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

FAQs

Why are my homemade oven chips soggy? ›

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.

Floury potatoes contain much less moisture but can fall apart if overcooked. For chips, we recommend using a maincrop floury potato, like a Maris Piper, which will give you a fluffy inside and crisp outer coating. They will absorb the oil when fried to give you the crunchy chip you're looking for.

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.

Chip Tip: For golden, crispy fries, cook on an open wire rack instead of on a baking sheet. The outcome is a soft and fluffy interior with a crispy salty exterior. Delicious!

Both oven-baking and air-frying your chips limit the amount of oil you're using, so these are healthier ways to cook chips. '' Deep-fried chips are generally considered tastier because they contain more fat (more on that below), but if you're going to deep-fry food, it's worth being wary of the oil you're using.

Yes! You absolutely can freeze potatoes, and you should if you have an excess of spuds. But there's one important thing to remember: You should really only freeze cooked or partially cooked potatoes, as raw potatoes contain a lot of water. This water freezes and, when thawed, makes the potatoes mushy and grainy.

Soak the potatoes in cold water after cutting for at least half an hour. This will remove a lot of the starch and result in crispier potatoes. It also prevents the sugars from browning before the potatoes are cooked. Dry them thoroughly after soaking them so they don't steam and get soft in the oven.

In most cases, baked potato chips have more sodium than fried ones, because manufacturers try to use salt to replace the flavor of fat. Anyway, when you consider the calories and fat content, you may want to choose baked potato chips.

How do you keep oven chips crispy? ›

Preheat the oven to 190°C/fan170°C/gas 5. In a roasting tin big enough for the chips to cook without crowding (which would make them soggy), add a few tbsp oil with a high smoke point, such as groundnut oil, or use beef dripping.

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.

How Do You Keep Homemade Chips Crispy? The key to keeping homemade potato chips crisp is to store them in an airtight container, which protects your chips from outside moisture. Just make sure the chips have thoroughly cooled off for at least 30 minutes at room temperature before sealing them.

To begin with, Magda recommends cooling the leftover chips as soon as possible, putting them in the fridge with a "loose cover" to prevent bacteria growth. It is vital the chips are dry when you reheat them, this can be done by patting them with a kitchen towel or by using salt to draw out any excess moisture.

Food expert Magda Ganae, from The Real Food Cafe in the UK, explains the biggest reason chips go soggy when reheating is moisture. The trick to avoiding this is all down to how you store them. "Leftover chips should be cooled as quickly as possible and placed in the fridge with a loose cover," Magda told Metro UK.

Silica gel does two things: It takes extra moisture and releases the moisture it soaked if the environment is too dry. This dual function of the silica gel makes it a fantastic preserver for potato chips.

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.