This week my asian eggplant produce 6 eggplants. This is a lot of eggplant for me to use given that I’m the only one in my family who likes it. Given that I didn’t want it to go to waste I was looking for recipes that would allow me to use it at a later date.
Freezing or pickling were both possible options but neither really appealed to me. So I thought I might try out the new food dehydrator I bought was part of Prime Day. After some searching I came on this recipe for eggplant chips. The basic preparation was super easy. Now it is just a waiting game to see how long the dehydrator takes to do the job. The directions recommend you
- check on it frequently after the 3 hour mark
- remove chips which are done
- rotate placement as the bottom tray cooks more quickly.
Total dehydrate time for my total batch was about 5 hours but as the direction indicated I had to remove and rotate chips. One thing I noticed was chips with excess oil took way longer to cook than the ones with less oil. These also were the more flavorful chips because they got more spices on them. So it is a balancing act to get the oil/spice spread out across the batch evenly.
I’m excited to see what other kinds of veggie chips I can create. Especially since I have lots of interesting things my garden is currently producing.