Basil Chips, Baked Style

You know how the saying goes. When life hands you lemons you make lemonade, right?

Well, this weekend life hand me an entire basil plant. True. Story.

We had a crazy storm come through on Friday evening and on Saturday I woke up to my basil plant truly snapped in half. The plant that I’ve been growing, watering and loving since it was basically a baby. Yeah. That one. *sniff*

If you follow me on Instagram or Facebook even then you most likely heard all about it. I was only a little bit sad, and by little bit I mean A LOT.

So I did what anyone would do and made pesto. And then a few of you mentioned to stick a leaf or two in each slot {or whatever they’re called} of an ice cube tray, cover it with olive oil and then freeze it. Fresh basil frozen in time with olive oil is pretty genius I must say. I have one remaining branch sitting in a vase of water on my kitchen counter and I stacked the rest up into neat piles and froze them whole.

But that was after I made basil chips.

After I rinsed the leaves off of any dirt, I patted them dry COMPLETELY.

Then I simply preheated my oven to 325 degrees and arranged the leaves on parchment lined sheet pan.

Truthfully you could use any kind of cooking spray. I use my spritzer that has only olive oil it in and minus any extra junk or expellants.

I gave them a short spritz…

…and double checked to make sure that I got every leaf and that they’re all lightly speckled with oil.

Then I sprinkled them all with coarse sea salt.

I then slid the whole pan into the oven and set the timer for 5-8 minutes. The smaller leaves were perfectly crispy at the 5-minute mark, the larger leaves take a minute or two longer. So I removed the smaller leaves and finished the larger ones for the few extra minutes that they needed. Next time I would divide the leaves between big and small and separate them on two different sheet pans. You live and you learn.

Ta-da!

Insta-basil chips. I would imagine that if you skipped the oil and salt part and only bake these plain they probably would still dry out and crisp up and you could crush them up for your own dried basil!

But chips are nice. And good. And so much better that they’re basil and not potato.

For the basil-obsessed (like myself) these baked basil chips are your JAM! They’re so unfussy to make and so unbelievably tasty with that deliciously distinct basil taste. Needless to say these were gone in nanoseconds.

Enjoy! And if you give this Baked Basil Chips recipe a try, let me know! Snap a photo and tag me on twitter or instagram!

My cookbook: 120 Wholesome Kitchen-made Recipes Made Unfussy is now available! CLICK HERE for details and THANK YOU in advance!

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