A Healthy Take on Chips and Dip

Daina’s Sweet Potato Chips

I’m such a sucker for chips and dip. I love the crunch and the deliciousness of the dip, especially when it’s French onion. What I don’t love is how fattening and high in calories chips and dip are. I simply have worked too hard on my personal health and fitness to throw it away on chips and dip (that I can easily put down by the truckload). So, rather than depriving myself of one of my favorite game day snacks, I decided to change it up a bit and make it healthier! While too much of anything is never good for you, a healthy portion of my version of chips and dip won’t kill your diet.

Why is this healthier? Sweet potatoes and white potatoes both have a ton of nutrients, but I prefer sweet potatoes because they are lower in carbs and calories, and significantly higher in calcium, Vitamin A, and Vitamin C. In terms of sugar, sweet potatoes are also much lower on the Glycemic Index scale (54 versus 85). Whenever possible, I try to limit the spike in my Glycemic Index so as to prevent the storage of sugars (carbs) as fat. I’d rather just eat good fat. (And we will with our dip)! Also, we are baking our chips today, rather than frying them as is normal procedure for chips. But fear not, they will be just as yummy and crunchy as the fried stuff!

Ingredients

2 medium to large sweet potatoes, cleaned and sliced ¼” — ½” (horizontally if you want long chips and vertically if you want more round chips).

*It’s at your discretion how thinly you slice it because ideally you will use a mandoline or hand slicer to get the chips nice and thin. The thickness of the potato is really based on how comfortable you are holding the potato while you slice.

1–2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
Lawry’s Seasoned Salt
Paprika
Black Pepper

Preparation

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Place the sweet potato chips onto a rimmed baking sheet (you will likely need 2). Drizzle the potatoes with the oil. Make sure that you only have a single layer of potatoes. (If you layer them they will not cook evenly).

Bake the spuds, flipping them at least once, until they are crisp and browned. Some people like the centers of their chips softer, which will usually entail baking for 22–25 minutes. I prefer the entire chip to be crispy so I bake 25–27 minutes.

Once you remove the cooked taters from the oven, sprinkle them (lightly!) with the seasoned salt, black pepper, and paprika and serve!

A Healthy Spin on French Onion Dip

If you’re like me, you hear dip and you cringe just a bit. For me the word brings to mind the processed gunk at the grocery store that can probably last (if still sealed) ’til the next century. Not exactly what I want to put into my body. It’s really not all that hard to make dip and it’s not that hard to make French Onion healthier.

The usual recipe for this dip calls for ingredients like butter, sour cream (yikes!), and mayonnaise — a trifecta of saturated fat. (Now, don’t get me wrong, you must eat some saturated fat, but the normal recipe for this dip is a little over the top). So let’s use extra virgin olive oil in place of butter (monounsaturated fat, lowers your bad cholesterol), and lowfat Greek yogurt instead of the sour cream and mayo. Suddenly the calories come way down, we are introducing good, healthy fats, and saving you the need to take your probiotic since the yogurt has billions of healthy live cultures already in it!

Ingredients

2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
1 large yellow onion, finely diced
1 teaspoon of kosher salt
2 garlic cloves, finely minced
1/8–1/4 teaspoon of cayenne pepper (to taste)
2 teaspoons of Worcestershire sauce
1 ½ cups of lowfat Greek yogurt (plain)
¼ teaspoon of black pepper

Preparation

In a skillet over medium/medium-high heat, sauté the onions in the olive oil until they caramelize. Then add in the garlic, sprinkle with salt, and sauté for about 1–2 minutes. Remove from heat.

Giving the skillet a quick few seconds to cool, add in the Worcestershire sauce and use a wood spoon to scrape the olive oil and salt bits off the bottom of the skillet. Stir everything together and put aside, letting cool.

In a mixing bowl, combine the remaining ingredients. Stir well and add the room temperature onions and garlic.

Refrigerate before serving with my sweet potato chips and you’ve got a killer (healthier) tailgating snack!