Baking your own potato chips...

For tonight's dinner, Jeff actually decided he would like me to make those Mini Honey-Mustard Meatloaves with Roasted Fingerling Potatoes for his mom.

So, we didn't make a new recipe today - but, I do have new another recipe to talk about! Remember how I went and sliced up my finger while trying to sharpen the blade from are mandoline? Well, the whole reason I was doing that in the first place was I needed to thinly slice some potatoes for these homemade Potato Chips with Blue Cheese Dip that we had as a snack earlier in the week. Our food processor slicing blade would have made the slices too thick and I didn't want to take the time to try and get perfectly even slices with a knife either... oh well, my finger is recovering well enough (stitches out on Monday!) and I know what not to do next time!

It was funny though, Jeff really didn't want me to make this recipe after I sliced my finger - he aptly renamed our mandoline as "The Slicer of Doom". He couldn't make himself watch either while I was preparing the potatoes since he had enough trouble watching them put the stitches in!

Before I started on the potatoes, we slipped one of our large and heavy baking sheets into the oven to get a head start on heating up. Once the starchy potatoes were sliced up, we patted them dry in an effort to remove as much moisture as possible. Since one pound worth of potatoes made for quite a few thin slices, they need to be baked in batches - we did it twice, but you made need a third time if your sheet isn't large enough. As soon as the potato slices were arranged on the hot baking sheet (love hearing that sizzle!), they were sprinkled with coarse salt (use as much or as little as you like - potatoes soak up salt like crazy) and the pan was placed back in the oven. For even color, the slices will need to be turned over after about 10 minutes or so - when you do this, you can season the other side again with salt if you like your chips particularly salty.

Once baked, the finished chips were golden and had a nice even crunch throughout. While we did snack on a few by themselves, the chunky blue cheese dip really made these shine. Tangy sour cream, crumbled blue cheese, silky mayonnaise and a couple tablespoons of milk band together forming the luscious dip. You could get around 6 servings if you really portioned it out well, but it was more like 3 for us. If you do have any leftover, store the chips at room temperature and toss them in the oven at 450 for just a couple minutes to bring that crunch back.

Recipes
Potato Chips with Blue Cheese Dip