Microwave Potato Chips

When cold weather keeps us indoors, I have more time for homemade snacks. One of our favorites is warm microwave potato chips. This recipe is easy and fast — no more than 15 minutes — and makes a nice little winter treat for two.

The Ingredients

The recipe for microwave potato chips is quite versatile as to what type potato to use. Our favorite is Purple Majesty. This small potato is full of flavor and just the right size for bite-size potato chips.

I’ve also made this snack with our go-to potato variety, Yukon Gold. And it works well with sweet potatoes. (There’s also a Purple Majesty Sweet Potato, but so far we haven’t tried it.)

You need as many potato slices as will fit your plate in one layer. For us that’s one medium potato or two small ones. For this blog I used one Purple Majesty and one Yukon Gold.

Peel them, or not. Since I like peels, but my husband Allan doesn’t, I capitulate and peel them.

Other ingredients are: olive oil, salt, and pepper. I use California Olive Ranch 100% American olive oil. For the salt and pepper I grind sea salt and black pepper corns. But, hey, use whatever oil, salt, and pepper you like best.

You could even add a dash of onion powder, red pepper flakes, or any other flavoring you prefer. Allan and I like the basic potato flavor, so we stick with simple.

The Equipment

Equipment you need to prepare microwave potato chips is: Some way to slice the potatoes super thin. A flat microwavable plate. And, of course, a microwave oven. Oh, and potholders — the plate gets too hot to handle without them.

When I first started microwaving chip snacks, I sliced the potatoes by hand with a sharp knife. But I couldn’t get the slices of even thickness. And the closer I got to the end of a potato, the closer I came to slicing a finger.

So I decided to get a mandolin slicer, which also comes in handy for making goat treats. After a bit of research, I found one that’s easy to use and basically foolproof, meaning any fool can use it without losing fingers. The appliance I chose goes by the weird name Once for All. I’m pretty sure they mean “One for All,” but whatever.

Initially the plate I used was a regular china dinner plate. Because it had a wide rim, it didn’t leave much room for chips (or anything else). Eventually we upgraded our plates to rimless ceramic plates, which have more room for whatever we want to put on them.

The microwave oven, well. I guess nearly everyone has one, so I won’t go into details about how we acquired ours. Or the second one we were gifted that we use at the barn while waiting for a goat to kid, which inevitably happens on a miserably cold winter day.

The Recipe