The Pennywise of Potatoes: Mrs. Fisher's Salt & Vinegar Potato Chips

I have been a fan of the Dark potato chips from our neighbors in Rockford, IL, Mrs. Fisher's, for a while now. They just taste extra rich and roasty and I have lamented that I've never found a salt & vinegar chip from them. Until now. Or rather a recent shopping trip at the Woodman's in Sun Prairie.

For as long I have been a fan of their chips I have been a fan of their packaging as it features an anthropormorphic potato who knows a fine milliner dancing with a couple of kids. It's something of a Rorschach test as the look on the spud's face can be interpreted as being gay & mirthful or simply menacing. Personally I see it as the latter because, to my eyes, he looks like he's about ready to throw the children into a cauldron of hot oil and kettle fry them up before salting them down.

And I love the company motto: "VITA SEALD". Who needs that second E? The life essences of potatoes are sealed in each bag. Or the life essences of children? Hmm...

The bag notes that these chips are "thick sliced" (not thickly) and so they were. They were also of a fairly narrow diameter. By and large these chips were lightly colored - yellow - but there were brown bits to be had as well including an occasional brown edge. The surfaces were well-bubbled and featured plenty of large salt crystals which raised my blood pressure just by looking at them. They looked very deer-friendly. A delightful earthy-sweet potato flavor was up front on the nose followed by oil and a touch of vinegar. Usually oil is most prominent so this was a nice change of pace.

The thick cut yielded a nice, big crunch. Those salt crystals kicked up the salinity as expected and there was plenty of vinegar tang to match. Truth in labeling here. As for the potatoes, they provided a rich, earthy-sweet taste that I liked because it was earthy tasting first.

Mrs. Fischer's has another winner here. These are on par with Vitner's as far as the salt & vinegar go. Eating them I thought I was pickling my viscera. The difference is that these are thicker and crunchier than Vitner's. A very fine chip. Highy recommended.

Crisps: The good and the ugly

I found myself at a grocery store in Verona this morning so of course I kept my eyes peeled for salt & vinegar crisps. Lo and behold, I came upon one that I'd never had before. I believe I've had this flavor by Kettle Chips but of the non-avocado oil variety.

I then stumbled across these and found myself appalled.

From Our Family to your mouth

In my previous salt & vinegar chips review, I tasted some that I had bought while preparing for a trip up north. This time I taste chips that I bought while up north.

My venture to the northwoods brought me to Spooner and I stopped in at Schmitz's Economart hoping to find some locally-sourced wild rice, artisanal pemmican, or a new brand of salt & vinegar potato chips. I succeeded on this last count only, although I happened up a nice loaf of cranberry wild rice bread as well.

I hadn't been to Spooner in 40 years or so but Schmitz's Economart has been in that area since 1937 so it's quite possible I'd been to a previous incarnation of the store as a boy. It was an impressive place for a town of 2,600. Or a city of 260,000, for that matter. They stocked a fair number of trendy organic products and things like brown rice syrup that I wouldn't expect at a store up north.

I found foods from the Our Family brand including salt & vinegar chips. I've never seen their products in Madison, as best I can recall, but they're available in most of the continental U.S. outside of large coastal cities and the South. Their Facebook page links them to the SpartanNash Company which owns grocery stores, brands, and does wholesale food distribution. They're out of Michigan.

The bag is revealing in 2 ways. First, it says that the it was distributed by Pique Brands which I presume is another subsidiary of SpartanNash. Gotta love how "Our Family" is really just another Giganto Corp. Second thing is that the ingredient list has neither vinegar nor acetic acid on it. Instead we have malic acid and sodium (sodi-yum!) diacetate. I see here that sodium diacetate is a salt of acetic acid so I guess it counts. I don't recall ever seeing a salt & vinegar chip that didn't have vinegar or acetic acid listed as an ingredient.

Sticking my nose inside the bag and inhaling, I smelled a lot of oil and a slightly lesser amount of starchy spud goodness. Taking a deeper breath, I managed to sniff out a bit of tang. The chips were mainly a darkish yellow in color with some spots that were more of a light gold.

These are kettle chips and they had the requisite crunch to them. While they were on the salty side, the sour tang was rather mellow. I liked the potato flavor but it seemed restrained. Normally I chew a few chips and move the resulting paste around on my tongue and I get that creamy, toasty, starchy flavor coming through loud and clear. But with these, that flavor was dialed down. I wonder if that's because of the variety of potatoes used. Or perhaps one of the other ingredients did something to my tongue so that it registered a duller kind of spud flavor.

Regardless, I'd rate these chips as good but not great. The lack of vinegary tang being the biggest culprit.

Chips for the Great Outdoors

Earlier in June I stopped in at my local Cabela's to get some rain gear in anticipation of a trip up north. It took me a while but I finally found just the right waterproof jacket and a hat to boot. Standing in the checkout line, I noticed rows of potato chips. Salt & vinegar potato chips, no less, so I just had to get a bag of Uncle Buck's.

I was reminded of the movie of the same name starring John Candy which, in turn, brought another movie of his, The Great Outdoors, to mind. Would these chips pair well with a 96oz steak?

Bass Pro Shops are no doubt too busy selling lures, rods, and reels to be slicing potatoes and frying them up. The back of the bag revealed the people behind the curtain: 1 in 6 Snacks out of Raleigh, North Carolina was responsible for these here chips.

The name comes from a statistic that the founders heard back when they started the company: 1 in 6 Americans didn't know where their next meal would come from. This being the case, some proceeds from their snack sales go to a local food bank by which I assume they mean one out in North Carolina.

In 2021, just over 10% of American households were food insecure, which is a great improvement over 1 in 6. Of course, looking at folks whose incomes are closer to the poverty line, you find more food insecurity. With various pandemic relief programs ending, I suspect food insecurity will go up.

