You got potato chips in my croutons! You got croutons in my potato chips!: Hen of the Woods Red Wine Vingear Kettle Cooked Potato Chips

Hen of the Woods is a snack company out of Cincinnati. Their website tells an origin story involving 3 area chefs who were on a mission to make a gluten-free crouton. "Countless trials later we found it," it claims, "and our Red Wine Vinegar potato chips born [sic]." This sounds more than a bit suspicious to me. How do you go from croutons to potato chips? With drugs.

I bet they were tinkering around with sorghum or millet or corn and got frustrated. So they popped open a few cold ones and then lit a doobie. Finding themselves more than a bit hungry, they ordered a pizza. But the munchies just wouldn't wait so they busted out a bag of potato chips which got into a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup-like accident with a nearby cruet of red wine vinegar. Viola! The snack at hand was born.

That's my hypothesis, anyway.

Hen of the Woods is a type of mushroom but the company's website makes no mention of how it got named after a mushroom. (A 'shroom, eh? Hmm...)

This is apparently the first time I've encountered a salt & vinegar chip made with red wine vinegar. I thought that I'd tasted one or at least a chip that had red wine vinegar in addition another variety but, alas, I can find no evidence of such a snack. Too bad as red wine vinegar is very tasty with a fruity, vinous flavor. It's my preferred vinegar for potato salad.

These chips were light in color - a very light yellow - with some brown edges. When I stuck my nose in the bag and took a whiff, it caught mainly oil. But there was a faint vinegar tang and a hint of potato as well.

In addition to being kettle cooked, these spuds were also sliced more thickly than your normal chip. As expected, they had a high crunch factor. Concomitant to that, however, was a kind of mushiness. Kind of like a Tootsie Roll Pop with its hard candy shell encasing a soft interior. It was as if these chips were thickly sliced and not cooked long enough to imbue crunchiness throughout.

This crunchy-mushy yin-yang thing aside, they had a lovely creamy potato flavor. They went easy on the salt but get a pass, I suppose, since they're advertised as vinegar chips and not salt & vinegar. The vinegar was firm but stopped short of corrosive strength. And I could taste the red wine part of it.

Although perhaps not as tangy as is my preference in these matters, these are excellent chips. The vinegar tastes wonderful as do the chips, texture issues aside. The tang and spud comingle perfectly here.

I would also add that Hen of the Woods kept things basic in this recipe. There are no "natural" flavorings to be had. You've got some citric acid added to the holy trinity of potato, oil, and vinegar powder but that's it. You don't need to adulterate a salt & vinegar chip. Keeping it simple is a winning formula.