Lesser-Evil Potato Chips
Published on Thursday, July 29th, 2010 by James Norton
Before proceeding to sing the praises of these delicious, well-balanced potato chips, a slight diversion to make a point about marketing. Earnest is great. Extolling your ties to the land, even though it’s generally
greenwashing, is par for the course. But including language (and bold text!) on your bag of potato chips like “Start with
farm-grown potatoes cut into waves …” or “We start with
farm-grown potatoes, sliced nice and thick …” is straight-up ridiculous. Where else are they growing massive amounts of potatoes these days? Factories? Laboratories? Space? Even if any of these things were true, you could just refer to an indoor farm, a cutting-edge farm, or a space farm, or “farm” for short. Of course they’re freakin’ farm-grown.
Dispensing with the word games for a second: I tried two new varieties of Kettle Cooked chips, Kettle Cooked Crinkle Cut Original and Kettle Cooked Harvest Ranch. Both, as mass-marketed potato chips go, were good. The crunch was substantial, the salt level adequate but not over the top, the flavor balance excellent. Harvest Ranch claims to have the tang of buttermilk and sour cream; the ingredients include buttermilk and sour cream, and the chips taste of buttermilk and sour cream. It’s a minor miracle. The Crinkle Cut Original chips are even more interesting from an elemental perspective, as they have as few as three ingredients total: “Potatoes, Sunflower Oil and/or Corn Oil and/or Canola Oil, and Sea Salt. No preservatives.”
People are (justifiably) always carping about big companies and their soulless, chemical-laden, overly sweet or overly salty garbage food. And, granted, eating even handcrafted artisanal potato chips is not the fast road to good health. But if you’re going to have a salty snack, Kettle Cooked chips are an option worth considering.
James Norton edits the Upper Midwestern food journal Heavy Table. He's also the coauthor of a book on Wisconsin's master cheesemakers. For his Supertaster column, he samples offerings from supermarket aisles and fast-food menus. You can follow him on Twitter and fan him on Facebook. His wife, Becca Dilley, takes the photographs for Supertaster. She specializes in weddings and food photography, and is the coauthor of and photographer for the book on Wisconsin's master cheesemakers.
Guys, they're chips. Calm down. I love all the curmudgeons that congregate to this section.
Alright people get your stories straight. I think they accentuate the "farm-GROWN potatoes, SLICED nice and thick" to more put the emphasis on grown and sliced, as in the potato grew, and was sliced and fried. End of process. In opposition to one of their competitors Pringles who uses dehydrated potato flakes, like in instant mashed, to make their chips. AND- I know there is not much talk this...+READ
Alright people get your stories straight. I think they accentuate the "farm-GROWN potatoes, SLICED nice and thick" to more put the emphasis on grown and sliced, as in the potato grew, and was sliced and fried. End of process. In opposition to one of their competitors Pringles who uses dehydrated potato flakes, like in instant mashed, to make their chips. AND- I know there is not much talk this way or that, but potatoes in the US are not GMO. In fact, mainly our staple crops corn and soybeans are the only mass produced commodity that is. Not to say we can't make GMO crops. We can, but they are not as widely distributed as some might think. I understand it is hard for the every day person to know whether or not their food is GMO unless it is organic, then they can assume it isn't. But in general, anything processed with a corn or soy byproduct will be.
http://www.gmo-compass.org/eng/grocery_shopping/crops/23.genetically_modified_potato.html-COLLAPSE
What, no organically grown free range potatoes harvested by indigenous peoples from the middle slopes of the Andes and transported by llamas in hand woven rush baskets?