Closer to home, I have given to Second Harvest Foodbank of Southern Wisconsin, though it's been too long. Here in the Eastmorland Neighborhood, the SS Morris Community AME Church has a food pantry on the 1st and 3rd Saturdays of the month.

Now, unless I am drastically mistaken, North Carolina barbecue sauce is vinegar-based so I figured the 1 in 6 folks knew one of the key ingredients of my beloved potato chip style.

Looking at the ingredient list, I saw balsamic vinegar powder, balsamic vinegar, vinegar powder, white distilled vinegar, malic acid, and citric acid. These appeared to be the potato chip equivalent of Xenomorph blood. Would I lift the bag only to have the chips spill out from a hole in the bottom? Perhaps it has a special lining to keep from being eaten away.

I was impressed after sticking my face in the bag and taking a big whiff. Normally I get a noseful of fryer oil and, while these chips had a prominent oil aroma, I could also smell vinegar. How could I not with all those acids? They were a nice yellow color with an occasional brown area. The edges were generally dark but I am unsure if that's because the skin was left on or if there's some kind of fryer thermodynamics at play here where small surface areas brown quickly or some such thing.

These were kettle style chips and had a very nice crunch to them. A tasty, creamy potato flavor was bolstered by a firm saltiness. I've had saltier chips but most have less. The vinegar was much the same strength. A really nice tang was to be had and they were more sour than most chips but not quite in the very upper echelon of tongue numbing snacks.

Considering the various vinegars and acids on the ingredients list, I expected more puckering tang. Still, these were quite good chips that gave solid doses of salt and vinegar that are no doubt appreciated by all the Babe Winkelman types out there, in addition to our cat Grabby.

They're on dust!: Siete Sea Salt & Vinegar Kettle Cooked Potato Chips

Another new brand for me. Siete Family Foods is based in Austin, Texas and was apparently started by a Mexican-American family. One member, Veronica Garza, had health conditions which prevented her from eating corn, amongst other things. The search for foods that wouldn't trigger her condition eventually led to Siete. Judging by the website, it appears gluten was her enemy.

The About Us section ends with, "Siete Family Foods is a mission-based company, and we're passionate about making and sharing real food, gathering together in authentic community, and advocating for healthier lifestyles among Latino families." When did a heart-warming, human tale become mandatory for company origin stories? What about "We were broke and loved potato chips so we used the trailer home for collateral on a loan for a snack food company."?

I just find these pathos-laden stories at corporate websites to be unconvincing. All the best to Ms. Garza and there may be heaps of truth in that story, but you're pushing carbs drowned in fat. They may be vegan carbs drowned in fat but I just don't see this as advocacy for a healthier lifestyle.

On the other hand, Siete deserves credit in the taste department for making a capsicum-laced salt & vinegar chip. I think I've only encountered one other such chip, Lillie's Q Hot Pepper Vinegar Kettle-Cooked chips. Here, Siete has lightly dusted the potatoes with serrano powder.

Serrano chilies are hotter than the jalapeno but easier on your tongue than a habanero. They have a sharp, sprightly flavor and I tend to think of them as a workhorse chili that labors in the background. Jalapenos get all of the glory in Mexican cuisine but I think serranos are used in a lot of commercial products like salsa.

These chips were thicker than average and I have to wonder if consumers take "kettle cooked" to mean thick as opposed to cooking them with increasing temperatures. They were light in color and had a bubbly, rough surface texture. There appeared to be some skin on the edges as well as an occasional brown spot. Taking a sniff of the bag, I was pleasantly surprised to smell mainly potato as opposed to oil, which is usually the most prominent aroma. Perhaps the avocado oil here lends itself to melding into the olfactory background. The potato had a great earthy scent. Behind the oil was a hint of vinegar.

As expected, a big crunch was to be had. Unlike those red wine vinegar chips I had a couple months back, these did not have a mushiness lurking inside. They were 100% unalloyed crunch. The salt was applied with a light touch and, unfortunately, so was the vinegar. The bag advertises a hint of serrano and so it was. But, as I chowed down more of these, the chili heat slowly built and the pepper's bright taste became more evident.

There is a lot to like here with a nice potato flavor and a gentle sprinkling of serrano dust which rewards the eater the more of these chips they eat. Clever. Sadly, they lack a tang worthy of the salt & vinegar appellation. Otherwise these are an excellent snack.

Siete gets points in my book for keeping it simple as there are no flavorings, natural or otherwise here, beyond the basics. Well, there's some citric acid there but that's as far afield as they go.

Herr's Kettle Cooked Boardwalk Salt & Vinegar Potato Chips

The intricacies of running a supermarket are a mystery to me. There are times when I witness the shelves being stocked with fresh goods and then find myself out in the main aisle next to a palette of cans of crushed tomatoes with an inch of dust on them. I will buy a certain tried and true brand for months or even years and then one day it is gone. Nowhere to be found. Well, not on any shelf at my local supermarket but perhaps still available at other stores in town.

Are the managers always on the lookout for aging canned vegetables sitting in some warehouse that can be sold for just a few pennies less? Do my favorite products go missing because of a personal beef between distributor and buyer? Such are the vagaries of the supermarket business, I guess.

But sometimes the winds of the grocery trade are in my favor. Such was the case on a recent shopping trip which saw me slowly wandering aisles and casting inquiring glances at the end caps which held snacks by brands I’d never heard of while others held bags of junk food by familiar brands but of flavors unknown to me.

One end cap held bags aplenty from Herr’s, a brand out of Pennsylvania. While I’d seen their chips around town before, I didn’t recall ever them at my local store nor of ever having run into their salt & vinegar variety. Realizing my luck was in, I eagerly grabbed a bag of them before the winds of Fate changed.

