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We’re constantly trying to replicate store-bought treats in the Gardenerd kitchen, and this week we successfully tackled raw flax chips/crackers.  We did it all in the solar food dryer too – so the entire experiment was carbon neutral!

If you are looking for a substitute for potato chips or any other salty snack, you’ve got to try these flax chips.  They are nutritious and delicious – it’s hard to eat just one.  Here’s how we did it:

The Recipe –

Garlic Flax Crackers –  from Rawfoodliving.com

Ingredients:

• 2 cups flax seeds
• 1/4 cup Braggs Liquid Aminos
• 1 lemon, juiced
• 1 Tbsp garlic powder

Directions:

1. Soak flax seeds in 4 cups distilled water for 30 minutes or more. (filtered water worked fine)
2. Strain lightly through a cheese cloth or nut milk bag and add back to bowl. You don’t have to get all the liquid out,
   just the excess. It should still have a gel like consistency. (we used a sieve – it just took a little longer)
3. Add the remaining ingredients.
4. Spread onto Teflex lined dehydrator trays. Dehydrate at
   115 degrees F for about 4 hours. Flip the sheets over and remove the
   liners.
   Dehydrate for an additional 4 hours or until crisp. (Our solar food dryer hovers around 115 degrees, so this timing worked perfectly for us).

We used Pensey’s granulated garlic powder, a homegrown lemon, organic flax seeds and Braggs, of course.

The Process –

Soaking the seeds was easy.  Draining it was a little more work since we started out with a fine sieve. We moved to a lesser-fine sieve and that did the trick. The mixture will still be very liquidy even after draining it.

Then we mixed in all the other ingredients and poured the mixture onto silicone mats for food drying.

The Excalibur ParaFlexx non-stick dehydrator sheets sit on top of the dryer screen, then the flax mix gets poured on top of that. We spread out the flax mix to a thin layer and walked it out to the solar food dryer.

Temp reads 115 within minutes.  Flax chips are on their way.

Now,  regular readers know that nothing ever really goes off without a hitch in the Gardenerd kitchen, and this experiment would be no exception.  We noticed pretty quickly that the flax mix was heavier than expected, and because of that extra weight it started to slide off the mats toward the center of the dryer (like a heavy person sitting in the middle of a pool float with two little kids sitting on the ends).

While trying to keep the mixture from dripping off the mats, we panicked… then we located two glass mason jars and slid them under the drying screen, strategically placing them under the spaces between the second and third silicone mats.  This trick worked!  The screen was level and the mixture started to dry.

After 4 hours, we flipped over the sheets and peeled off them off the flax chips, which allows the chips to dry on the other side.  Back out into the sun they went, and a couple hours later they were crispy and done.

We brought them inside and broke them into chip-sized pieces, storing them in a glass container in the pantry for future snacking.

The Result

Delicious, garlicky, salty oh-so-satisfying snacks at your finger tips!  There are plenty of variations on this recipe, but this one seems the most simple.  If you don’t have a dehydrator, you can  use your oven at low temperatures to enjoy this great snack.