The Offut Truth: Sea Salt & Vinegar Potato Chips by Spudlove

Like a great many people, I have been feeling a wanderlust lately. There are certainly places I have a preference for visiting but basically anywhere will do now after a year+ of isolation, social distancing, and fear of viruses. Sadly, while I have done some traveling, it has not been nearly enough to compensate for its near total absence in 2020 nor have I gone very far from home. And so I've been traveling vicariously via the Internet.

Unlike a great many people, I am not a tropical climate kind of guy. While I wouldn't turn down a free trip to Hawaii or the Caribbean or any other similar place, they just aren't high on my list of places to visit. No offense if sunny, sandy beaches are your thing; they're just not mine. I want to go north.

I want to travel above the Arctic Circle and take a stroll with the midnight sun shining down upon me. I want to sail the Arctic Ocean and make port so I can watch polar bears and penguins in their natural habitats. Or maybe I could go south to Antarctica. I think it would be extraordinarily neat to walk where Shackleton and his crew walked. To wander the vast stretches of snow and ice wondering if there are Elder Things slumbering beneath me. Now that's a vacation.

No trips to icy wastelands are planned at the moment but I was daydreaming one day about meeting up with Stellan Skarsgård in the far reaches of Norway where he'd show me where Insomnia had been filmed and I could witness for myself how 24-hour daylight drives people mad. We'd have a few beers and talk about manly things as we men are wont to do.

As I was researching such a trip, I came across the world's most expensive potato chips. They were made for a Swedish brewery, St. Eriks, and for ~$56 you got a box of 5 potato chips. Yes, this was a publicity stunt but I guess some of the proceeds went to charity. The chips were made from rare Swedish potatoes grown on a steep, south-facing slope and harvested by hand. They were infused with even more boreal terroir by their seasonings which included mushrooms picked in remote northern areas of Sweden by virgins wearing cotton gloves and seaweed harvested near the Faroe Islands but only after skillfully avoiding the kraken. Oh, and a bit of the wort used to make their IPA too.

I hope that whoever paid good kronor for these chips enjoyed them and that charities made out like bandits. I'd eat one, if offered to me for free, but I certainly wouldn't pay for them as they're not salt and vinegar. Speaking of which…

Things had gotten a bit desperate on the salt and vinegar front recently when I found myself straying from the course and buying my favorite snack flavor that wasn't on sliced and fried potatoes. So far, my editorial Reinheitsgebot remains intact and there are no plans to give these goodies a full review. But there will be commentary of some sort, I suppose.

However, I finally came across a new brand of chips while wandering the snack aisle at Woodman's: Spudlove. Truth be known, I looked at the bag and read "Spudlore", which I thought was a really neat name. After looking closer, I realized my error.

Spudlove appears to be very new – only about a year old. The company is out in Oregon and is owned by the farmers who grow the potatoes. Their chips are organic, non-GMO, and gluten-free. That's the story you get from their website and the bag.

I found an article that confused me. It sounds like "Spudlove Snacks" is the brand and that the company is actually Threemile Canyon Farms. The article notes that Threemile Canyon Farms is owned by R.D. Offut Farms which is described as being a "giant". The marketing material leads you to believe that Spudlove is wholly owned by a small cadre of farmers who grow the potatoes which are sent to the Spudlove processing facility where they are turned into potato chips by a group of dedicated potato chip enthusiasts. So who really owns what?

When I think of the leviathans of agri-business, I think of Archer-Daniels-Midland and Neil Young's favorite, Monsanto. But R.D. Offut lays claim to the title of this country's largest potato grower. They have potato fields in several states including here in Wisconsin, although I do not know where those are. It is no surprise that the company has run afoul of environmentalists. I don't claim to know all of the details, but alarm bells ring when I read pieces entitled "Op-ed:The High Cost of Cheap McDonald’s Fries". Apparently the company wants to expand its potato growing into some tribal lands in northern Minnesota and environmental watchdogs claim this will befoul the pristine areas.

Do I know exactly what would happen if those potato fields get the green light? No. Do I trust a giant multi-billion dollar company to do the right thing? Nope.

In addition to being organic and whatnot, Spudlove's chips are thick-cut and you can tell by looking at them that they are a few extra nanometers thicker than your normal chips. The edges were all brown so they leave the skin on. Color was less uniform than I am accustomed to as some chips had a more golden brown color than others.

Oil was the most prominent smell when I stuck my face into the back and took a whiff. Spud was next followed by a little bit of vinegar at the end.

If you didn't notice the thicker slice, you would definitely notice the big crunch. They are not advertised as being kettle cooked but they are instead "slow cooked". Presumably this contributes to the crunchiness as does as the spud's thickness. I did wonder as I was eating these chips if there's a difference between the crunch you get with kettle cooked chips and the crunch you get from a thicker cut. Or does a thicker cut necessitate a slower (i.e. – kettle) cooking method so the chips don't burn?

The salt level was average while the vinegar level was somewhere in the middle. I've had chips with more tang but also ones with less. These weren't exactly in the middle and instead leaned towards the light side. When I chewed the chips and let that potato paste sit on my tongue, I tasted a really nice roasty potato flavor. But that was underneath a taste that was like Worcestershire sauce. The label has "organic flavor" on it but Spudlove claim their chips are vegan. Perhaps they used an anchovy-less version of the venerable condiment. Regardless, the flavor was unexpected.

Offering only a medium-light dosage of vinegar drops these chips down in the rankings. Although I very much like Worcestershire sauce, I wish that flavor wasn't present here. Let the vinegar take pride of place and make another chip where it can shine. There was nothing unpalatable about Spudlove's take on my favorite snack but they deviated from the true nature of a salt and vinegar chip.