Homemade potato chips are an entirely different animal from packaged ones and are definitely worth the effort. Make. A. Lot.

LC Glory Days Note

Easy to make. Good with beer. Perfect for parties. Gosh, this homemade potato chips recipe with pecorino takes us back to our college days. The only thing that’s changed is we have more flawlessly exceptional taste in potato chips these days. Well, that and we’re less lazy, although we’ve still included a cheater’s version of this recipe (see below) that relies on store-bought chips rather than the ones you stand at the stove and plunk in oil yourself. Beer pong, anyone?

Homemade potato chips on a crumpled piece of parchment paper and a bowl of sour cream.

Homemade Potato Chips with Pecorino

5 / 3 votes
Homemade potato chips are an entirely different animal from packaged ones and are definitely worth the effort. Make. A. Lot.
David Leite
CourseSides
CuisineAmerican
Servings6 to 8 servings
Calories209 kcal
Prep Time20 minutes
Cook Time10 minutes
Total Time30 minutes

Equipment

  • Deep-fry or candy thermometer

Ingredients 

  • 6 cups cold water
  • 2 tablespoons fine sea salt
  • 1 tablespoon baking soda
  • 1 1/2 to 2 pounds russet potatoes, scrubbed
  • About 6 cups peanut oil, for frying
  • 1 tablespoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
  • 1/4 cup very finely grated pecorino Romano
  • 1 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper
  • 1 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper, plus more to taste
  • 1 cup plain Greek yogurt or sour cream

Instructions 

  • In a large bowl, stir together the water, sea salt, and baking soda until everything is dissolved.
  • Using a mandoline, handheld slicer, or sharp paring knife, slice the potatoes 1/16 inch thick and toss them in the water mixture. Let ’em soak for 10 minutes.
  • Fill a large, heavy, deep-sided pot no higher than halfway with oil and clip a deep-fry or candy thermometer to the side of the pot. Place the pot over medium-high heat until the oil registers 350°F on the thermometer. Meanwhile, grab a scissors and cut open a brown paper bag and situate it on a baking sheet next to the stove.
  • In a small bowl, stir together the kosher salt, pecorino Romano, pepper, and cayenne.
  • Drain the sliced potatoes and pat them completely dry. Add the potato slices to the hot oil in batches, being careful not to crowd the pot. Fry, stirring occasionally, until the potato chips are light golden brown, 2 to 3 minutes. Use a spider, strainer, or tongs to remove the potato chips and dump them on the paper bag to drain. Immediately sprinkle the warm chips with the salt and cheese mixture so the warmth will melt the cheese. Repeat with the remaining ingredients.
  • Gently dump the chips in a bowl or on a cutting board lined with parchment paper and serve right away with the yogurt or sour cream in a dish on the side for dipping.

Notes

Homemade Potato Chips With Pecorino Variation

Cheater’s Potato Chips With Pecorino
Wanna save yourself some time? If you’re rushed (or just plain lazy), instead of frying your own chips at home, grab a 10-ounce bag plain salted potato chips at the store. Arrange the chips on a rimmed baking sheet and slide them into a 300°F oven until warm, about 8 minutes. The second you remove the chips from the oven, sprinkle them with the cheese mixture, being certain to omit the salt since the packaged chips will already be plenty salty.
America Farm to Table Cookbook

Adapted From

America Farm To Table

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Nutrition

Serving: 1 portionCalories: 209 kcalCarbohydrates: 23 gProtein: 7 gFat: 10 gSaturated Fat: 2 gMonounsaturated Fat: 5 gTrans Fat: 0.002 gCholesterol: 6 mgSodium: 4103 mgFiber: 2 gSugar: 2 g

Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.

Tried this recipe?Mention @leitesculinaria or tag #leitesculinaria!
Recipe © 2014 Mario Batali. Photo © 2014 Quentin Bacon. All rights reserved.

Recipe Testers’ Reviews

What is more satisfying after a long day of work than a warm, crisp, homemade potato chip?  A warm, crisp potato chip made simpler. I did not make my potato chips from scratch. Instead, I used a 10-ounce bag of Lay’s potato chips. Wow, was this easy.

It took about 8 minutes to heat my chips up in the oven. While they were heating, I ground some pepper and grated some cheese. Tossing the chips with the pepper, cayenne pepper, and cheese took about 3 minutes. This made the total time 11 minutes. The chips had great flavor. 2 teaspoons cayenne can blow your socks off, though. I would try 1 teaspoon and add 1/2-teaspoon increments to taste to avoid killer heat, as my family likes spice but not flaming hot. Heat can always be added but is not easily removed. While sour cream is a great dip, I actually prefer blue cheese dressing. This gives the chip a cool bite with some incredible depth of flavor.

