Sun Veggie Chips

Anyone who watches their calorie intake knows that a crunchy, salty, satisfying, low calorie snack is pretty much non-existent. Unless you're one of those people that can stop after a single serving, and if you are I hate you, chips and such are pretty much a thing of the past. I know there's always air-popped popcorn, but that gets boring after a while. With that in mind I had high hopes for this vegetable chip recipe I found on the Weight Watchers website.

It's pretty simple. Slice the vegetables, spray some rimmed baking sheets with cooking oil, spread the vegetables out on them, season, and bake at 200ºF for a couple of hours. I used sweet potatoes, rutabagas, and zucchini. To get everything to fit in the Sun Oven I stacked the trays in a criss cross fashion. I knew it wouldn't be a problem to get the oven up to 200ºF.  I was more concerned that it would get too hot. I was also concerned about the condensation; I wanted crisp, not soggy, chips. To keep the temperature low and let the condensation out, I propped the glass door open on the latches. Even with the door propped open the Sun Oven temperature maintained a steady 250ºF. The top trays cooked faster than the bottom ones so I switched them around a few times, consolidating the vegetables onto fewer trays as they shrank, and removing the ones that were ready.

I was surprised by the results. I only used one small zucchini, thinking it would be the least tasty, but I was wrong. The sweet potato was good but slightly chewy, even though it was sliced very thin with a mandolin slicer. The rutabaga also chewy, tasted a little weird, and was hard to slice thin enough. The zucchini was awesome. Crisp and nicely browned. It could have almost passed for potato chips. Next time I'll use zucchini only. The only problem is the limited space in the oven chamber. I might have to invest in a Villager Sun Oven to keep up with demand.