The boy holding the knife and cutting this potato is a member of our Friday kids cooking class. Today we made some homemade potato chips. I think these kids are very much improving on their knife skills. Ages five through twelve and all of them did a wonderful job handling the knives safely and practicing cutting potatoes paper thin. Amazing isn't it!
We put the cut chips in big bowls of water. When they where all cut, we drained the chips and dried them between two clean kitchen towels. Piled them in a bowl and heated s large heavy pot full of oil. The oil got very hot. When it came time to fry the chips, we had the kids play outside for the most part to avoid any oil injuries. It takes 3-5 minutes to cook a potato chip to optimum crispness. It took a while. We skimmed them out with a metal skimmer.
Put in a paper towel lined metal pan or metal colander. The best part of teaching knife skills with potato chips (free hand, without a food processor or other appliance) was that they felt extreme ownership for those potatoes. They could easily tell if the thickness was acceptable when it was fried and we got to talk about the cooking times being different for thick and thin cut potatoes. It was a great lesson learned.
The chips where delicious!There you go.
Those look so good. I wish we could have been there. My kids need to learn some knife skills.
ReplyDeleteWow! Okay, so is putting the cut potatoes in water the trick to keeping them from turning pink and black? Hm. I tried making some freshly grated funeral potatoes...had to toss the shreds. It was disgusting. Instantly they turned on me...is this normal? I rarely use/eat potatoes...just not so much of a fan.
ReplyDeleteBUT hey! Your homemade chips look FABULOUS!
i think i am going to hone up on my knife skills and make some for us..
ReplyDeleteyum!!