The bag I bought notifies eaters that it had been made with artificial flavors. Looking online for more info, I see many pictures of bags without that warning. Had the formula changed? The ingredients list I find on the net is:

Potatoes, Vegetable Oil (contains one or more of the following: Corn, Cottonseed, Sunflower), Salt, Lactose, Sodium Diacetate, Malted Barley Flour, Citric Acid, and Natural Flavor.

Perhaps this is the old one and I just haven’t stumbled across the new listing with the synthetic ingredients. The need to artificially flavor a salt & vinegar potato chip still eludes me even after all of the sampling I’ve done.

Herr’s sliced these chips thicker than your average potato snack. Poking my nose into the bag and inhaling, I smelled mostly oil but also a little potato. The vinegar became apparent after some up close sniffling. The chips were uniformly lightly colored. That yellowish off white was rarely punctuated with brown except on the edges where it looked like the skin remained.

These had the requisite crunch of a kettle chip and enough salt to fell a horse. I suspect they could double as ice melt for your sidewalk in winter. In addition to satisfying the salt half of salt & vinegar, Herr’s ensured they did the same for the other as these chips had a good, firm tang to them. After some extended sampling, my tongue got numb.

Herr’s did themselves proud here. They are like a thicker version of Vintner’s, the platonic ideal of a salt & vinegar potato chip. Highly recommended for some serious snacking.

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.

Potato Chips Go Seasonal: Kettle Brand Apple Cider Vinegar Chips

Eating seasonally was once a fact of life for humanity but I’d bet that most Americans can barely understand the concept today. I mean truly understand it, not just have the expectation of a plethora of products imbued with some combination of nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, and clove come the autumn. You no longer have to wait until fall for apples because your local supermarket has them year-round. No one in Wisconsin is restricted to eating fresh strawberries in June because we can get our hands on them whenever we please. Thanks to advances in food preservation and transportation, “in season” no longer means that the fruits and vegetables in your area are ripe for the picking, but rather that they are at their cheapest and, perhaps, best quality.

As I alluded to above, I suspect that, for many, eating seasonally is about the consumption of pumpkin spice this and that in the fall. What started as a latte flavoring has spread to divers processed foods including breakfast cereals, Spam, yoghurt, candies, cookies, and so on. I became resigned to the inevitabity that potato chips would succumb to pumpkin spice madness and, when I saw the orange Kettle Brand bag and “Limited Batch” emblazoned on it just below a leaf, I figured its time had come.

But reading on, I was mighty pleased to see that these autumnal chips were not laced with nutmeg or cinnamon, but rather with apple cider vinegar. Not only had the Kettle folks defied convention by eschewing the dreaded pumpkin spice route, but they had created a salt & vinegar chip instead. Furthermore, I spied this snack during its appointed season so credit to Kettle once again for not prematurely releasing a fall seasonal around Memorial Day, an affliction of craft beer brewers.

I would have sworn that I have reviewed a salt & vinegar chip here that was made with apple cider vinegar but I cannot find any evidence of having done so.

Your basic salt & vinegar chip relies on the sharp tang of acetic acid and whatever other acids the manufacturer puts on their chips plus other flavorings such as lactose or another kind of sugar. Fairly rare are chips that use another type of vinegar.

Malt vinegar seems to be the most common alternative to the plain white stuff or pure, unadulterated acetic acid. Having been prepared from barley and perhaps other grains, it has some of the flavor of the cereals. Wine vinegars have some of the taste of the grape juice from which it was made and so cider vinegar tastes a bit like apple juice.

Apples and their juice apparently contain a lot of malic acid and so cider vinegar undergoes another type of fermentation in addition to main yeasty one. In this bonus act, Leuconostoc oenos bacteria nom on the malic acid turning it into lactic acid which is less sour. Ergo apple cider vinegar is a bit mellower than the white stuff in addition to containing appley flavors and whatever other ones Leuconostoc oenos comes up with.

Now whether any of these pomaceous subtleties will come through in a powder on a potato chip is unknown so let’s try these puppies out.

These chips are cut thicker than normal and are nicely spotted with brown giving them a more well-done appearance than usual. Sticking my nose into the bag, I find that it smells mainly of oil but with a nice dose of potato as well. Catching a whiff of vinegar requires getting all up close and personal with the chips.

As expected from the Kettle Brand brand, the chips had a big crunch to them. They went easy on the salt (Note they’re Apple Cider Vinegar, not Salt & Apple Cider Vinegar.) but there was no lack of Maillardy goodness here as the potatoes had a rich and toasty flavor plus they had a nice creaminess to them. While the apple cider vinegar was really tasty with its mellow fruity notes, I felt the Kettle folks used a light touch in applying the magic vinegar powder. More please!

Very good chips but hopefully there will be more vinegar in next year’s batch.

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.

A Balancing Act: Fareway Kettle Cooked Salt & Vinegar Potato Chips

When I find myself away from home, I like to stop at a grocery store wherever I am to compare and contrast what's on offer versus what I have available to me at home. I don’t dedicate a lot of time to this nor do I go far out of my way to hit a grocery store. But, if there's time and a store in fairly close proximity, I make the trek. From my admittedly limited experiences, I have concluded that supermarkets around the country generally don't offer a whole lot of regional variation when it comes to types of foods. Sure, I'll find unfamiliar brands on the shelf but rarely foods that I cannot buy down the street at my local supermarket.

