One Of The Tastiest Ways To Cook Jicama Is To Make Crispy Chips

Mexican crops like corn, avocados, and tomatoes are now global staples, but jicama is another Mexican veggie that tastes great raw and cooked. Normally cut into matchsticks or spears and doused with lime and tajin, jicama is a white tuber with a refreshing cucumber-like taste and the most satisfying crunch imaginable. Even though it's normally featured raw in slaws or salads, the vegetable can also be cooked. One of the tastiest ways to improve on its crunchy and savory attributes is by transforming jicama into crispy chips.

Jicama is a vegetable and not a starch, offering a low-fat, carb-free alternative to potato or corn chips. Plus, they don't require the mess of a deep fryer to transform into the crispiest versions of themselves. You can either add them to a dehydrator or bake them low and slow in the oven. Either way, a dry cooking method will suck all the moisture out of them, effectively concentrating their subtle flavor into a more robust savoriness while converting their smooth fibrous and watery flesh into kettle chip doppelgangers.

You'll need an ultra-sharp and precise tool such as a mandoline to quickly and efficiently slice this rock-hard tuber into ultra-thin rounds. Toss the sliced rounds in a drizzle of oil and seasonings, spread them into a single layer over a baking sheet, and bake at 250 degrees Fahrenheit for between 90 and 100 minutes.

While olive oil will bring an earthy flavor and help seasonings adhere to your jicama chips, there are other methods to season them without added fat. A salt and vinegar brine is an oil-free alternative that'll infuse jicama with the perfect complementary tangy and salty flavors. You'll need to soak the jicama slices for an hour, but it's worth the wait! For a quicker oil-free seasoning, you can take a lesson from classic Mexican snack preparation by tossing jicama rounds in lime juice, salt, and a spicy chili powder or tajin before baking them. An oil-free seasoning will reduce baking times from 90 to 60 minutes.

You could serve salt and vinegar jicama chips with an herbaceous dipping sauce like this green goddess dressing or this creamy vegan dill dip recipe. Lime and chili seasoned jicama chips would taste delicious with this vegan chipotle mayo. You could also swap tortilla chips for jicama chips to dip in this crave-worthy guacamole.

If you stick with olive oil, your chips will be richer and slightly more indulgent. Plus, you can bring other savory and spicy seasonings to pair with its earthy notes. Cracked black pepper and rosemary would make for delicious jicama chips that you could serve with lemon aioli.