Variations on a Dish: Baked Sweet Potato Chips

I'd like to tell you a story about one of my earliest Kitchen Fails. When I was in junior high, my friend P and I went to visit her dad for the weekend at his cabin. Bored of reading and looking for something to entertain us, we decided that we wanted to make chips. We sliced something (I forget if we had sweet potatoes or regular potatoes) really thin, coated the pieces with oil, and cooked them...

on the top of her father's really nice wood stove. They burned and left gunk everywhere. He was not pleased.

Avoiding the wood stove this time, I decided I wanted to try making baked sweet potato chips after my success with sweet potato fries. Pretty much the only thing I did differently was to slice the sweet potatoes into medallions instead of chopping them into long pieces.

They were awesome. I baked them a little bit longer than I normally would because I wanted them to be really crispy, and it worked nicely. The best part was that the ones that burned actually ended up tasting the best, because the sugars in the sweet potato caramelized and gave the chips that great sweet-burnt flavor you get from marshmallows when you're making s'mores.

These are great as a side dish or just a snack, and they only take about 30 minutes in the oven. And they're pretty to boot!