I love love LOVE Terra Chips Sweets & Beets. I especially love the beets. I would eat a whole bag of beet chips if they existed - do they exist? I should check.
Those amazing chips are the inspiration for this recipe. The above picture may look as though I've added sweets to my chips, but they are, in fact, golden beets.
Golden beets are just as nutritious as regular red beets. Their orange colour provides us with high levels of vitamins C, A & beta carotene. All beets are an excellent source of folate, manganese, potassium and copper. They contain anti-inflammatory compounds, powerful anti-oxidants and provide cardiovascular support. They can help to lower cholesterol and boost nitric oxide production, which dilates blood vessels, expands arteries and improves blood flow.
My goodness, what a great idea to replace regular old potato chips with these babies!
Start by peeling your beets. Just look at how beautiful those golden beets are! They seem to be a bit sweeter and are a bit less earthy than red beets.
When your beets are peeled, it's time to prep them for slicing.
I've pulled out one of my all time favourite kitchen appliances for this recipe. My spiral slicer. If you don't have one, I urge you to get one. They are so much fun and can dramatically improve your salads and veggie chip recipes!
You can use a mandoline, as I did with my apple chip recipe, or you can slice your beets as thin and uniformly as possible.
Cut off the ends of your beets.
Now, my red beet had a bit of a blemish on one side, so I went ahead and cut it off. This is totally fine to do, as long as the vegetable your are about to slice will fit well into your spiral slicer. It's usually harder to spiralize smaller or thinner veggies like carrots than larger ones.
Both ends of my beet have been sliced flat. This will help it stay put and it allows for the best slicing.
Start slicing! These chips are going to turn out really thin and curly. Kind of like kettle chips.
You can see that even though I had to chop a bit of the red beet off, it's doing fine in the slicer.
Whoa! Somebody pass me my sunglasses! What a beautiful sight.
I've used two somewhat large beets for my recipe. This will make a good serving of chips. Enough for one person to munch on, or as a lovely garnish for a couple of salads.
If you decide to stop at this step and drizzle these beauties with olive oil and a sprinkle of cilantro, I wouldn't blame you. Raw beets make a very nice salad.
I am, however, going to lay them on a cookie sheet lined with parchment, sprinkle them with sea salt and set the oven to a very low temp.
You must prepare yourself though, because the beets are going to go from this perfect piece of art:
To this not so eye pleasing, but utterly crisp and delicious ugly duckling:
After a good 30 - 40 minutes in the oven, the beets go from mother nature's most spectacular visual masterpiece to have ever graced your kitchen to shrivelled up little wrinkly things, looking quite pitiful.
They are, however, SO DELICIOUS AND CRISP AND SWEET AND SALTY AND SATISFYING. I PROMISE.
Yum!
Meghann's Beets and Beets
- 2-4 Beets, peeled, ends removed (choose which ever colour you'd like)
- Sea salt (optional)
- Peel beets and remove ends.
- Slice with spiral slicer, mandoline or by hand as thin and uniform as possible.
- Lay flat on a baking tray lined with parchment - you will probably need more than one tray.
- Bake at 200 degrees C for about 30 - 40 minutes, turning once during the baking process. Don't fret if they are still soft at this point, depending on the thickness of your beets, baking time may take up to an hour.
- Remove from oven and let cool. They will crisp up as they cool, however, you may need to remove chips that have cooked quicker than others and allow softer chips to continue baking.