I recall going to a grocery store in Alabama several years ago. The cheese selection was inferior to that of any Wisconsin store, as is to be expected, but it was disappointing to find only 1 item that seemed to be Southern and unavailable at home: boiled peanuts. However, while on my first shopping trip after returning to Madison, I spied cans of boiled peanuts at Woodman's. All was not lost, though, as the store carried beers by Mississippi's Lazy Magnolia Brewing Company and one was brewed with pecans while sweet potatoes were used in another. I was happy to have had found some form of regional particularity in the store.

Better luck was had in Louisiana many years ago when I was down there to deal with my father's estate after his death. I ended up staying in the Pelican State for a few weeks because the Teamsters couldn't get a moving truck over there in anything approaching a timely manner. Everything moves more slowly in the South, you see. Anyway, I was down there alone for 2 or 3 weeks so I had plenty of time to check out what the local supermarket had on offer.

It was no surprise that the cheese selection made me realize how spoiled we are here in Wisconsin because it was not good. I also recall that they had ready-to-eat fried chicken dirt cheap. It was like a dozen pieces of dark meat – the best kind – for something outrageously cheap – around $5. While there may have been more regional delectations, I can only remember 2 and my delve into the blog archives came up empty.

One aisle was all stuff you'd need living down on the bayou. A section of it was dedicated to seasoning for crawfish boils. Next to that was a seemingly infinite variety of breading for fish and shrimp. And across from that was perhaps the ultimate convenience in Cajun cooking: pre-made roux. The first and only time I've seen it at a store. The second unique item was mayhaw jelly. Mayhaw trees grow in the South and the jelly made from their berries was a delightful sweet treat for me.

Tangentially, I discovered that bratwurst was not unknown in the town where my father had lived. A gentleman of some means lived there who was originally from Wisconsin and brats from Wisconsin were imported every year for a festival that I can recall nothing else about.

Recently my Frau and I took a trip to Dubuque and we had the time to visit a Fareway supermarket on our way back from the gardens/arboretum (they're wonderful so go there sometime). Fareway is a chain based in Iowa and most of its stores are west of the Mississippi River and none in Wisconsin. Before our trip I did a little internet research to find out if Dubuque (or Iowa more generally) had a dish or food item that it was known for. I mean no offense to Iowans when I note that I couldn't find anything that fit the bill and was left with what I already knew: they grow a lot of corn and raise a lot of pigs in Iowa.**

We wandered to the snack aisle and saw bags of Sterzing's Potato Chips, an Iowa brand that was unknown to me. Unfortunately, Sterzing's had no salt & vinegar chips on offer. But Fareway did.

These chips were a lovely golden yellow and most of them had brown splotches on them, usually at spots where the potato was at its thinnest. The bag advertised that they were sliced "extra thick" and this was easily visible. Aristotle himself would appreciate the aroma here as potato and oil were present in nearly equal proportions with both being complemented by some sharp vinegar tang.

The extra thickness and the cooking process gave them a definite kettle crunch. Salt was average, I'd say. Enough to enhance the flavor but not stand out or get in the way. The vinegar taste was much the same - middle of the road. Finally, I'll note the chips had a nice earthy-sweet potato flavor. Lactose was listed on the ingredients list but I am unsure how much, if at all, it contributed to the potato taste.

Overall, I'd say Fareway (or Fareway's hired spudsmith) did a very good job. These are some of the best smelling chips I've come across as potato, oil, and vinegar were all present in good measure. Similarly, the flavor found a harmony between roughly equal amounts of sweetness and earthiness which I really liked. My only gripe is that need a bit more vinegar. These were pleasantly piquant but I prefer a bit more sharpness in the acetic acid department.

**I'll cop to having poor Internet search skills as Dubuque does indeed have an indigenous dish: the Turkey and Dressing Sandwich. See footnote here.

Oh, those chips were so inviting, on the beach at Waikiki: Salt & Vinegar Potato Chips by Trader Joe's

Several of these chip reviews ago I lamented that I had seemingly exhausted the local supply of new salt & vinegar chip brands here in Madison. What a fool I was. (Still are. - ed)

I also noted a review or 2 ago that I am quite parochial when it comes to grocery shopping. Woodman's east is my main source of food although Jenifer Street Market is where I generally buy coffee. I also make an occasional trek to the Willy Street Co-op. But there are plenty of other places at which you can get your grub and, as I've learned, some of these joints have hitherto unknown brands of salt & vinegar chips.

Not too far from home, Meat People Butcher opened fairly recently in the Lake Edge Mall. While it sounds like the name of a cookbook to me, I summoned the courage to go check it out recently. In addition to cuts of beef that I was totally unfamiliar with, they had bags of Lillie's Q Hot Pepper Vinegar Kettle Chips. I am undecided if these qualify for a review here. Should I institute a Reinheitsgebot for potato chips? They're salt and vinegar it's just that the vinegar has been infused with chili goodness. I've already decided not to review Pringles because they're not slices of potato. And I have opted to forego non-potato salt & vinegar snacks like plantains despite plantains being extremely tasty. We shall see…

Another one of these places is Trader Joe's. It didn't even occur to me that there may be tubera incognita there awaiting my eager maw. This is likely because I don't think I've ever so much as stepped foot in a Trader Joe's. Thankfully my Frau has and she kindly brought me a bag of their Salt & Vinegar Potato Chips from her last trek out there.

The bag says these are "Hawaiian Style" but I am not sure what that means. There was no mention of ham nor of pineapple anywhere to be found. And I didn't even notice those words on the side of the bag until I went to take a photo of the it after I'd eaten most of the chips already. They are unpeeled and the bag says they're cut thicker than your average potato chip so maybe those are the criteria.

These chips surprised me with their aroma. Usually, chips smell of oil and potato in that order. These, however, smelled mainly of fried potato. Aside from bits of skin, they were a darker shade of yellow with mostly uniform coloring. If they were in fact sliced more thickly than your average chip, it must have been around a micrometer because they didn't appear to be particularly thick.

