Zapp's: A Mo' Bettah Salt & Vinegar Chip?

Last weekend at the grocery store I was pushing my cart by the snack aisle and recalled that I used to chronicle my search for good salt & vinegar potato chips here. And now that I had resurrected the blog, I should probably start seeking out tasty chips once more. I honestly don't recall what I have written about in the past on this topic beyond the brands I'd tasted so let me give some prefatory notes. Apologies to anyone who has gone back and read the 15 year-old potato chip posts here and find that I am repeating myself.

Firstly I will declare that I think Vitner's Salt & Sour chips are the Platonic ideal of a salt and vinegar potato chip. Or were, at least. It's been a while since I've had them. And I'd swear that they were called "Salt & Vinegar" in the past and not "Salt & Sour". Heck, maybe I am misremebering that. But I don't feel that my memory fails me when I recall my roommate and I eating them by the bagful 20 years ago. They were something of an extreme food in that they were really salty and very tangy. When you got to the bottom of the bad, you'd encounter a layer of salt and acetic acid dust and then realize that your tongue had gone numb. Vitner's chips had a fragile crispness that perfectly complemented all of the oil they absorbed which made them ever so tasty.

At first blush the humble potato chip is a simple food. It's a deep fried slice of potato not some fancy French ragout with an ingredients list a mile long. But there are 200+ varieties of potatoes to be sliced and at what thickness?  Plus you've got an arsenal of frying oils at your disposal. In addition, there's your salt & vinegar dust. What are each in proportion to the other? How much do you put on each chip? Perhaps there's a little sumpin sumpin extra in the dust...

I'm no expert in this area and ingredient labels generally aren't very helpful in trying to pin things down. Indeed, the Zapp's label says that the potatoes were fried in peanut oil. Unless there was a little canola oil thrown in as well. Or maybe it was simply corn oil. Or sunflower. But I carry on.

I've always associated Zapp's with New Orleans because of all the fleur-de-lis and Mardi Gras references in their chip names and on their bags. But apparently they originate a bit west of Nawlins. Close enough, for this Yankee, at least.

A couple things stand out looking at the bag. A) I have no idea what "New Orleans Kettle Style" is supposed to mean. Sounds like marketing BS. B) why would one have to resort to artificially flavoring a salt & vinegar chip? Don't you just need salt and powdered acetic acid? Maybe it's a quirk of FDA regulations.

Anyway, here they are:

I thought they were thicker than your average chip. Mind you, I didn't bust out my calipers but they looked and felt so on my tongue. Were they sliced more thickly than your average Frito Lay chip? Or perhaps there was something in the cooking process that made them absorb more oil. Do those bubbles on the chip's surface distort my sense of thickness?

They have a taste/mouthfeel that is a bit mealy, kind of pasty. For me, Old Dutch chips have this in abundance so, if you're familiar with them, you know what I mean. (I hope.) Kettle chips are those cooked at a lower temperature initially and gradually increased. This apparently allows starch molecules to inject, um, well, starch into the cell walls which reinforces them. (I am envisioning a scene from Bruce Conner's A Movie here.) And so you get a crunchier potato chip. These, however, did not seem to be particularly rigid chips despite being New Orleans Kettle Style.

But they did have a nice medium sourness and saltiness to them. My tongue emerged largely unscathed but there was enough tanginess to satisfy. And - I realize this sounds odd - I liked the potato flavor. A nice mellow earthiness underneath the salt and sour. A worthy companion to your next crawfish boil. Or just bust open a bag next week for Fat Tuesday.