Zucchini Chips

It’s that time of year where zucchini is in abundance from the garden, grocery store, and farmer’s markets. Even if you don’t normally eat zucchini it may be time to try some recipes. Zucchini doesn’t have a strong taste and it will pick up the flavors that you add to it which is why I love to shred it in the summer and freeze for later in chili, breads, and cookies throughout the year. Since I have an abundance of zucchini this year, I figured it is time to do a few other things with them which includes dehydrating them in to delicious zucchini chips. 

As I mentioned these squashes will pick up whatever flavor you add to them so just putting a little salt and pepper before placing them in the dehydrator can add some wonderful flavor. You can always try to spice them up or even make them sweet. The options are endless on what you can do.

There are lots of recipes on the internet on how to make zucchini chips so I am just going to list what works for me and what has not worked. The first thing I figured out was that adding olive oil to the chips just makes them oily and doesn’t help crisp them up. Plus it is very difficult to get olive oil evenly distributed across the zucchini chip. Then after hand slicing the zucchini in to uneven pieces, I realized a mandolin is really needed. Setting the mandolin to a thin slice (about 1/8 inch) will offer evenly sliced pieces and you can use a safety guard so you do not lose part of a finger.

The recipe I use is only for a dehydrator. You can use the oven but I have an excalibar dehydrator which evenly dehydrates each sheet instead of having to move them in the dehydrator as some require. These chips will have a crispiness but not the crunch of store bought potato chips. That said, if you ate an entire zucchini worth of chips you are only looking at about 30-50 calories and that initial crispiness is enough for so few calories.

Zucchini chips

Wash the zucchini and slice with the mandolin. Place the chips on the dehydrator sheets and sprinkle with whatever spices you like. I used just salt on these. Set the dehydrator to 115 degrees and leave to dry for around 14 hours. I usually do this overnight so that the next morning I can pull them off fresh and place in an air tight container.

They should last about a week or two in an air tight container but I will admit they never last more than about 2 days in this house.