Butternut Squash Chips
The crunch and saltiness of chips, without the mess and expense of deep frying! Butternut squash is allowed on the GAPS diet and is a lower carb alternative to potato. These work best if cut into very thin slices with a very sharp knife. During the process of dehydrating, they curl up like conventional potato chips- fun!
Ingredients:
2 large butternut squash necks
2 tablespoons olive oil (buy here)
¼ teaspoon sea salt
Directions:
Peel butternut squash neck (reserve the bulb for another use)
Slice as thinly as possible into rounds
Toss with olive oil in a bowl, using your hands or a fork if you wish
Lay in a single layer on dehydrator tray, sprinkle with salt.
Dehydrate 12 hours, or until crisp, on high if your dehydrator has temperature settings.
Enjoy!
We highly recommend the Excalibur dehydrator: it’s perfect for making yogurt too- you can fit quart jars in the 5-tray, but if you have an abundant garden that you’d like to preserve produce from, the 9-tray is a worthwhile upgrade. I haven’t found the need for the timer.
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I don’t have a dehydrator (yet). Can these be done in the oven?
I have same question, how long and what temp if done in oven? These will be great if the kiddos are fans.
In the oven I’d try them as low as your oven goes, and on a rack so the air can circulate… maybe 2 hours? I haven’t done them in the oven before so I don’t know for sure :)
Hi!
Veggie and squash chips are amazing! I do this with zucchini, yellow squash, eggplant – all sorts.
BTW, you don’t really need oil unless you really want it. I slice my veggies and sprinkle with salt and dehydrate until crispy. Awesome!!
Vickilynn Haycraft
Micah 6:8
I’m going to have to try this with zucchini too! Good idea!
If you can try sun drying them! I bet they would absorb some of the vitamin D from the sun like mushrooms do and would be even better for you! :D
Yum!! We LOVE butternut squash anything!
Ha, I forgot that these are vegan. Enjoy!
I make butternut squash “chips” every week (for the week) but I bake them in the oven @ 400 until nice and crisp! If I cook them in chunks they ooze with their natural sugar, so delicious! :) I am actually making a batch on Sunday, yay!
Thank you! When you say you do them in chunks, what do you mean? You don’t slice them really thin? Can you guess about how long it takes for them to get crisp at 400 degrees? Thank you so much!
You could fry these in tallow or lard too I’m assuming. Especially if you are trying to get more good fat into your diet! Have you tried Cara?
I bet you could, but I really don’t like frying because it’s so messy!
I am guessing that these are not a good idea to do while on the intro diet? l love squash and eat a lot of it, but on the intro I miss having something crunch when I eat it =)
Thanks for the tip on the oven. I don’t have a dehydrator but I’m thinking about getting one. What is more economical: baking at 400 for an hour or so, or dehydrating at a really low temp for 12? I’m not quite sure how to figure that out, but it’s important to me. Any help would be nice!!!
Maybe towards the end of intro- they don’t have much sugar but are going to be harder to digest :)
What a great idea! I’m looking forward to trying this when I’m on full GAPS.
Hi Cara,
These look delicious! How are these tolerated by people who need to peel and deseed and usually eat only cooked veges? Would it be too fibrous?
They might be if dehydrated on high, I know my little one was stuck on ‘only cooked fruit and veggies’ for what seemed like forever, and she would have been fine with them- I think just the process of cooking broke cell walls or something that made it easy enough to digest. I’m sure it would vary for each person though :)
Could you use coconut oil? These sound delicious.
Cara, you are my hero! I just love crunchy chips but was tiring a bit of the kale chips. This will add wonderful variety! Thanks!
These look fabulous Cara! How do you store yours and do you know how long they keep? (Unless they are gobbled up so fast that is never an issue?) :-) I can’t wait to try these!!!
I love this idea! Have you ever tried it with sweet potato?
I haven’t, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work! :)
I don’t have a dehydrator. Can I use the oven somehow? Thanks! Julie (please email me as I will forget to check back here! ) Love your site /eletters though!
I made these but also used some coconut vinegar and they are the sweetest chips! Yum!! I don’t know if the coconut vinegar is legal though.
That sounds great! I think the vinegar would be okay for gaps/scd
I finally got a dehydrator. I just made them but they turned out really tough. Does that maybe mean they need to go longer? (The dehydrator doesn’t have any settings – just on/off.)
They are more tough than potato chips- but they do best when sliced super super thin :) Hope that helps!
Just got my first batch of the butternut squash chips out of the Excalibur! Yummy!! I didn’t use any oil, but made a mixture of salt, sugar and cinnamon and shook it onto them. Good stuff! And it didn’t take twelve hours as someone mentioned. They were done in three. I did use my mandoline to slice them super thin. Thanks!!!!
tried it! we forgot the oil, but they came out awesome… really really yummy. thanks!!
Ok, I need specifics here! When you say slice “super thin,” what exactly do you mean? I tried something similar to this with delicata squash and sliced it with my food processor that slices really thin and I find them tough, too tough for eating. I don’t think I did them on high though. Would that make a difference? Thanks!
So, are these raw then? You don’t cook the squash, right? just want to be clear, as I tend to mess things like this up. Thank you!
These sounded good but I subbed out the squash for sweet potatoes sprinkled with cinnamon. Then I just stuck them in the dehydrator at 115 and I’m hoping they’ll be done in the morning to throw in the quiet bag for church. I’ve never tried making chips of any kind in the dehydrator. Looking forward to trying them out. Thanks for posting. :)
I did this and they were hard…definitely not crunchy. I think I set my Excal Dehydrator around 130-ish. Should I have done it HOT? Could you venture a guess as to why mine were “stale”?
I do sweet potatoes in my dehydrator, and my first attempts produced really tough chips. I think put them in a big bowl with some olive oil and salt, and that worked better, but then I tried microwaving them for a minute or two before I put them in the dehydrator and that worked much better. If you use sweet potatoes, they must be sliced VERY thin using a mandolin. So the secret for me was thinly slicing them, coating them in ollive oil and baking a few minutes in the microwave before putting them in the dehydrator. Hope this helps.