The bag indicated these chips were cooked slowly and this, perhaps in concert with a little more girth, definitely made for some kettle crunchiness. Salt was applied moderately while the vinegar tang rated medium to medium-high. What distinguished the flavor was the lemony zip owing to some citric acid. I found these chips had a nice earthy potato taste on the finish.

Overall I found these to be very good chips with a good sour taste from the vinegar and they got a few bonus points for the added citrus sour flavor which made for something novel.

I Wanna Tell You All About It: Urge Kettle Cooked Salt & Vinegar Potato Chips

 

Kwik Trip is a Wisconsin chain of convenience stores. It has gotten to be rather ubiquitous in these parts as the company's big cheese, Don Zietlow, has been doing his best Gordon Gekko imitation and gobbling up competitors like Henry I at a lamprey smorgasbord. While Zietlow doesn't have Gekko's slicked back hair and appears rather avuncular, he's not exactly the very model of a modern progressive business leader. From what I've read, he doesn't appear to be an asshole of extraordinary magnitude like John Menard but he donates generously to Republicans and various right-wing causes. This according to John McCracken at Tone Madison:

Kwik Trip founder Don Zietlow is a noted donor to a variety of Republican politicians. Between January 2010 and June 2017, members of the Zietlow family and other Kwik Trip employees donated $90,000 to former governor Scott Walker's campaigns. In 2017, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation awarded Kwik Trip $21 million in income tax credits for an expansion in the La Crosse area. Under the Walker administration, over 91,000 Wisconsinites lost FoodShare benefits due to harsh eligibility requirements in a state where 10 percent of families qualify as food-insecure. Kwik Trip is also listed as a sustaining sponsor of the charitable foundation for the Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, which is in theory a business lobbying organization but in practice the most powerful right-wing pressure group in the state.

Zietlow has also supported Donald Trump’s presidential campaigns. In 2016, the Zietlow family hosted a fundraiser for Trump in La Crosse. Zietlow donated a total of $135,000 to the Trump Victory super PAC from 2016 to 2017.

Apparently, he's also Catholic because Kwik Trip stores do not carry condoms, a staple at other such establishments.

Regardless of the guy's political and religious views, I stopped at a Kwik Trip recently while driving home from up nort. Generally speaking, I avoid Kwik Trip because it just keeps buying out competitors and part of me feels this is indicative of a company that's gotten too big for its britches. But this particular Kwik Trip had the advantage of being convenient when my bladder needed emptying. I found that the aisle to the bathroom was lined with junk food so naturally I perused it in search of salt & vinegar chips and was successful.

"Urge" is apparently Kwik Trip's house brand**. For a company that has at least the patina of religious do-goodery to it, the name just seems like it's one of the Seven Deadly Sins. If not a deadly one, a venial one, at least. I guess Zietlow is happy to have people indulge their urges as long as they don't wear condoms while doing so.

When doing one of these reviews I begin by smelling the chips. I usually stick my head inside the bag like a horse and its feedbag. And, truth be told, I'd eat the chips that way, if I could. In this case, my nose smelled oil and potato in roughly equal measure. Especially deep sniffs caught some malt vinegar.

I don't know what kind of frying sorcery they used on these chips, but they were of a beautiful light golden yellow. They looked perfectly fried. I am unsure if this is because of length of cooking time or the variety of potato or who. Regardless, these chips looked like, anyway, tater perfection. The bag they came in was drab and grey but these chips were refulgent in their sunflower and/or canola oil splendor.

They had a nice kettle crunch to them and a wonderful roasty potato flavor that is rare in potato chips, in salt & vinegar ones rarer still. It reminded me of a plateful of fried potatoes. There was an average level of salt while the vinegar was medium. I liked the malt vinegar flavor and wish it had been a tad stronger but it was no slouch. By the end of my sample, the tang had begun to numb my mouth.

These are some fine potato chips. I loved the roasty potato flavor and the use of malt vinegar is always a bonus.

**29 June 2021 - I have since learned that Old Dutch makes these chips for Kwik Trip.

Salt & Vinegar in Madison: Kroger's Salt & Vinegar Potato Chips

 

I was somewhere around Pflaum Road on the edge of Monona when the urge for carbs began to take hold. I remember thinking something like "I want potato salad; maybe I should drive to Pick 'n Save''. German food was on the menu that evening and I needed something starchy to go with the chicken and cabbage. I felt that German potato salad with its tasty vinegar tang would be just the thing to round out the meal. Plus it had the advantage of being German.

If memory serves, I also wanted something for dessert and there was another necessity that I was running low on like toilet paper or dishwashing liquid or some such thing. Despite snacks being absent from my list, I strolled through the snack aisle because, when you enjoy reviewing salt & vinegar potato chips, you cannot help yourself. At first it was just the usual suspects with some delicious looking ghost pepper potato chips thrown in for good measure. But just as the Kartoffelchips were beginning to give way to their tortilla cousins, I spied "Salt & Vinegar" writ medium on a bag that I hadn't seen previously.

While I had certainly seen the Kroger brand around, I was largely unfamiliar with it. This is a bit odd considering just how big The Kroger Co. is. According to Wikipedia, Kroger is headquartered in Cincinnati and is the largest supermarket chain in the United States. It is(was?) also the second largest retailer in this country, behind only Walmart. My family and friends in Chicagoland are familiar with the Kroger sub-brand, Mariano's, while those of us in Wisconsin know Roundy's which is further subdivided into Copps, Metro Market, and Pick 'n Save. It speaks to my near single-minded dedication to Woodman's (or laziness - ed.) that I've never been to the Metro Market here in Madison nor have I frequented Copps and Pick 'n Save very much.

