Apple chips are one of my favorite snacks, but I hadn’t made them myself until this week. They’re essentially a dry, crunchy version of the dehydrated apples you get in health food stores. They can be eaten plain or seasoned, and made with any kind of apple you have on hand.

Apple Chips with cinnamon and sugar

Plain Apple Chips

Cut the bottoms off your apples

Put the slices in a bowl of lemon juice and water

Blot as much moisture as you can off the apple slices

Lay the slices on parchment paper

All crispy!

Give ’em a toss with some seasonings if you’d like!

The perfect apple chip.

Chip me, baby:

• 2-3 apples of your choosing (makes roughly 25 chips, enough to fit on one baking sheet)
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 3/4 cup water
• About 2 tsp of anything you’d like to season them with (cinnamon, sugar, nutmeg…)

Apple chips must seem like a no-brainer, but there are some necessary extra steps. The most efficient way to make the chips is to chop the bottom 1/2″ off the apples before you start, because the tiny chips and bits of stamen (the brown, crinkly bit in the center of the end) that would result from using it make that pretty undesirable. If you want a slightly quicker cooking time, you can also core the apples–the decreased surface area at the center means that there are fewer places for the moisture to hang on.

Holding the top of each apple, cut thin roundels–as thin as possible, really. Mine were about 1/10″ thick. Place these slices in a bowl with the water and lemon juice, making sure that both sides of each slice get wet. This will stop them from browning. Grab some paper towels and blot each slice as dry as possible before laying it on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper.

Bake the apple slices at 215°F for an hour and fifteen minutes, or slightly less time if you’ve cored the apples (say an hour). Take them out of the oven and change the parchment paper, flipping the slices over onto the new sheet to bake the other side. Put them back in the oven for up to another hour and fifteen minutes, checking to make sure they don’t go dark brown or burn (if they begin to darken, take them out and call them done).

When they’re done and crispy, let them cool before storing them. Or, if you want to season your chips, take them straight out of the oven and put them in a bowl or container with your seasonings, and give them a toss or stir (I put mine in a closed Rubbermaid container and gave it a shake).

Enjoy!