The Great Salt & Sour Debate

Whether it's me having gotten older and my taste buds more mature or the fact that I have so much German & Slavic blood in me, I don't know. What I do know is that, in the potato chip world, my favorite province is that of Salt & Sour, a.k.a – Salt & Vinegar. That intense rush of NaCl and CH3COOH is tongue-numbing and leaves me puckering for quite some time after indulging myself. I'm not sure when I first started riding the Salt & Sour Horse, but it was probably several years ago, just after I got out of college. I quickly found a favorite brand and stuck to it for a few years. But, starting just after the turn of the millennium, I found myself trying other brands looking for that rush. During travels down South in 2002, I eagerly grabbed a bag of an unknown brand at each gas station we stopped at to fuel up. My general conclusion was that the salt & sour chips outside of the Upper Midwest sucked. And they got worse the further south we drove. For me, a good salt & sour chip should be very salty and very sour. A dash of salt and a drop of vinegar just doesn't cut it. Before my first review, let's dig into the history of the venerable potato chip or "crisp", if you're across The Pond. (I glean my history from Atlas of Popular Culture in the Northeastern United States and answers.com.)

The potato chip was invented sometime in the summer of 1853 (August 24th, in some accounts) by the man below.



This is George Crum. Crum was a chef at the Moon Lake Lodge in Saratoga Springs, New York. A customer (Cornelius Vanderbilt in some surely apocryphal versions of the story), kept sending his fried potatoes back to the kitchen because they were too thick and soggy. Fed up with the customer, Crum sliced his potatoes super-thin and fried them up. Much to his surprise, the man loved them. They soon became a regular item on the lodge's menu as "Saratoga Chips". Almost unbelievably, it took another hundred years for technology and ingenuity to produce the first seasoned potato chips. This was done by Tayto, an Irish snack maker. In 1954, it produced Onion & Cheese and Salt & Vinegar potato chips. The rest is, as they say, history. So, onto the first review.



Today's entry is the Malt Vinegar & Sea Salt chip from the Boulder Natural Foods company. I picked up a 5 oz. bag at the Co-op. I'd give the price but it's not on the receipt so I got it at the 100% discount. The bag blurts out at me, "INTENSE POTATO CHIPS!" and "Thick Sliced". They were right on the second count. The chips are about 50% thicker than your regular Frito Lay variety. I'm not sure from what kind of potatoes they're made from but the chip size is on the small side which means taking some from the bag was followed by more spillage than I care to see. The nuggets of potato are fried in sunflower or safflower oil.

Biting into one, I find a great texture. Nice and crunchy but not like some brands where you feel like you're biting into a piece of dried wood. And they taste good. I love malt vinegar and you can definitely taste the malty goodness. They also throw in some apple cider vinegar for good measure and there's a hint of it to be had towards the back of your tongue. Salt comes ahead of vinegar in the ingredients list but it's not particularly prominent, allowing the vinegar to take center stage. I wish the flavors were a bit more balanced but, overall, they taste good. One thing that these chips are not is intense. I had to eat about half the bag before my tongue started to become useless as a tasting instrument and puckering was never even a thought.

These chips get high marks for their taste with the combination of malt and apple cider vinegars as well as for their texture which is near-perfect crunchiness. However, they're intensity level is quite low. I've had blander but these just don't have much oomph.