Now that I think about, I do believe I've been shopping at Woodman's here on the east side since c.1991. I recall going to the Kohl's which was over at Winnebago and Milwaukee on the odd occasion, though. I rather miss the place with its arched roof, a look that was unique to Kohl's stores. There is a photo of it at this page along with other locations with the inimitable architectural member. Looking at that site I learned that the Pick'n Save mentioned above is, in fact, a former Kohl's store. But one from the later years after the arched roof had fallen out of favor.

If the history of Madison's grocery stores is right up your Strasse, check out the page at Groceteria dedicated to our fair burg. You couldn't swing a dead cat on Atwood Avenue back in the 30s without hitting a grocer. They were everywhere.

So how were the chips?

Despite calling Kroger, I was unable to ascertain who makes their chips for them as I didn't have a model # or SKU or whatever for the person on the other end to do their query with in the computer system so the spudsmith's identity will go unknown, for better or for worse. For now, anyway.

Sticking my nose into the bag much to the disgust of my Frau, I smelled mostly oil but there was a hint of vinegar too if I huffed it. I put a serving into what is now my official chip testing dish and noted that these chips were of a slightly darker hue than normal. Potato variety? Length in the fryer?

Kroger says these were kettle cooked and so they were as attested to by their kettle crunchiness. Salt level was average while the vinegar tartness was fairly mellow. However, it built up as more chips made their way into my maw. The vinegar taste remained in the background even as my mouth was rendered numb by the acetic acid.

Despite having lactose, I found these chips to have a potato flavor that was more earthy than sweet. This throws previous hypothesizing about lactose adding sweetness to chips under suspicion.

Not bad. A little more vinegar taste would have been nice but these chips are nothing to sneeze at.

Something Old, Something New, Something Blue: Old Dutch Salt'N Vinegar Potato Chips

While it is certainly true that I do not want for salt & vinegar chips, I do find it odd that some brands don't offer the flavor. For instance, the beloved chip of my youth, Jays, does not. However, since they make those paprika-laced Hot Stuff chips that burn my tongue just perfectly, I can't complain. Too much anyway. Old Dutch offers salt & vinegar kettle chips, as we have seen, but they have never sold their regular chips with the precious flavor. Until now.

It happened when I was at the supermarket in the early spring. I was making my way down one of the main aisles when I noticed an end cap display of chips. I always look at them and always see the same flavors yet I still inspect them every time. This time as I am perusing the shelves when I see a deep turquoise bag that looks blatantly unfamiliar. Had those wily Minnesotans finally made lutefisk chips? Nope. I stood there agog as I read "Salt'N Vinegar" on the bag and thought to myself, "I can't believe those bastards finally did it." A new salt & vinegar chip and I didn't even have to leave my neighborhood to find it.

Considering they already had a salt & vinegar chip in their portfolio, I wonder why Old Dutch added another. Did someone in the marketing department have an epiphany that they could innovate by making a pivot from sour cream & onion and leverage their existing salt & vinegar chip infrastructure to take it to the next level?

Let us find out what these shiny, new chips are all about.

As I've noted before, most salt & vinegar potato chips don't smell of vinegar. Usually I smell oil and potato and in that order. While I could not smell any vinegar, the order of smells was reversed here as these chips had a subdued oil aroma with the potato taking pride of place in the olfactory realm. As is the norm, I could smell a hint of vinegar if I put my nose right on a chip and took a big whiff.

The first thing I noticed after grabbing a handful for testing purposes was just how many large chips there were. It was impressive that so many of them survived packing, transit, and being put on a shelf without being reduced to smaller, less breakable shards. Once I had gotten over the size, I noticed that they seemed to be of a slightly darker yellow hue than is normal with scattered brown spots. I am unsure if they were cooked longer or if perhaps there were more sugars present to get that almost golden color.

I found these to be just a touch saltier than average and I liked how the typical regular chip crispness veered towards kettle crunchiness. The vinegar tang was really odd with these chips. When eating them, my tongue detected a medium-light bit of sourness which left me wanting more. And when I indulged, I found that my lips started to tingle even though my tongue wasn't registering dangerous levels of vinegar as I'd expect. This happened at different times so I don't think it was my tongue.

They finished with a sweet earthiness – these chips have lactose and dextrose.

I posit that we have here chips that are in the top 2 of all time for texture. I loved the crunchy crispness. Less thrillingly, they tasted sweeter than their kettle counterparts and less sour too. I will definitely try them again because I am flummoxed at the vinegar irritating my lips (in a good way) but not my tongue.

Things Get Ugly: Uglies Salt & Vinegar Potato Chips

Uglies Snacks is a brand belonging to Dieffenbach's, a maker of potato chips since 1964. Uglies' chips are made from potatoes "with minor cosmetic imperfections" such as these:

The Uglies website positions itself as being on the frontlines against food waste which, they claim, is also a waste of money and an impediment to "creating a sustainable food system". They rescue spuds that are "too large or too small; those with the wrong color or have the wrong sugar content. Some of the potatoes are slightly blemished and, of course, some are just farmer surplus." It proceeds to describe how we Americans throw out lots of uneaten food that ends up in landfills in alarming quantities. I think consumers are supposed to infer from this that Uglies is rescuing potatoes that farmers would otherwise throw into the garbage. Or something like that.

I have no doubt that Americans waste a lot of food by throwing it away. But were the potatoes that the folks at Uglies use for their chips in danger of being interred at a landfill as their website implied? Or would they have met a different fate? Reading about the ugly produce movement, I find myself growing ever more confused. Some scientists argue that companies like Uglies are a hoax of sorts saying that those ugly spuds would been eaten by farm animals or simply plowed under to become fertilizer. Others in the debate say, sure, they don't end up in a landfill but becoming animal feed is still "food waste".

