chips, as the natural sugars diminish over time and convert into starch – the perfect excuse to use those old potatoes that have been sitting around for a while.

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. 2. Using enough of the right oil.

Just like roasties, always parboil your potatoes before they go into the oven as this will help make them fluffy and make those soft edges on the surface that will crisp up. Add the raw chips to a large pan with salted cold water and bring them to boil. Cook them for around 7-10 minutes until they are tender.

The best chips have a certain potatoey-ness to them and taste of more than just oil and salt. A good potato chip should not have any overcooked/burnt flavor, and it needs to have enough (but not too much) salt. By rinsing the chips well, we can eliminate surface sugars that will brown too quickly, or even burn.

The Double-Fry Method

When it comes to the actual cooking, you want to fry the french fries twice. The first round is at a lower temperature to cook the inside of the potato and the second time you'll use a higher temperature to make the fries golden brown and crispy.

But, if you're after flavour, cooking chips in beef tallow (rendered beef fat you can get from your butcher) gives you better flavour and colour – the choice is yours. Finally, on salt, being an Essex boy, in my house it has to be Maldon sea salt.

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.

If they're not quite as crispy as you'd like, this is almost always because they need more time to cook or they are overcrowded on the oven tray.

Don't salt the oil, and don't overcrowd the pan, or the oven. Steam is the arch nemesis of the crispy chip. Cook the chips at a high temperature, and turn them halfway through.

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.

Are homemade oven chips healthier? ›

Baked chips may offer less fat, but they are 25% richer in carbohydrates than regular chips. More starches and sugars are added to baked chips for flavor and texture enhancement, which may account for the bump-up in carbs. These added starches are often refined carbohydrates, which are broken down quickly.

Preheat your oven to 230°C (conventional oven) or 210°C (fan assisted oven). Remove chips from packaging and spread evenly on a baking tray. Make sure that there is enough space for the chips to cook. Place your tray of chips in the centre of the oven and cook for 20 - 25 minutes.

Lemon + Herb — fresh lemon zest and dried herbs are suspended in buttermilk powder to bring a green goddess freshness to the chips. (This one is my favorite!) Rosemary + Parmesan — Fresh rosemary and grated parmesan with a little onion and garlic makes for a hearty flavored chip.

Moisture in Potatoes

For chips, the best potatoes have a combination of waxy and floury qualities. King Edwards and Maris Pipers are great examples, combining these qualities so that the outer edges crisp up and hold their shape while the inside of the chip gets creamy and soft.

Salt is a natural Flavour enhancer and has been used for centuries to preserve and Flavour foods. When salt is added to potato chips, it triggers the release of dopamine in the brain, which creates a pleasurable sensation and makes us crave more.

Best Overall: Cape Cod Original

One of our tasters noted it was the “yummiest and most well-seasoned” of the bunch. While some other chips had excessive amounts of salt and oil that overwhelmed the potato flavor (we're looking at you, Lay's), Cape Cod is just salty and fried enough.