Moscow Food Co-op Food ReviewPotato chips
by Vicki Reich, from the August 2001 Newsletter
I felt like quite a pig as I left the Co-op with this month's taste test candidates overflowing from three shopping bags.
Potato chips just take up a great deal of space—I convinced myself as I opened a bag to do a little pre-test sampling.
It's hard to find anyone who doesn't like potato chips, and it's also hard to find a group of people to agree on what makes a great potato chip. This was the case with the Hog Heaven Handspinners, my valiant group of testers. Everyone was very excited to test the chips but we came to no consensus on which was the best. And since I am bored with writing the play by play of tastings, I thought I'd tell you about the history of the potato chips instead. Don't worry, I'll fill you in on all the chips we tasted at the end.
As you probably know, potatoes are a New World food, but early colonists fed them mostly to pigs. They thought eating potatoes shortened your life. The colonists believed potatoes had aphrodisiac properties and the behavior they induced was life shortening. They obviously didn't know what they were missing. There's nothing like a good Lay's potato chip.
It wasn't until the French got their hands on potatoes that people realized their potential (those French have a way of touching things). The French sliced them thick and fried them up, creating what we now know as French fries. Thomas Jefferson brought French fries back with him in the 1700's. By the 1800's they were a popular item on restaurant menus.
In 1853 at Moon Lake Lodge in Sarasota Springs, New York, a rather persnickety customer thought his French fries were too thick so he sent them back. The chef, a Native American named George Crum, didn't appreciate customers sending food back, so to retaliate he cut the potatoes really thin, fried them to a crisp and salted the heck out of them. Thinking he would show this rude customer who was boss, he sent them out with a mischievous grin on his face. Much to his surprise, the customer loved them. Thus was born the potato chip, known at the time as the Sarasota Chip.
Chips became very popular in New England, but it wasn't until Mrs. Scudder invented wax paper bags to transport potato chips and keep them fresh, that they gained wider appeal. And in the 1920s it was Herman Lay, a traveling salesman from the South, who made potato chips the very popular item they are today.
There are so many choices in chips today, it's hard to decide which to buy. They come in so many different flavors I can't even begin to list them. I've even seen chocolate covered ones. You can get thick chips, thin chips, chips with ridges, kettle cooked chips, baked chips, no-fat and low-fat chips, even ones that are made from reconstituted potatoes and shaped into chips.
For the taste test, I chose only lightly salted chips. The Co-op carries seven different lightly salted chips. They range in price from $.85-$4.19 and in size from 1 ounce to 1 pound. Kettle Foods makes four of the seven chips we sampled. Kettle's original lightly salted chips were liked by the most people. They're super crispy with enough salt and a good potato flavor. We also tasted the organic version of these just to see if there was a difference. There was a slight flavor difference, but they were basically the same chip without the pesticides. Kettle Crisps were the only baked chips we tried. They are very potatoey since there is no oil to overwhelm the flavor. They were not a favorite, but it probably wasn't fair to taste them next to their full fat brethren.
The last Kettle chip was the Krinkle Cut. They are the dip chip of choice. They are thick and the ridges make them stiff enough to stand up to any dip you put them in. They taste good too. The salt and pepper ones are my personal favorite. Barbara's potato chips are not a good dip chip. They are light, delicate, and flavorful and reminded us of Lay's. Season's Reduced Fat Rippled Potato Chips are another light chip with a good crunch, not very much salt, and a bit like Ruffles. The last chip we tasted was Terra Yukon Golds. These are made from Yukon potatoes and have slightly sweet creamy flavor like the potatoes they're made with. They are thick and salty with a lovely yellow color. My husband loved them.
So there you have it. A history lesson and the taste test results. And the moral of this article, you can't go too wrong if you start with a potato.
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