At this point in my understanding of the ugly produce debate, it's still something of a he said, she said kind of thing. And it brings up the question of whether your average consumer of potato chips can tell if their snack was made from cosmetically imperfect spuds or not. I highly suspect not so why doesn't everyone use ugly spuds? Or do they to one degree or another but just not advertise the fact like Uglies?

If you look at these chips, they are really not all that different from other brands. They are perhaps not as uniformly colored as other chips but they certainly don't stick out like a sore thumb. There is, however, one way, that Uglies are different from most of the other brands of salt & vinegar chips that I've tasted and that is their smell. When I took a whiff, my nose was greeted by a pungent cloud of vinegar fumes and not the usual smell of potatoes and oil. From what I've read, acetic acid (the main component in vinegar) is aromatic when it exists in its whole form. When you apply it to a base food, it loses a hydrogen ion and loses its aroma. But when applied to an acidic food, that hydrogen ion stays put and you smell that distinctive vinegar smell.

To be found amongst the ingredients are citric and lactic acids so my guess is that the potatoes are already slightly acidic by the time the vinegar powder is applied thusly the hydrogen ions have nowhere to go, much like people during a Covid pandemic, and hence the chips' aroma.

These chips seemed to be a bit thicker than average. As kettle chips go, they had a solid crunch to them that was pleasing to the ear as well as the tongue. I tasted just a hint more salt than average here which I rather liked. Plus, there was "way more vinegar" as my notes say. A really nice tang. I suppose this isn't surprising considering the recipe uses vinegar powder, sodium diacetate, citric acid, and lactic acid. In fact, you'd have thought that, with all those acids, they'd have been even tangier. The spuds themselves had a more earthy flavor mostly lacking that spudly sweetness.

It seems debatable to me that Uglies really do much to lessen food waste in this country but it is incontrovertibly the case that Uglies makes a fine salt & vinegar potato chip with its firm tang and solid crunch.

Getting Lay'd: A Twofer from Lay's

Joe "Spud" Murphy and his conspirators at Tayto may have invented the seasoned potato chip but it seems that Lay's now dominates the potato chip world. It is a very large corporation that is a subsidiary of an even larger and multinational conglomerate, PepsiCo. They have a vast array of flavors that span many cuisines of the world meant to appeal to local tastes around the globe.

The food alchemists there are kept busy updating their grimoire of potato chip seasonings as they endeavor to bring flavors suggested by consumers to the humble potato chip as part of a contest. Thusly in years past you saw flavors like Southern biscuits and gravy, cappuccino, and gyro on your store shelves. Last year they produced chips modeled after dishes from iconic restaurants, though I admit I'd never heard of any of those establishments. I've gotta get out more, I guess. The tongue can be tempted according to nature or against nature and these were certainly of the latter disposition. The carnitas street tacos and Philly cheesesteaks at El Torito and Geno's Steaks, respectively, are no doubt delightful but their analogs in the potato chip world were just gross.

If you're in the Madison area and want a tuberous taste out of the ordinary, Woodman's on the west side carries a smattering of English crisps (or did the last time I was there) while various ethnic grocery stores carry some unique flavors. An Indian grocery store I was at had Lay's India's Magic Masala flavored chips, for example.

But I am here to write about a flavor more familiar to most of us in Madison, the humble salt & vinegar chip. I wouldn't doubt for a second that Lay's has many iterations of this flavor for sale worldwide but, from my vantage point in here Madison, I've only seen their Salt & Vinegar and Kettle Cooked Sea Salt & Vinegar chips.

Going in I figured that A) these chips would be basically the same with the big, if not only, difference being that the kettle cooked variety would be crunchier. And B) they'd both have a mellow vinegar tang because the unwashed masses wouldn't be keen on a prominent sour flavor.

The regular Lay's smelled like roasted potatoes to me while their kettle kin smelled like French fries with a hint of vinegar. As expected, the common chip was thinly sliced and had a wonderful delicate crispness. The kettle ones were similarly sliced and had a bit of that crunchiness but not a lot. They were still rather light. Each had had salt applied modestly.

The regular chips had a fair amount of vinegar on them as they tasted rather tangy, coming up just short of what might reasonably be described as "assertive". I was genuinely surprised at how much vinegar flavor there was. For their part, the kettle chips had just a tiny bit less. Regular Lay's had a mellow, earthy potato taste with just a little sweetness while the kettled tasted like French fries. That is, a similar taste but with a more intense potato flavor to it.

Both varieties were very tasty and could have used a bit more vinegar. The regular ones had the perfect crispness that keeps you coming back for more while the French fry-like taste of the kettle chips was rather novel and I enjoyed their hearty spud taste.

Tuberous Connections: Avocado Oil Malt Vinegar & Sea Salt Kettle Style Potato Chips by Boulder Canyon

Back in 1968 or so a certain English bluesy/jazzy kind of band with a singer who played flute on one leg were christened "Jethro Tull". In those early days the group's name was constantly changing in an effort to land gigs and, in a cruel act of fate, the one that stuck was that of an agronomist of some note who lived from 1674-1741. For their part, the band members were not particularly happy with such an unhip name but it was the one giving them work. Ten years later they were much more at ease with the moniker and recorded Heavy Horses, an album about English rural life including a large dose of farming.

Some 40 years later a deluxe version of the album was released with unreleased songs dragged kicking and screaming from the dusty vaults. Amongst those songs was "Horse-Hoeing Husbandry", which was also the name of the name of Jethro Tull the agronomist's book describing one of his inventions – the horse drawn hoe. Tull's invention apparently made the lives of farmers much easier as it did a swell job of breaking up the soil and bringing up weeds.

