Crispy Garlic Chips Are The Salad Topping You Didn't Realize You Were Missing

Bland salads seem to finally be a thing of the past. Flavorless salads are in nobody's interest, so recipe developers have been getting creative. These days, there are so many innovative salad recipes with plenty of new additions when it comes to taste, texture, and ingredients.

Now, you can find (or make) one more addition to elevate your next salad to another level — crispy garlic chips. As delicious as they sound, garlic chips are the perfect ingredient to sprinkle on your salad to add a crispy topping. Once you've sliced your garlic clove into thin pieces, just pan-fry them in oil until they're golden and crispy. After transferring them to a paper towel to cool, you can use them immediately or store them for later. If you want to add a nice crunch to your salad, using them on the same day will help you get the crispiest texture. After frying the garlic, you can even keep the oil as a homemade garlic oil to use for salad dressings, marinades, or drizzling.

Garlic chips make the perfect crunchy topping for plenty of salad recipes, but if you're stuck, here are a few ideas to get you started. Add garlic chips to a classic Italian salad. Garlic is used in many Italian dishes, and crushing garlic chips on a salad featuring tomatoes and olives will accentuate the already present flavors and add a caramelized garlicky taste.

Salads with a savory, crunchy element could be replaced with crispy garlic chips, such as a Thai grilled chicken noodle salad. If you want your salad to have an extra layer of crunch, keep the existing crunchy element in the salad recipe and add garlic chips on top.

Crispy and creamy are known to be texture best friends, which is also why any salad with a creamy dressing, such as a homemade Caesar dressing, would benefit from some crispy garlic chips. Apart from salads, sprinkle garlic chips anywhere you'd normally use garlic: Steak, noodle dishes, fries, or even on top of pizza. The possibilities are endless!

Since your garlic chips need to be crispy to elevate the texture of your dish, here are some tips to give you a crunch on every bite. Be sure to cut your garlic as thin and evenly as possible. This will help each piece crisp up at the same rate with no burnt or undercooked outliers. Another tip to ensure even cooking is to spread your pieces evenly when frying, breaking up any clumps.

To avoid soggy garlic chips, make sure you are letting your cooked chips drain on a paper towel afterward. Let them cool completely on the paper towels to allow the excess oil to be soaked up. If you're using your garlic chips as a topping for a dish, make sure you add them as the last element right before serving. Saving your garlic chips until the end will prevent them from soaking up the moisture from dressings or other wet ingredients.

If you have leftover garlic chips and still want to keep them crispy, storing them in an airtight container in the fridge should do the trick. Try not to forget about your crispy pieces, though, because they will start to lose their crunch over time.