This post is not about travel. It’s not even about activities to do when travelling. It’s sort of about a travel tip, but not completely.
Sue has been on an AIP diet for almost a year now. It has many challenges as it is highly restrictive. For example: no grains, no legumes, no dairy, no processed foods, no nuts or seeds, no nightshade vegetables, no refined sugars. The diet is used to help heal the gut to reduce inflammation caused by auto-immune conditions.
The diet is not all about “no” though. Examples of foods we regularly consume in our house are: grain fed beef, organic chicken, wild (not farmed) seafood, coconut products, olive oil, vinegar, many fresh organic fruits and vegetables (with the exception of nightshades), herbs and uncured bacon. We’ve gone from a typical midwest US diet to routinely making items such as our own bone broth, mayonnaise (we recently added eggs back in to the diet) and snacks. We still have an occasional Friday Fish Fry – but it is all AIP compliant. That may need to be the subject of a different post!
First off – What exactly is AIP?
(from healthline.com) The autoimmune protocol (AIP) diet is … food-based approach to eliminating unwanted inflammation in a person’s body. It’s a diet that’s thought to help heal your gut to reduce inflammation created by autoimmune conditions.
Why post this here?
Well we make these special chips for ourselves which travel well and make for a great snack when out with friends at some of our favorite wine bars (also added back in). They are crunchy, salty, AIP compliant and quite delicious. They are not difficult to make, but might take a little practice to perfect.
Ingredients needed: Arrowroot Powder, Unrefined Organic Coconut Oil, Baking Soda, Kosher Salt, Water
In addition you will need parchment paper, rolling-pin, pastry blender, measuring cups and of course an oven.
As these are so good we will make a double batch!
Preheat oven to 350F
Measure 2 Cups of Arrowroot powder and put in mixing bowl. Arrowroot is ground extremely fine so be aware a cloud may rise up if you just dump this in.
Add about 1/2 teaspoon of Baking soda into the bowl.
Melt 1/2 cup of the Unrefined Organic Coconut Oil. Unrefined is solid at room temperature. Do not use refined liquid coconut oil.
Coconut Oil – 1/2 cup melted in microwave
Hand mix these ingredients together with your pastry blender.
Mixture after adding coconut oil
Cutting in Coconut oil into the dry ingredients
Add 1/2 cup + ~ 2 tbsp of cold tap water. Mix well – the material will stick together extremely well after adding the water. Too little water and it is hard to work with – too much water and it will look like quicksand.
Mix after adding water and it will be quite sticky/oily – this is a good thing
Form 2 even sized balls of dough by hand. They should stick nice when pressed together. This is not regular bread dough though, kneading is not necessary and they do not form a sticky gluteny blob.
Lay out some parchment paper about the same size or a bit larger than your cookie sheets. Put 1 ball in the middle of the parchment paper
You can see the oily look which occurs after adding the water. This is exactly what you want.
Lay a second piece of parchment paper over the first and press the ball flat with your hand.
With the dough in between our 2 pieces of parchment paper, roll it out to about the size of your cookie sheet. I generally roll it to the short ends first and then work it towards the long ends to finish. You may find you need to use the rolling-pin as a squeegee to get the dough to size and a somewhat uniform thickness.
Here’s what it looks like after being all rolled out
Place the whole thing on your cookie sheet – and then gently pull away the top piece of parchment. The bottom stays in place during the cooking process. DO not try to take the dough off the bottom parchment as it will not stay together until it is cooked
Top piece of parchment removed. Nice sheen on dough – this will disappear quickly if you let it sit – so salt it immediately
Sprinkle Kosher Salt across the dough to taste. You could also add other herbs if you wish at this point such as rosemary or thyme. Let us know if you do and how you liked it. No matter what – with just salt, the final taste will be excellent
close up with salt added before putting in oven
Here is the oven arrangement we commonly use. As we seem to frequently multi-task, some delicious uncured bacon is cooking on the middle shelf. We place the Arrowroot chips on the top and bottom. The bottom one will finish first and when it does, move the top one to the bottom shelf if it needs more time.
How long does it take to cook? This is up to you – cook it until it browns – maybe 10 minutes, maybe longer. We’ve never really exactly timed this part.
Why the bottom shelf? You will get nicer browning this way if your oven heat source is on the bottom. “Brown food tastes good”
Finished product after removing from oven – nicely browned
2nd one made at the same time – some may say it’s a little burnt – but really those are quite tasty parts. With a little experimentation you’ll figure out how you like it best.
Once you remove from the oven, let it sit until cooled and then break it by hand into whatever sizes you like. It is crunchy. It is salty. It is AIP compliant and very satisfying. The closest flavor it brings to our mind is corn chips, but actually much better.
Sue eats it plain or dips it into Organic black olive Tapenade.
Lot’s of our friends and customers have asked for the recipe and instructions – so here it finally is. If you think more clarity is needed or something is missing – please leave a comment and we will update.
If you are also on an AIP diet it can be quite a challenge when travelling – believe us we know. These Arrowroot chips travel well but you will need to put them in a hard sided plastic container so they don’t break during your trip. We have lots of first hand experience on what vacations and locations are easier for AIP compliance than others – so if you need help with this, just give us a call. 262.538.2140
