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These easy oven-baked zucchini chips are thin, crispy, and perfect for pairing with all your favorite dips!
There is so much you can do with zucchini, from Zucchini Boats to Zucchini Cakes. But I think these oven-baked zucchini chips might just be my favorite. Who knew you could turn zucchini into crispy chips for snacking?!
While you won’t mistake these for potato chips, they are an excellent swap for when you’re trying to cut back on carb-heavy snacks and work some extra veggies into your life. They’re paleo-friendly, keto, naturally gluten-free, vegan, and they pretty much fit perfectly into every possible diet since they’re only made with zucchini, oil, and salt.
The next time you find yourself with an abundance of zucchini to use up, you know what to do with it: make zucchini chips!
What You’ll Need
While you only need 3 ingredients for this recipe, you can also add seasonings, flavored salts, etc.
- Zucchini – Look for one that is large but not too large. The baseball-bat-sized zucchini you harvest at the end of August is not going to work here!
- Olive oil
- Kosher salt
How do you make thin sliced zucchini?
I highly recommend using a mandoline slicer; if yours has thickness settings, set it to 2, otherwise, aim for 1/8-inch. It’s very difficult to cut thin, uniform slices of zucchini with a knife.
How to Make Oven-Baked Zucchini Chips
This is one of those recipes that comes down to technique. Follow these instructions closely and you’ll have perfectly crisp zucchini chips!
Prepare. Preheat your oven to 225ºF and line two large baking sheets with silicone baking mats or parchment paper.
Blot the zucchini dry. After you slice your zucchini, place the slices on a sheet of paper towels. Place another paper towel on top and press down to absorb any excess liquid.
Oil and season the zucchini. Line the zucchini slices on the prepared baking sheet. Don’t overlap them, but they can be very close, as they’ll shrink when they bake. Brush the slices with oil, then sprinkle them with salt.
Bake. Place the baking sheet in the oven and bake the zucchini for 2+ hours, or until they start to brown, feel dry, and seem crisp.
Cool. Let the zucchini chips cool on the baking sheet, then serve.
Can you make zucchini chips in a dehydrator?
Yes, zucchini chips can be made in a dehydrator, but you’ll need to follow the directions for your food dehydrator to make them. This recipe was developed for making baked zucchini chips in the oven.
Tips for Success
Again: technique is everything here. These tips will help you nail it.
- Cut thin, uniform slices. Thinly sliced zucchini rounds are a must. Thick slices won’t get crispy, and if your slices are uneven, you’ll have some chips that are burnt while others are still soggy.
- Be conservative with the salt. Use less salt than you think; the zucchini slices will shrink in the oven, so they can easily get too salty.
- Don’t walk away. Once you’re nearing the 2-hour mark, you’ll need to keep a close eye on the chips to make sure they don’t burn.
- Don’t rush them. Bake the zucchini chips until you see that most liquid has cooked off. If you don’t do this, the zucchini will stick to the parchment paper or your chips will be soggy. You’ll also need to let the zucchini chips cool on the pan before removing them.
How to Store
Keep zucchini chips in an airtight container at room temperature for no more than 3 days.
Serving Suggestions
Here are some of my favorite dips for pairing with zucchini chips:
- Beet Hummus
- Homemade Tzatziki Dip
- Street Corn Hummus
- Herbed Tahini Spread
If you love zucchini chips, you may like these recipes with zucchini:
- Roasted vegetables
- Zucchini Turkey Meatballs
- Zucchini Noodle Cashew Stir Fry
- Zucchini Brownies
- Zucchini Chicken Meatballs
Easy Oven-Baked Zucchini Chips
Ingredients
- 1 large zucchini
- 2 tablespoon olive oil
- Kosher salt
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 225 °F (107 °C). Line two large baking sheets (I used two 17" baking sheets) with silicon baking mats or parchment paper.
