New salt & vinegar potato chips are ever fewer on the ground these days but I have a new brand to review: Crav'n.
I initially saw it on the shelves of my local supermarket last year but have been quite the procrastinator for some reason. The name sounded familiar to me and my first thought was that I had seen it previously at Target and wondered what that chain's house brand was doing at the supermarket. Perusing the shelf, I came across not only salt & vinegar chips, but also salt & vinegar kettle chips. I had hit the jackpot!
Crav'n or, more accurately, Crav'n Flavor (with "Flavor" written vertically and to be read bottom to top) is a brand owned by Topco Associates, LLC. Although based in suburban Chicago these days, the corporation started out as a cooperative called Food Cooperatives, Inc. in 1944. It was formed by a group of Wisconsin grocers as a means to deal with wartime shortages of dairy products and paper goods. Today the member-owners are from all around the country and the company's website has a map of where they are located/headquartered. A corporate entity from the Madison area is marked on the map but I cannot determine what it is. When I look up the companies in the list provided, I don't see anything headquartered in these parts. So it's a mystery.
These Crav'n chips are the first I've come across, to the best of my recollection, that have a food safety warning.
WARNING: Consuming this product can expose you to chemicals including acrylamide, which is known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.
What is acrylamide and why had a I never seen a warning about it on potato chips bags before? Frito Lay sells chips in California so it wasn't simply buying a brand distributed there for the first time. Maybe bags of Lays salt & vinegar chips sold out in the Golden State have this warning on them but not the bags sold elsewhere. Perhaps the Crav'n folks just didn't want to be printing up bags bound for but a single state.
So what is this acrylamide stuff? The FDA defines it as "a substance that forms through a natural chemical reaction between sugars and asparagine, an amino acid, in plant-based foods – including potato and cereal-grain-based foods. Acrylamide forms during high-temperature cooking, such as frying..." The National Cancer Institute notes that the "major food sources of acrylamide are French fries and potato chips; crackers, bread, and cookies; breakfast cereals; canned black olives; prune juice; and coffee."
So Maillard reactions, which produce some of the tastiest foods ever devised by humanity - coffee, toast, German beer - also laces them with a carcinogen?!
As Palmer says in The Thing, you gotta be fuckin' kidding.
The NCI notes that tobacco smoke has much more acrylamide than food and that the carcinogenic properties of the compound were found in mice. Reading further it says, "However, a large number of epidemiologic studies in humans have found no consistent evidence that dietary acrylamide exposure is associated with the risk of any type of cancer".
Whew! Dodged a bullet there.
Let's start with the regular, non-kettle variety.
They looked to be just a hair thicker than your normal cut of potato chip. The surface of the chips was bubbly and had the occasional brown spot, but mainly they were of a light yellow color. Poking my nose in the bag and taking a whiff, I caught a big earthy potato aroma, a hearty dose of oil, and just a hint of vinegar.
Biting into one, I found it to be light and crispy before my tongue was assaulted by the acetic acid. These had a healthy vinegar tang to them which was addictive in the best way. After the chips had been chewed on, I tasted a good earthy and slightly sweet potato flavor. The oil flavor was mild and had a nice clean oleaginous taste to it as if they had used fresh stuff.
Onto the kettle-cooked variety.
In addition to having "kettle cooked" in large, friendly letters on it, the bag had a darker color scheme and featured different decanter of vinegar than its regular cousin. That one had a cruet that I associate with, less upscale restaurants, shall we say. Not places that health inspectors should close, just not hoity toity joints. And that metal cap ensures that the vinegar comes out in short, controlled bursts. On the other hand, the kettle cooked bag has a slightly fancier decanter - more like a small jug with a handle. So you can just easily pour as much vinegar as you like.
These chips smelled almost exactly like their non-kettle cousins with an aroma that was equal parts potato and oil but very little vinegar. Unlike their more workaday cousins, a deeper yellow color was prevalent with some lovely golden brown spots, especially the edges. It was readily apparent that they were thicker than normal and they had rough/bubbly surfaces.
Instead of delicate crispiness, these kettle chips had a good, solid crunch to them. A nice oil taste accompanied a potato flavor that was sweeter than above. Despite the decanter that promised no limit to the vinegar it could pour, the tang here was middle of the road.
Both of these styles of chips were very good but I prefer the regular ones as they had more vinegar zing to them and a slightly more earthy potato flavor. Honestly, these were probably the closest to the Platonic ideal of a salt & vinegar chip (i.e. - Vintner's) that I've come. They were really great.
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