Sweet Potato Chips and Sour Green Dip

This is probably two days past the point to bother saying, but I don’t really do football. I just don’t watch it. And I don’t feel left out of an annual popular culture event by not going to a Super Bowl party, sitting on a friend’s couch and routing for a team, catching the first glimpse of all the “great” commercials, and snacking on endless bowls and mountains of appetizers: tasty fried, stuffed, dipped, blanketed morsels. Okay, maybe I feel left out of the snacking.

It hasn’t helped that I recently got plugged back into cable television, and so have been watching the Food Network this past week. Now it’s hard to imagine how naïve I was to all the types of foods you should eat on the couch, how integral they are to watching football, and vice-versa.

Fortunately, my boyfriend couldn’t care about football any more than I do. When I asked if he had ever celebrated the Super Bowl in some way, he said that it was the one day of the year, growing up, that he got to eat potato chips with dip. This must be something akin to a holiday meal, I thought. Let’s make it.

Sweet Potato Chips and Sour Green Dip

Sour Green Dip:

3/4 cup sour cream
½ cup mayonnaise
2 scallions, chopped
1 Tb pickled jalepenos with the juice

Blend ingredients thoroughly. Serve with sweet potato chips (recipe below).

Sweet Potato Chips:

2-3 sweet potatoes, peeled and sliced in thin, kettle chip-sized rounds
2 cups vegetable oil

Place sweet potato slices in a bowl with ice water and let chill for about 10 minutes or longer. Heat oil over medium-high flame for approximately 5 minutes. Drain and pat dry the sweet potato slices. Cook in batches in the hot oil, turning over once or twice, for about 8 minutes or until potatoes just begin to darken. Remove from oil with a slotted spoon and onto paper towels to drain.

Cost Calculator

2-3 sweet potatoes (at $0.79/lb): $1.00
2 cups oil: $0.40
3/4 cup sour cream (about ½ small container): $0.50
½ cup mayonnaise: $0.30
2 scallions, chopped (at $0.50/bunch): $0.16
2 Tb pickled jalepenos with the juice: $0.25

Total: $2.61 (less than a bag of good chips alone)

Health Factor

Six brownie points – considering the fact that this is supposed to be a greasy halftime snack, I think you could do a lot worse. The freshness is something that you can really enjoy the flavors of as well as feel much better about the next day.