- Slice your zucchini on a mandolin. Mine had 1, 2, or 3 for thickness and I used 2.1 large zucchini
- After you slice your zucchini, place the slices on a sheet of paper towels and take another paper towel and sandwich the zucchini slices and press on them. This helps draw out the liquid so it’ll cook a bit faster.
- Line up the zucchini slices on the prepared baking sheet tightly next to each other in a straight line, making sure not to overlap them.
- In a small bowl, pour your olive oil in and take a pastry brush to brush the olive oil on each zucchini slice.2 tablespoon olive oil
- Sprinkle salt throughout the baking sheet. Do NOT over-season, in fact, it’s better to use less salt initially because the slices will shrink; so if you over-season, it’ll be way too salty! You can always add more later.Kosher salt
- Bake for 2+ hours until they start to brown and aren’t soggy and are crisp.
- Let cool before removing and serving.
- Keep in an airtight container for no more than 3 days.
Video
Notes
Nutrition
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Just made them. Yummy! We used the food processor,then towel dried. Put salt and put half in oven. The other half we put on the bacon cooker for the microwave. They were done in 12 minutes. They were gobbled up
In a class, my lab partner and I had trouble with the zucchini being too wet. Our instructor suggested sprinkling it with a little salt, let sit for a bit, then use paper towel to dry the zucchini. The salt was used to draw out the moisture. It worked, but was a real challenge because another part of the assignment was too keep the sodium level below 540 mg per servings. Toweling off the slices will remove some of the salt along with the water. This may help those who are having trouble with the chips not crisping up.
I wanted to ask you what temperature are we supposed to bake the zucchini at? You mentioned that we have to preheat the oven to 225 dregrees Fahrenheit, but I couldn’t find the baking temperature.
You bake them at 225 degrees Fahrenheit.
Hi There. Is it possible to slice the zucchini the night before and then bake them the next day? How would that change things?
You could. I don’t think it’d change anything.
Zucchini are very moist from the start. Make sure you lay them out on paper towel and then cover them with a paper towel. I did this for about a hour and a half. Used some Wildtree Garlic oil and alittle garlic salt on top and they were amazing. Not to much oil and a dash of seasoning salt on top. So make sure you are really getting alot of that moisture out.
I used flavored olive oils (from OlivasDeOro.com) with a little salt and these were outrageously delicious and crisp. I used my very old Oster Kitchen Center food processor which sliced quite thin. After making 8 different flavors from one large zucchini, I put half of each cookie sheet in Ziploc bags to share. This morning, they are all soggy. They were crisp when I bagged them last night. Can you tell me what I did wrong?
I think even baked, zucchini still gives off a bit of moisture so it’s probably best to eat these day of or don’t seal them when bagged cause the moisture just circulates within the baggy.
I laid them between paper towels with a little weight for a dew hours before baking,. The paper towels were damp when I transferred the slices to the pan, and each pan of slices took about 2 hours to reach perfection (crisp & lightly browned). The ones we ate right away were great.
Instead of baggies, I’ll try leaving the chips in an open bowl to take them to share. A full day aftrr baking and bagging them, I put them back on parchment in the oven at 200 for about 30 minutes and they re-crisped just fine. We ate them immediately. We enjoyed sampling all the flavors and could not decide which is our favorite.
I was going to ask you the best way to store the chips, but I eat them as fast as they come out of the oven!
Wonderful recipe. Thanks for sharing!
Haha, they’re definitely way too hard to resist out of the oven :)
Thanks for posting with clear directions and taking the time to answer questions, as I had several of the same questions. A friend just gave me 2 zucchini and I had no idea what to do with them until now!
I’ve tried different variations of zucchini chips and look forward to trying this one…..it’s nice and simple. Of course they are nutritious because they are only zucchini and a little salt. Although the ones I have made in the past have been a bit on the soggy side they still seemed to disappear. :) Thanks for the blog. I look forward to this tasty treat.
Just made them and they are in the oven! Hope I get a couple before my teenagers find them!!!!! Yum!!! Thanks for the recipe!