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Sweet Potato Chips are a crunchy, healthy snack that you can make at home. No deep fryer required! You can make them at home in just a little over 30 minutes.
How to Cut the Potatoes
The easiest way to prepare sweet potato chips is by using a mandoline slicer. This handy kitchen tool will help you create paper-thin slices, which are best for getting crispy chips.
If you slice the potatoes too thickly, they won’t crisp up. You want them to be roughly 1/16th” thick, which is hard to achieve using a knife alone.
Be sure to hold the potato at an angle when slicing the potato, to make the slices as large as possible. The potato slices will shrink significantly as they cook, so the larger slices will mean you’re not left with teeny-tiny baked sweet potato chips.
If you have a food processor with a slicing blade, that might work, too, but you won’t have as much control over that as you do with a mandoline slicer.
Have a sweet potato that is wider than your mandoline slicer? Simply slice the side off until it fits, so you can easily slide the potato back and forth over the blade.
Safety Tip: As your sweet potato gets smaller and smaller when using the mandoline slicer, be sure to use the finger guard that the slicer comes with, to protect your hands. It’s very easy to slice your fingers on the sharp blade! (It happened to me once, and I’ll never let it happen again.)
Why Are They Healthier?
Are sweet potato chips healthy? Since these chips are baked, instead of fried, they use less oil and have no artificial preservatives added. All you need is olive oil and salt to make them!
When baking sweet potato chips, you can skip the oil all together, but the mouth feel won’t be the same as store-bought potato chips. In fact, oil-free potato chips are pretty dry and unappealing in texture.
Instead, I recommend brushing each potato slice lightly with olive oil (on both sides) so that they bake evenly, with a melt-in-your-mouth crispness.
You don’t want to use so much oil that they are dripping, but you want to use enough that they have a shine to them with they go into the oven.
How to Cook Them
I’ve been baking sweet potato chips for years, and have experimented with all sorts of time and temperatures. In my opinion, it’s best to bake sweet potato chips at 300ºF so they won’t burn too quickly.
If you try baking sweet potato chips at 350ºF or 400ºF, they tend to get too brown before they get that melt-in-your-mouth crispiness that we come to expect when eating a chip.
Setting your oven slightly lower and cooking them a little longer gets that perfect crispy texture, without waiting too long for your homemade sweet potato chips.
You’ll probably notice that smaller chip slices will cook faster than the larger ones. After roughly 25 minutes of baking is usually when I need to remove the smaller pieces, and then the larger slices will need 30 to 35 minutes of baking total.
If you find that your chips aren’t nearly done after 35 to 40 minutes of baking, that probably means they were sliced too thick. You can continue to bake them until they crisp up more, but they may never be quite as crunchy as a store-bought chip when they are thicker.
How to Serve Them
What do you eat with sweet potato chips? These homemade chips are a little more earthy-tasting than the deep-fried kind you’d buy at the store, so I think they go best with a dip, like homemade guacamole or vegan ranch dressing.
They also make a great side dish for my favorite veggie burgers.
Ingredients
- 1 sweet potato , washed and scrubbed (about 8 oz.)
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- Fine sea salt , as needed
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 300ºF and line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
- Use a mandoline slicer to cut the potatoes into paper-thin slices. You want them to be almost-transparent, but not quite. The thinner they are, the faster they will cook, and the crispier they will be.
- Arrange the potato slices in a single layer on both baking sheets, without much overlap. Brush both sides of each potato slice with oil, then sprinkle with sea salt.
- Bake at 300ºF for 15 minutes, then flip the chips over and bake for another 10 minutes. Be sure to watch the oven closely if your chip slices are particularly small, as they will cook the fastest. You want the chips to be lightly golden all over to get the crispiest results.
- Remove any small chips that are looking browned at the 25-minute mark, then continue to bake for 5 more minutes. If the chips aren't all uniformly golden at the 30-minute mark, continue to bake them in 5-minute intervals until they are done, removing any brown pieces as you go, so they won't burn.
- Let the chips cool on the pan for at least 5 minutes. They will crisp up even more as they cool. Serve right away with your favorite dip, or as a side dish.
- Homemade chips don't store particularly well. They will get a little softer if you store them in the fridge overnight, but you can re-heat them in the oven again, if you want to crisp them up the next day.
