By Emma

Super healthy! Super crunchy!  Super tasty!

Eating healthy is our big focus for this year, but who wants to give up chippies—not us—so we’ve come up with a great healthy, and super tasty, recipe for plantain chips! No sugar, no frying, no additives. How good is that? And they’re super perfect with our home-made guacamole and spicy salsa dips!

Plantain Chips (click continue reading for the recipes)

What you need

2 large plantains

1 teaspoon coconut oil

Salt (or other seasoning)

What you do

Heat oven to 175 degrees Celsius.

Cover two baking trays with baking paper, and peel and slice the plantain as thinly as possible. Use a mandoline if you have one.

Melt the teaspoon of coconut oil and pour into a bowl. Carefully toss the sliced plantain in the oil.

Place the plantain on the baking paper—each slice must be separate so you need to spread them out a bit. Sprinkle lightly with salt or other seasoning.

Cook in the oven for around 30 minutes or until crisp. Allow to cool and voila! These are terrific served with our home-made guacamole or salsa dips.

Once cool they will keep well in an airtight plastic container—think Tupperware, Decor, ClickClack or similar.

 

Super easy Guacamole!

It’s pretty amazing what you can do with a simple avocado, a lime, a couple of cloves of garlic and pinch of salt. Yes, that’s all you need for our guacamole.

What you need (makes about two cups)

3 ripe avocados

I lime

1 – 2 cloves garlic (finely minced or pulped)

Pinch of salt

What you do

Peel and slice the avocado and place in a bowl. Add the juice from the lime, garlic and salt. Gently mash the avocado a few times then stir everything together. Guacamole is best served (and eaten) immediately.

Optional extras: You can also add a bit of the following for something different: finely chopped tomato or onion, finely minced chilli, or finely crumbed cooked bacon.

 

Super easy Salsa!

 

This is a serious home-made salsa and uses all fresh ingredients. Note that we’re not using anything canned or pre-processed as a lot of canned and processed foods contain additional salt and sugar which you really don’t need.

What you need

4 medium – large ripe tomatoes (we used organic vine ripened from Choku Bai Jo)

1 large red capsicum

1 small onion

1 – 2 small Jalapeno chillis (if you like it really hot leave the seeds in)

Large pinch salt

Juice of one lime

1 teaspoon ground cumin

Parsley for decoration

What you do

Roughly chop the tomatoes, capsicum, onion and chilli and place in a bowl. Add the salt, lime and cumin and stir together, then pour into your Cuisinart processor or blender and whizz for a couple of minutes. Decorate with a sprig or sprinkle of chopped parsley.

If you don’t have a processor or blender then chop everything really finely—remember to remove the seeds from the chilli, and mix well together—but be aware that the consistency will not be as smooth as when you use a processor.

Got your own healthy dip recipes? Share here.