Local Flavor: Slide Sea Salt & Malt Vinegar

I'd been living here in Madison for well over 20 years before I learned that our fair burg used to be home to the third largest maker of potato chips in the nation, Red Dot. When I told my mother-in-law of my discovery, she revealed that she had worked there as a teenager. Founded in 1938 by Frederick J. Meyer, Red Dot lasted until 1973. The Madison factory building still stands at 1435 East Washington.

I think the Mullins Group owns it today and uses it for storage although it seems like items are put on display occasionally in the windowed room on the southeast side of the building. It is prime real estate and wouldn't be surprised to see it get the wrecking ball soon. You can get the Red Dot story from the Wisconsin Historical Society site here.

Forty-two years after the final Red Dot chip rolled out of the fryer, it was finally time once again for Madison to be home to a maker of potato chips. (Is there a term for these people? "Spudsmith"? "Taterwright"?) In 2015, Christine Ameigh was looking for a way to earn a few bucks during the winter months when her Slide Food Cart was out of action. The homemade potato chips available from the cart were popular and so she decided to scale up production for distribution to stores and thus was born Slide Gourmet Potato Chips. The spudsmithery kitchen where all the action takes place is, ironically, on East Washington. (The 2800 block.)

Ameigh has wisely thrown her hat into the salt & vinegar ring and chosen to go with malt vinegar. I have no issue with this as A) malt vinegar is extremely tasty and B) malt vinegar is vinegar.

The first thing I noticed about Slide's chips is that they are thicker than other brands. Nearly twice as thick as other chips, although I have admittedly not put a set of calipers to work in order to get specific numbers. These slices of spud are also darker than you normally see.

It's funny I should type those words because in the process of seeking information about Red Dot, I learned that they "worked closely with the University of Wisconsin's agricultural department to create the perfect potato for chips. The University continued to do research in this area after Red Dot folded and in 1990 introduced the Snowden potato, now considered the ultimate chipping potato." The Snowden was bred at the UW-Lelah Starks Potato Breeding Farm up in Rhinelander which is also responsible for the Wischip potato variety, by the way. We in Wisconsin may be known for cheese but we apparently also have researchers that take potato chips quite seriously.

In trying to find out a bit more about Snowden spuds, I found nothing but technical papers meant for agronomists or food chemists. But I got the impression that one of the reasons Snowdens are so good for chipping is that they require less reconditioning, something I was not familiar with. So I asked a friend of mine who was a food scientist in a former life about this. He replied:

"Temperature causes conversion of sugars to starch and vice versa so reconditioning takes the sugars, mostly sucrose, and converts them to starch which for chips will prevent them from caramelizing or [getting] deep dark brown.  The opposite process is great for vodka production (traditional Russian process)."

I never knew there was so much chemistry involved in potato storage.

Now, does Ameigh use unreconditioned potatoes? I have no idea. Slide is a small operation, not a big mechanized, Taylorized one like Frito Lay so perhaps she can't adhere to industry standard storage practices. Regardless, it is interesting that the Platonic ideal of a potato chip includes very little caramelization and browning which are so tasty. If you want to get an idea of how all of this reconditioning and whatnot affects the flavor of a potato chip, get some Dark Chips from Mrs. Fisher's down in Rockford, IL. They use a variety of potato with more sugar so you get a chip that emerges from the fryer quite browned. Then contrast them against your normal chips.

I found the Slide chips to have a slightly richer, roastier flavor than other chips (besides Dark ones) and I attribute this to the caramelization. The malt vinegar tasted great. It wasn't mouth-puckeringly strong but simply very flavorful. Ameigh showed restraint with the salt shaker. Just enough to enhance the taste but not enough to be intrusive and make the chips taste salty. Because these were thicker than average, the chips lacked a delicate crispness, they lacked that sharp snap when you break them. But they were very crunchy. Heavy but not mealy.

My only complaint is that the magic malt vinegar dust was not evenly distributed amongst the chips. While some could have used more, none had clumps of dust on them. For me, this lack of uniformity is not a big deal. These are great potato chips and they're local for me as well. (I believe they also use Wisconsin-grown potatoes.) Highly recommended.