Video
Notes
Nutrition
Frequently Asked Questions
If you would prefer to use a dehydrator to bake these chips, I recommend using the highest setting on your dehydrator. (This can range from 165ºF to 176ºF on the models I own.) At 165ºF, I need to let the sweet potato chips cook for 4 to 6 hours to get crispy. The thinner you slice them, the faster they will cook. Dehydrated chips don’t quite have the same mouthfeel as a baked chip, but you don’t have to worry about them burning this way.
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If you want to experiment with your air fryer, you won’t be able to cook as many chips at one time. Bake at 300ºF for 15 minutes, then open the air fryer and separate any chips that have stuck together. The air fryer’s circulation usually causes the chips to fly around, so they stick together more with this method. Once they are separated, return to the air fryer and cook for 10 to 15 more minutes at 300ºF until they are lightly golden all over.
Yes! You can use white potatoes instead of sweet potatoes if that’s what you have on hand. Just keep in mind that they might cook slightly faster, so keep an eye on them in the oven.
If you try these Baked Sweet Potato Chips, please leave a comment below and let me know how you like them! And if you make any modifications, I’d love to hear about those, too. We can all benefit from your experience.
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I made these in the microwave. Such a tasty crispy late-night guilt-free snack! (Peel, then slice just like above, place on parchment papered plate, micro 3 min ’til limp, season, micro in 30-second increments until dry.)
Thank you for these ideas. I mixed coconut oil with powdered pink salt and a hnt of ceyanne pepper and brushed both sides before putting them in my dehydrater..They been in there for the last 15 hrs. But Im willing to wait as long as it takes…There is nofan on my hydrater. I have mmandelin that only cuts one size….I think its a 16th of an inch. You didnt say how thin the slices shoud be so Im wondering if I cut them too thick, Thank you for responding to our questions. Imblooking forward to making this a habit. I eat one every time I check it just because it tastes so good…done or not!…..oh yes, I put them on parchment paper in order for easy clean up. They are still drying so Im wondering what you think….will the parchment paper keep them from drying?
I was sooo excited to make these last night only to find that they tasted like dried starchy sweet potatoes.? So after wasting tao sweet potatoes, I sliced another one, coated it with a little bit of organic coconut oil, and this batch turned out a lot better!? I ‘m going to see if I can rehydrate the first batch, and selvage those, as I don’t like to waste food.
I recently made sweet potato chips with my Dehydrator ,but they came out tasting starchy even after seasoning them.How do I take out the starchiness? Is it advisable to blanch them before putting in the dehydrator ?
How long is baked sweet potato can last?or is it only good for a several minutes? Can it last for a month? If so,Do i have to put it in the refrigerator? Would it loose it’s crispiness if i do that? Please i need a response quick.
So I have tried sweet potato chips twice. Our dehydrator is just a basic one and doesn’t have temp settings. So it dehydrates slow. However, both times I’ve done them; they’ve ended up TOO crispy. Is there anything I can do to them to make them where I don’t feel like I’m going to break a tooth?!?!
Do you need to soak or blanch before you dehydrate them? The way you do them, are they as crunchy as the chips on the market? Do the snap when you break them in half?
They do get very crispy and snap in half, but they don’t have the greasy, buttery texture that fried chips have.
Hi,
I made these using beets instead…after 2 hrs in the dehydrator, they were still chewy and not crispy at all. I haven’t had any success with my dehydrator and root chips yet. I really want crispy chips. Do beets take longer? I will try the sweet potatoes next time. Any tips?
We tried these both in the oven and dehydrator! I’m pleased with the dehydrator – they were better on day 2 (and easier to manage over watching the oven so closely) I WILL say we added just a hint of melted coconut oil – tossed ours (well really smeared with my hands) and some cajun seasoning and they are quite AWESOME 🙂
We are eating Potato chips with a cup of tea in the morning.
So thank you for this type rice-pies.
I too am wondering about blanching. I read they were to be blanched 8 minutes before baking to kill anything in the raw food and make them keep better. Bit doesn’t that kill good bacteria and nutrients as well? Which is better for you? How long do they keep each way? Do they have to dehydrate longer if blanched?
Thank you for the great recipe and for answering my questions.