Ingredients
- 2 kg large green zucchini, cut into 1/8 thick rounds
- 1 to 1 1/4 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 Tbsp. + 1 tsp. apple cider vinegar
- Salt & pepper to taste
Instructions
- Choose firm zucchini and reject any that flex when held at one end. A soft one has already begun breaking down and dries into a limp papery disc rather than a chip.
- Slice rounds at 3 mm on a mandolin with the guard on. Consistency matters more here than in almost anything else, because a chip is judged entirely on whether it snaps.
- Toss the rounds in the olive oil first and the vinegar second. Oil goes onto a dry surface; poured over vinegar-wet slices it beads and slides off.
- Salt and pepper go on last, once the slices are glossy enough to hold them. Salt added at the start draws water out into the bowl and you end up frying the chips in their own puddle.
- Lay them on mesh with no overlap whatsoever. These are oiled and will grip a plain tray hard enough to break when lifted.
- Dehydrate at 57 °C for 11 hours. Expect the vinegar to fill the kitchen for the first hour and then vanish — the sharpness stays in the chip, the smell does not.
- Start testing three-quarters of the way through by taking one off and waiting two minutes. It should shatter, not fold. Oil keeps a warm chip flexible, and that two-minute wait is the only honest test.
- Anything still bendy goes back on. Check the outside edges of the tray first, since those chips finish early and can go bitter while the middle ones catch up.
- Store them in a rigid tin rather than a bag and eat them inside a fortnight. They are fragile enough to powder in a bag, and the oil is what sets the two weeks.
