Adapted from "Essential Cuisine" by Michel Bras
Ingredients
- Potatoes, starchy, like russets. About one medium-sized potato per baking sheet tray works.
- Good olive oil or clarified butter, as needed
- Salt, to taste
Directions
- Preheat oven to 275 F.
- Peel the potatoes, and slice them lengthwise as thin as possible. I use a mandoline for this, one of those $20 Japanese babies, and cut them about 1 millimeter (1/25th of an inch) thin. In a pinch, you can improvise with a potato peeler; just use it to cut wide ribbons from the spud.
- Lay parchment paper or a Silpat (silicon baking sheet) on a baking tray. Brush it lightly with oil or clarified butter.
- Lay the potato slices in rows on the tray, overlapping the slices by about 1/3, to form long, shingled ribbons. Brush them lightly with oil or clarified butter.
- Bake, rotating after 20 minutes if your oven isn't perfectly even, until the potatoes are a rich golden brown, crisp and translucent. Pale splotches are OK, in fact, they provide for an interesting textural contrast -- a little less crisp, a little chewy. The only trick is to bake them long enough that the paler spots are cooked through and not rubbery, approaching crispness, about 45 minutes. When done, lightly salt them and let them cool a bit on the pan, and serve immediately or store in an airtight container. If they get a little stale, refresh them in a warm oven.
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