Dusted with paprika and roasted in the oven, these Homemade Sweet Potato and Smoked Paprika Chips are so much tastier and healthier than shop bought oven chips and almost as easy!
Last autumn I was really inspired by Jamie Oliver’s Everyday Super Food
book (which I reviewed earlier this year). One of the superfoods he really advocated were sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes are apparently one of the healthiest vegetables on the planet: packed full of fibre, vitamins and antioxidants.
Since reading Jamie’s book I have used sweet potatoes in a lot more of my recipes: Chicken, Chorizo and Sweet Potato Traybake, Vegetable Mole and Harissa, Sweet Potato and Chickpea Tagine, for example. Not only can I feel super smug about being healthy but I absolutely love the flavour of sweet potatoes – they are totally delicious!!
Now, I have been making my own oven chips for yonks, but I’ve never quite got around to making sweet potato chips. Oh. My. Goodness. – I have been missing out!! I so enjoyed developing these sweet potato chips – they taste amazing!
Sweet potato chips taste great just on their own, but even more fabulous with the addition of a little smoked paprika. If you are not a fan of smoked paprika or fancy mixing things up a bit, you could try normal paprika or hot paprika, or swap the paprika for ground cumin, cayenne pepper or chilli flakes, or why not try a mixture? Cayenne pepper and cumin go particularly well together.
These homemade sweet potato and smoked paprika chips go really well with almost everything. They would be fab with a steak, a homemade burger, a grilled chicken breast or why not try them with with my pan fried tuna or lamb koftes?
Homemade Sweet Potato and Smoked Paprika Chips
Ingredients
- 1 kg sweet potatoes roughly 2 medium ones
- 2 teaspoons smoked paprika or normal paprika/cumin/cayenne pepper/dried chilli flakes
- 1 teaspoon salt or to taste
- 2 tablespoons olive oil or melted coconut oil
Method
- Preheat your oven to 200C.
- Cut the sweet potatoes roughly into chip shapes - leave the skin on for extra goodness!
- Place the sweet potatoes into a bowl and add the paprika, salt and oil. Mix together using your hands or a spoon (I find hands more effective!).
- Place the chips on a non stick baking tray, well spaced out so they are not touching each other (you may need 2 or 3 baking trays – if you don’t have that many, improvise using roasting tins or pizza trays!).
- Put the baking trays in the preheated oven for 10 minutes.
- After 10 minutes, remove the trays from the oven and carefully turn over the chips using tongs or a fish slice (do this one tray at a time so the other chips don’t get cold).
- Put the trays back in the oven for a further 10 minutes or until cooked – I tend to find eating one is the best way to know if they are cooked or not 😉
Pin Homemade Sweet Potato and Smoked Paprika Chips for later
These look amazing!! I love sweet potato chips
L X
#brillblogposts
Thanks Lisa!! Me too – they are fab, aren’t they? Love how healthy they are 🙂 Eb x
Oooh yummy! I love sweet potatoes and I bet the smoked paprika compliments them perfectly. Thank you for sharing with #CookBlogShare x
Thanks, Kirsty – it really does! They have a gorgeous sweet/smoky/savoury thing going on which is just sooo delicious! Eb x
Once I bought them from a market stall with rosemary and sea salt. Absolutely amazing, would highly recommend if you haven’t already tried.
Oooh yes! Sweet potatoes and rosemary are a fab combination, aren’t they? I haven’t done sweet potato chips with rosemary, yet (must try!), but I have done it before as a traybake – rosemary is fab in my Chicken, Chorizo and Sweet Potato Traybake. Thanks for commenting 🙂 Eb x
Those sweet potato chips look gorgeous, the lovely colour of sweet potatoes always seem so inviting to me. I love your tip of knowing when they’re ready….when they’re super yummy like this it’d be quite tempting to say they’re not ready and pop them back in the oven for 30 seconds more – test and repeat 😉 ….not that I’ve ever done that you understand 😉
Angela x
Thank you, Angela! They are so pretty aren’t they? Especially with their dusting of paprika. Which also makes them taste FAB! I made some yesterday with smoked paprika, cayenne pepper, garlic and lime – SO GOOD! Yeah, I like your testing plan! I do find trying the food is nearly always the best way to check if it is done…and so often it isn’t quite done the first time… as you say test and repeat!! 😉 Eb x
Another one of my favourite things! Although no chance of Mrs Why eating these :'( Do these crisp up after cooking? My one and only time of doing these turned out to be a rather floppy affair. Still loved them though! Also do you have a dip of choice??
Um, depends on your definition of crisp! They are crisp enough to dip into things and they are certainly not floppy, but not as crisp as if they had been deep fried… I find the keys to a crispy sweet potato chip are: a hot oven temp – 200C, spreading them out on the baking tray so they are not touching, minimal oil (that’s why I oil them in a bowl, not drizzle oil over on the baking tray), turning them at least once during cooking and cooking them till they are quite brown. And eating them straight away, of course – they get soggy if they sit around too long!! But to be honest…a mission to find the perfect way of making sweet potato chips crispy sounds like a mission for The Why Chef!!! (I’ve heard egg whites help…but haven’t tried that one!!) My dip of choice would always be guacamole. I have a recipe on my site for an easy version. For me sweet potatoes and avocados are a match made in heaven! Thanks for your lovely comments. Eb 🙂
Ah that sounds decent – these were totally floppy! Wouldn’t stand up under their own weight when held out! Haha oooh it could be! I’ve been reading up about starches and how they help crisp under heat… could try adding a starch before frying! Ah no way, I’d never put them two together and I’m always looking for an excuse to use avocados! I fell in love with them in Costa Rica at the start of the year, but have no idea on their uses! Cheers! 🙂
Sweet potato and avocado is an awesome combination!!! Can’t believe you’ve not tried it – do it now! Looking forward to a future The Why Chef post on the ultimate sweet potato chip!! Eb 🙂
I love Jamie Oliver’s book too and am a big fan of sweet potatoes. I don’t use them as often as I would like to as my husband doesn’t like them but I do often add them to stews and then pick the sweet potato out of his portion and add it to mine! I never complain if there’s more for me! I have tried making chips with them but find it slightly harder to get them crispy than normal chips. I still gobble them up though and the smoked paprika on these ones must be lovely.
Sweet potatoes are fab, aren’t they? – I am amazed that there are people out there who don’t like them! I am fortunate that my family all love them – my little boy couldn’t get enough of these chips!! But then I mostly weaned my kids on sweet potatoes, so not especially surprising!! Eb x
Delicious Eb, love the idea of smoked paprika with the sweet potato. A tasty and healthy alternative recipe to regular oven chips, pinned for later x
They go so well, Sarah. I had some at the weekend with smoked paprika and cayenne pepper – they were pretty awesome too! Thanks for your kind comments and for pinning 🙂 Eb x
I adore sweet potato chips and this recipe is perfectly timed….. I have just returned from the States to find a sweet potato that was there when I left, still loitering! Looks like it’s heading for the knife, shortly followed by the oven! Thanks for sharing xx
Thanks Kate! That sweet potato sounds like it has a great destiny 😉 Eb x