Baked Beet Chips

 Hey, long time no blog!  
You know the saying, ‘you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone’? Well I didn’t realize the amount of free time I had before April came and took it away!  Ever since my last post, life has shifted up a couple gears. A week of studying and paper writing, to a week of cabo(ing), and then back home with a whole new schedule of work and school which unfortunately leaves me with little time for cooking, let alone eating and sleeping. But this busy life is a good one.

Just because I haven’t been cooking much, doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking about cooking a lot! Have you ever been reading a book and get to the end of the page and realize you’ve been thinking about something entirely different, yet seem to have ‘read’ the entire page? Ya, try being a foodie deprived from precious time in the kitchen and reading the psychology of learning and behavior. Ive spent the better part of an hour reading page 43. In practically every chapter there is some mention of the Pavlov-Dog experiment, which involves food. Dog food, mind you, but the word food sends my mind off into thoughts of recipe ideas and hunger pains.  Whoever buys the textbooks I have been using will be seriously confused at the annotations I've made… "What the heck do beet chips have to do with psychology??"

Beet chips probably have nothing in common with psychology, but they have a whole lot in common with incredible deliciousness. Ive noticed a couple blogs with recipes for kale chips recently, so my housemates and I tried them out. We are BIG FANS!!! I think even the biggest Lay’s fan would find these kale chips tough competition! After making them continuously for a week, I saw some beets looking a little neglected next to my stash of kale. So I decided to give the beets a shot at being chips. I wasn’t really sure how they would turn out, but it was all needless worrying. 

  
As I sat at my desk, attempting to study my textbook, the smells coming from the kitchen swirled around me. As the beet slices dried up and shrank into crispy perfection, they infused the house with a warm and earthy smell. If only text could infuse its way into my brain the way these beets can. As the smell gets a hold of you, close your eyes and the darkness you see will turn from black to deep beet magenta.

Pavlov’s dog’s would salivate when he rang a bell. This Practicing Foodie drools at the scent of beet chips baking.

Baked Beet Chips

A mandoline is an essential tool for this recipe. It is important for the beet slices to be uniform and very thin, something hard to do even with the best of kitchen knives. Unless you have the precision of a ninja who catches flies with chopsticks, use a mandoline.

• Use as many beets you want, 3 large beets would be enough for 4 people to snack on. 
• Olive oil
• Salt

Wash and peel the beets. Make sure to wear an apron of some sort because beet juice is attracted to things it can stain. Ive noticed it especially loves dry clean only clothes.

Using your mandolin, slice the beets around 1/16th – 1/8th of an inch.

Place all the beet slices in a bowl and drizzle with olive oil, just enough to coats all the beets, 2-3 tablespoons. Toss all the beets together with the olive oil using your hands to make sure all the beets are coated and aren't stuck together.

Lay the beet slices flat on ungreased cookie sheets, in a single layer. Sprinkle with a little bit of salt (or ground sea salt is even better).

Bake at 300 degrees for around 30 -40 minutes. They will shrink a lot. To test if they are done, I removed one of the slices after 35 minutes, set it on the counter to cool for a few moments, then tasted it. If it got very crisp and crunchy after cooling, then take them all out of the oven. Keep doing this test until you get a good one.

Store in an air tight container, though mine were gone before they had a chance to get stored.

**click picture to print recipe without the whole post