Types of Potato Chips

The United Kingdom and Ireland, crisps are potato chips which are eaten cold, while chips are similar to french fries and are served hot. Americans, Canadians, Australians, Indians, New Zealanders, many Europeans, and those in the West Indies use chips. Many other countries also call them chips. People in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland call them Kartoffelchips. The Japanese call them chippu.

In Ireland, the word Tayto is synonymous with potato chips after the Tayto brand and can be used to describe all varieties of chips, including those not produced by Tayto. In fact, the word has become a genericized trademark.

Seasonings have come into vogue around the world and now potato chips have such flavorings as dill pickle, ketchup, barbecue, salt and vinegar, sour cream and onion, and ranch dressing. There are wasabi chips, poutine, maple bacon, Jamaican jerk chicken, cheddar and lemon-lime, Greek feta and olive, Ballpark hot dog, and barbeque baby back ribs, among others.

In Germany they have red paprika and ready salted along with sour cream and onion, cheese, oriental, chakalaka, currywurst, red and white with tomato ketchup and mayonnaise. The Japanese have pizza-flavored chips along with nori and shiyo, consommé, wasabi, soy sauce and butter, garlic, plum, barbecue, pizza, mayonnaise, and black pepper. Chili, scallop with butter, teriyaki, takoyaki and yakitorie.

There are prawn cocktail, Worcester sauce, roast chicken, steak and onion, smoky bacon, lamb and mint, ham and mustard, barbecue rib, tomato ketchup, sausage and ketchup, pickled onion, Branston pickle, and Marmite.

You can also find Thai sweet chili, roast pork and creamy mustard sauce, lime and Thai spices, chicken with Italian herbs, sea salt and cracked black pepper, turkey and bacon, caramelized onion and sweet balsamic vinegar, stilton and cranberry, mango chili, and American Cheeseburger, English roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.

If you like them hot, you can find Mexican limes with chili, salsa with mesquite, Buffalo mozzarella tomato and basil, mature cheddar with Adnams broadside beer, Soulmate cheeses and onion, crawtator, Cajun dill, voodoo, and Creole onion.

New Potato Chip Flavor

Starting this month, Lay's Canada has a new flavor, 'Maple Moose'. Trying them will not be on my to do list.

My Two Favorite Foods Combined

Two of nature's most perfect foods combined into one. Hard to believe it took this long to come up with this treat for the ages.

Bacon flavored potato chips. It makes for a Happy Friday!

Hot Dog Chips

7-Eleven, has produced a new product - Big Bite Hot Dog Flavored Potato Chips. They are ketchup, mustard, and relish spiced chips. 

Others have been making hot dog chips for a while, Like Shearer's rippled hot dog chips, and Humpty Dumpty that are loaded hot dog with onions and relish flavors. Even Snyder's of Hanover produces hot dog chips. Go ahead, be daring.

Four More Uses for Potatoes

We all know that potato chips and french fries are natures almost perfect food, (next to bacon, of course). There are also more uses for potatoes you may enjoy.

Potatoes hold heat well, so warm one up and wrap it in a dishcloth and you have a great hot compress. Put a potato in the freezer for a while and you have a cold compress.

Cut a potato and rub on your hands to remove those stains from fresh berries. It the stains are extra tough, add some lemon juice to the potato.

Press a piece of raw cut potato against a cooking burn and it will soothe and remove the sting.

Mix some room temperature plain mashed potatoes with lemon juice and some milk for a soothing facial. Leave on your face for about 20 minutes and then rinse off to reveal soft skin.

Cut a potato in half and press the cut surface of a potato into the sharp edges of a broken light bulb. Unscrew the broken bulb with the potato. Don't forget to throw away the used potato with the broken bulb.

Bacon Cheddar Chips

Here is an interesting twist, potato chips on the outside and bacon with cheddar on the inside. Salty, crunchy, cheesy, and smoky, what more can a person want.

Butterz are hand formed and the bacon and cheddar are coated with an actual potato chip wrapped around. In fact, it’s a thick potato chip batter, like Pringles. They also have other flavors made by B More Nutz in Baltimore and are available online.

National Potato Chip Day

Yep, March 14 every year marks the day we celebrate the thin and crispy snack, the potato chip.

Potatoes were originally cultivated in South America, probably in Bolivia, Chile, and Peru. More than 400 years ago, the Inca Indians in those countries grew potatoes in their mountain valleys.

During the Alaskan Klondike gold rush, (1897-1898) potatoes were so valued for their vitamin C content that miners traded gold for potatoes.

Potato Chips were first made in 1853 while Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt was on vacation in Saratoga Springs, New York.  At one restaurant, he kept sending his fried potatoes back to the kitchen because he said they were "too thick".  The chef, George Crum, decided that he would cut them into paper-thin slices, boil them in oil, fry them, and salt them as a joke to the Commodore.  It backfired.  They became an instant success and the restaurant was well known for them.

It was the invention of the mechanical potato peeler in the 1920s that paved the way for potato chips to soar from a small specialty item to a top-selling snack food. For several decades after their creation, potato chips were largely a Northern dinner dish. I can still make a dinner of nothing but chips.

Of course, I am partial to Detroit's Better Made Potato Chips. Detroiters eat an average of 7 pounds of chips per year, vs. 4 pounds in the rest of the country  Better Made has even been sending chips to our troops in Iraq.

Chip facts - Chips are available in other countries, and are also called crisps and Saratoga chips. Potato chips have become America's favorite snack, and  US retail sales of potato chip are over $6 billion and 1.2 billion pounds a year. The thickness of an ordinary potato chip is 55/1000 of an inch. Ridged chips are 4 times thicker, 210/1000 of an inch. 50.4% of US potatoes come from Idaho. The potato was the first vegetable to be grown in space.

For those who have been wondering, yes, there are bacon potato chips. Who's Your Daddy makes handmade bacon potato chips. They are available on the web and in selected stores around San Francisco.

Potato Chip History

In 1853, it has been claimed that the first potato chips were prepared by Chef George Crum, an American Indian, at Moon's Lake House in Saratoga Springs, NY. When railroad magnate Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt was dining there, he sent his fried potatoes back to the kitchen, complaining they were "too thick."

The chef, George Crum retaliated by slicing paper thin strips of potatoes and frying them to a crisp. But Vanderbilt loved these "Saratoga Chips" and they became an instant success. I am trying to decide whether I love chips or bacon more. Ah, the dilemma.

Potato Chips are sooo Good

True - Oklahoma City resident Lahuma Smith, pled no contest to prostitution charges that she traded sex for a box of Frito-Lay potato chips.

According to the police report, undercover officers noticed Smith was flashing her headlights to 'catch' a date. They followed her car and found her with her blouse open and a man in the passenger seat pulling his pants up.

The man told police he was having marital problems and she told police the man said he was looking for company, but he didn’t have any money, so she agreed to be paid with a $30 case of Frito-Lay chips he had in his car. As much as I love potato chips, this one is not right. . . and they weren't even Better Made or Granny Goose potato chips.