This was a very easy, quick, and yummy dish. It was a crazy week for me, so I did the cheater’s version by buying potato chips at the store. Since I really love the thick-cut, just plain olive oil, salt, and pepper chips, I used those here.

I heated them in the oven and then tossed them with freshly grated Parmesan and a mix of cayenne pepper and ground chipotle pepper. They were great on their own but also tasted very good with the Greek yogurt. Next time, I would season the yogurt with a bit of salt and pepper and maybe a couple of drops of olive oil as well.

I liked this homemade potato chips recipe because it flipped around the traditional combination of plain chips and flavored dip. The spice mix for the chips was great. It’s the black pepper that steals the show here—the amount seems like a lot, but the pepper gives the chips a wonderful fruity spiciness.

Making homemade potato chips also made this more of a celebration dish. The testers all liked these a lot—I had to fight them to get to the bowl. I used plain yogurt for the dip, which was perfect as you need a very bland, creamy counterpart to these chips.

The recipe was quite labor-intensive since I don’t own a mandoline, which might deter me from making them again…but if you have all the equipment and want to do something special for a party, I think these would be very welcome. I also tried this with store-bought chips (leaving salt out of the spice blend). It was great, but missing the wow factor of the homemade version.

If you’ve ever looked at the ingredient list on a bag of flavored potato chips, you’ve probably shaken your head in amazement that it takes so many ingredients just to make, say, a barbecue-flavored chip. And then that flavored chip doesn’t even taste good! Well, here’s the solution—make your own seasoned chips at home. And here’s the perfect recipe for you to do it. These chips come out crunchy and with a nice kick from the seasoning.

You may be wondering what that baking soda is doing in the soaking water. The baking soda breaks down the pectins in the potatoes. This helps them cook quickly all the way through, which gives you a crisper chip. It will also give you nice little air pockets inside and promotes browning during frying. So don’t skip the baking soda—you won’t taste it in the chips at all.

Thanks to the salt in the soaking water, the chips are already somewhat seasoned right out of the fryer. I recommend you taste one plain, then add the seasoning mix to taste. You will probably not use all the seasoning. I seasoned the chips pretty heavily and then used plain yogurt to dip the chips in as suggested by the recipe. That’s a good combination because the yogurt cuts the saltiness and tames the heat. If you don’t want to dip the chips in yogurt, or if you want some other dip that has salt in it, you’re going to need to have a lighter hand with the seasoning mix on the chips. One way to go might be to season the chips a bit less, then mix some of the leftover seasoning into the yogurt.




About David Leite

I count myself lucky to have received three James Beard Awards for my writing as well as for Leite’s Culinaria. My work has also appeared in The New York Times, Martha Stewart Living, Saveur, Bon Appétit, Gourmet, Food & Wine, Yankee, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, and more.


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6 Comments

    1. No, Gabriel. It makes chips that are sooo much better! These have much more potato flavor and don’t taste overwhelmingly of salt. Hope you like them!

  1. Here it is a lovey Friday evening, enjoying a glass of cold rosé, with my shopping list for tomorrow complete and making a final entry to your giveaway of the OXO digital scale. I was hoping to win the scale to be more precise with bread baking and to use it for portion control in my endeavors of not overeating. My email pops up showing the latest posting for LC and just what is on offer? Homemade potato chips with Pecorino cheese. Just how many servings does this recipe make? Who cares! They will all be mine! Yes, I added potatoes, peanut oil and Pecorino cheese to my shopping list. I can wait to see how well these beauties will go with my mixed green and tomato salad.

    1. Elizabeth, thanks so much, your note made my evening. Heck, it made my entire weekend! Love that this recipe speaks to you. Looking forward to hearing what you think of the chips…

      1. 5 stars
        These are wonderful! So easy to make and well worth the small effort that goes into slicing and frying the potatoes. I made one change to recipe out of necessity. The only cayenne pepper I had was at least four years old and was stale, no punch left to it. Instead I used a dried jalepeno and lime juice powder that I make. I grind jalepeno peppers with lime juice and then spread this mixture very thinly on a parchment paper covered sheet pan. This is then covered with a layer of cheese cloth and set out on my back uncovered porch. I live in AZ and this time of year the whole thing dries in less than a day. Once dry, I feed this powder into to a jar with a shaker top. Mixed with salt this is what I use on freshly popped popcorn. Its yummy. I used this powder without salt on these chips with the Pecorino and it was to die for with or without the yogurt dip. It did take me a couple of days, but I ate the entire batch by myself. The were excellent with a mixed greens and tomato salad as well as being a yummy, crunchy carrier for a thin slice of cucumber. Not sure if I should be concerned that I feel no guilt for eating all of these…

        1. You definitely should not be concerned, Elizabeth. It’s a good thing. Thanks so much for taking the time to let us know you loved these as much as we do. Looking forward, as always, to hearing which recipe on the site you try next…