To make these delicious baked basil chips, all you need is fresh basil, olive oil, sea salt and an oven. The flavor is absolutely delicious!
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 literally 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 just 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 quick 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 just 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 yummy. 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 easy to make and so unbelievably yummy 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!
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Baked Basil Chips
Ingredients
- 1 bunch fresh basil leaves
- olive oil cooking spray or mister
- coarse sea salt
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 325° and line a rimmed sheet pan with parchment paper.
- Rinse the basil leaves well to get off any dirt or debris. Pat them well between two towels so they are dried completely.
- Spritz with olive oil {or cooking spray} and sprinkle with sea salt.
- Bake the basil leaves for 5 to 8 minutes or until crispy. Larger leaves do take longer so I would recommend removing the smaller leaves and place the sheet pan back in for a few minutes or divide the leaves among two sheet pans, one for smaller leaves and one of larger leaves.
- The basil leave will crisp up as they sit so allow them to cool for a minute or two before snacking.
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This is such a creative idea! If I didn’t gobble them up first, I’d love to sprinkle some of these over a salad.
Such a great idea! I’m so going to do that next… over pasta too!
What a great idea. I’ve never had basil chips before. But sounds delicious! Can’t wait to try it out. Sorry about your plant….
I’ve never thought to bake basil! Looks like a great idea though!
You will love it Millie!!
What a fun way to use basil! I’ve never baked it like this before. Awesome!
You’ll have to let me know when you try it Ashley! It’s SO good!!
Tell me more about this mister, I need one of those. I use an embarrassing amount of olive oil in my cooking. That looks awesome!
Abby it’s from Pampered Chef! I LOVE IT! I also have a Misto but I use this one more 🙂
I’ve never eaten chips made from leaves, and never seen 🙂 It’s really healtry and probably very tasty.
This is total geniu, Laurie. I can almost taste them!
Fresh basil with slices of brie and tomatoes on crusty bread is a totally delicious sandwich as well. I got addicted to these travelling to the UK, they use basil almost like lettuce there.
Also, while I think of it, fresh sage is also really good for this concept. I usually fry them for a couple of seconds in a pan, but same basic idea of crisping them up. So tasty and really easy.
Thank you for publishing this recipe, I am so excited to try it! I am going to try a little Parmesan cheese on some. I bought too much!