Linseed crisps

Cooking for people who can’t eat grains, including wheat, can be a challenge when it comes to snacks and finger foods. It’s all very well to keep putting out those celery and carrot sticks on the table, but sometimes, you just want to do more for people.

These linseed crisps do just that. They’re gluten free and, if you choose the seeds carefully, starch free too. The only catch is that you don’t bake them: you dehydrate them. This takes a long time, so plan ahead, days ahead, to make sure you have crisps rather than half-dried soggy mush.

So how did we go?

Linseed crisps. Look closely and you can see the linseeds holding the crisps together

After a night of soaking seeds (while we slept of course), and then five hours on-and-off of drying them out in the oven (our dehydrator wasn’t available), we had crispy seed crisps. They looked great and I enjoyed the taste, even if it was a little strong. These are crisps for pairing with dips or even blue cheese  (the stinkier the better),

My husband wasn’t so keen. He said the smell reminds him too much of cricket bats and his years of oiling these bats with, you guessed, linseed oil. He says he loves the smell, but he’s never associated it with eating.

Because these crisps work so well with things, and they are gluten free, they will be made again and again (even if my husband leaves them for the rest of us). Next time, though, I’ll plan further ahead and have the dehydrator ready.

• Servings: about 250 grams of crisps
• Time: 24 hours (includes soaking time)
• Difficulty: easy
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Ingredients

• 160 grams of linseeds
• 80 grams total of sesame and sunflower seeds
• a pinch of salt
• optional: extra flavour from a teaspoon of cumin or fennel seeds, cayenne, or even some finely chopped rosemary

Directions

1. Soak all the seeds overnight.
2. In the morning, tip of any excess water. The linseeds will have a jelly-like gel around them, which is what holds these crisps together as they dry.
3. Spread the mixture over parchment paper on baking trays so it’s thin but evenly spread. You want crisps at the end of this, not slice.
4. If you have a dehydrator, use it (and the trays that come with it, of course). Otherwise, dry the mixture out in the oven at the lowest temperature possible for at least five hours. Check every hour or so to make sure you have drying and not cooking. Turn them over about half way through.
5. Once they’re dried out, break them into randomly shaped pieces (this happens even if you don’t want it to). Scatter them artistically on a platter and serve with dips and cheese.

Notes

We have a dehydrator, but I didn’t get organised enough to use it for this one: I’d need to make half the amount for the trays we have. Our oven doesn’t go below 110°C, so we turned it off half way through, flipped the half-dry crisps, let everything cool down, then turned it back on for another couple of hours.

Source: It’s based on a recipe from the famous paleo chef, Pete Evans, as published in the Food and Wine section of the the local newspaper earlier this year. He might be in trouble for his advocacy of paleo (including for babies), but these are great crisps.

Linseed crisps

Submitted to Fat Tuesday, Tell ’em Tuesday