Tull worked on methods to cultivate the potato and helped promote root vegetables generally, a worthy endeavor indeed. Staying in the British Isles, only moving a bit west to Ireland, but fast forwarding to the mid-1950s, we come to Joe "Spud" Murphy. He was the owner of an Irish potato chip, er, crisp, company called Tayto and he apparently grew weary of crisps seasoned only with salt. Tayto ultimately figured out how to season them and changed the world forever when he introduced cheese & onion seasoned crisps. Salt & vinegar soon followed.

My guess is that Tayto used the tried-and-true method of spraying vinegar onto a food starch such as maltodextrin, drying it, before finally making it into a powder suitable for putting onto crisps. Now we cross the Irish Sea and fast forward again to 1968 when a Canadian food scientist named Jim Connell was in England on assignment. His mission changed to inventing a new way of seasoning salt & vinegar crisps and he did so. He invented sodium diacetate, a mix of sodium acetate and acetic acid, the latter being the tangy part of vinegar.

Moving ahead 10 years, Jethro Tull the band were out touring the United States in support of their Heavy Horses album and on 7 November they played the McNichols Arena in Denver, Colorado. Our final fast forward takes us ahead 16 years and 25 miles or so outside of Denver to Boulder where Boulder Canyon, maker of malt vinegar & sea salt chips fried in avocado oil was founded.

I have previously reviewed a different iteration of these chips. However, that was almost 16 years ago and those were not fried in avocado oil.

These chips are "Canyon Cut", i.e. – ripple cut, something I don't recall having run into before on the salt & vinegar trails, even the cousins of these chips. They smelled like potatoes and oil but, if I took a really deep sniff, I caught a little vinegar. They are "kettle style" but you'd be hard pressed to know this without reading it on the bag as they possessed only a little of the kettle crunch.

For my taste, these were a bit saltier than the last couple brands I've tried but there were by no means overly salty. The malt vinegar taste was really good but also rather weak. You'd think a ripple cut chip would have more surface area to accommodate vinegar dust. For their part, the potatoes had a really nice, earthy taste that was less sweet than the previous few chips I've sampled.

I'll be honest here and say that I do not know what frying in avocado oil is supposed to bring to the table. Will it give chips fried in it a distinctive taste, even if it's not strong? Or is avocado oil in some way "healthier"? I guess I need to do more research into frying oils.

As with many other brands, Boulder Canyon's chips taste good – I really like the potato flavor – but simply need more vinegar tang.

We'll go down to Traverse City: Bold Sea Salt & Vinegar Potato Chips by Great Lakes Potato Chip Co.

The Great Lakes Potato Chip Co. is in Traverse City, Michigan. Whenever I see "Traverse City", I immediately think of Warren Zevon's Transverse City album and picture a futuristic scenario with neon vistas and laser lights ablaze as street corner Jerry Garcia holograms play the solo from the title track. But Traverse City does not look like it came out of Blade Runner and, when I visited there many years ago, it was an average-looking but quite nice small city on the shores of Lake Michigan. (We're talking lower Michigan all you map averse coasties.)

I found my bag of Great Lakes' Bold Sea Salt & Vinegar chips at Jenifer Street Market. From my experience, it's the only grocery store in Madison to carry them but it's not like I have shopped for salt and vinegar potato chips at them all. Seeing "Bold" on the bag made me feel rather sanguine after the Late July chips and their paucity of vinegar taste.

Allow me to go on a brief tangent here.

Several years ago, I was involved in an online debate with someone who wanted the City of Madison to ban plastic grocery bags outright. Part of this person's argument was that they were made with oil and, since the use of oil is bad, the argument went, plastic bags were also bad. Q.E.D., right? Well, I poked around and found that plastic bags are generally made from natural gas and not oil. This revelation did not change my interlocutor's mind on the issue but it introduced me to the idea that natural gas has utility beyond being lit aflame for heat.

I was reminded of this recently when I discovered that you can use it to make white vinegar. Pure alcohol can be synthesized from natural gas which, in turn, is fermented into the stuff that cleans coffeemakers, that pickles live in, and is made into dust for putting on potato chips. However, it seems that vinegar makers use natural gas as a vinegar starter very infrequently.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

I gleefully opened my bag of Bold Sea Salt & Vinegar chips and took a whiff. They smelled like fryer oil. There are worse things to smell like, I grant you, but I was rather hoping to smell potato and/or vinegar. Was this a function of the type of oil(s) used? Is sunflower oil more aromatic than canola oil? Did something go wrong with the frying process?

These chips were sliced a bit more thickly than normal. They had a bit more crunch than delicate crispness to them. As with the last few brands of chips I've sampled, restraint was used in the application of salt. Truthfully, I am becoming a bigger fan of this. Here, it allowed a really nice, sweet potato flavor to shine through. Unfortunately, I did not find these chips to be bold. Instead, they had a rather timid vinegar flavor. Not bad, mind you, just lacking. Maybe the "Bold" referred to something else.

Although their salt & vinegar chips aren't bold enough for me, I am interested in trying their Michigan Cherry BBQ chips. Michigan leads the nation in cherry production and the Traverse City area is Montmorency Central. Sounds like a tasty, regional treat.

Gotta Keep Those Salt & Vinegar Vibrations A-happenin': Sea Salt and Vinegar Vibes by Late July Snacks

With a few feet of snow on either side of my driveway apron, late July feels like it's aeons away rather than just five months. But anytime is a good time for the folks at Late July Snacks to appeal to all of your positive feelings about the month of July which it describes as "the sweet spot of summer…when life is simple, pure & good." These people are obviously not from Wisconsin because they appear to be blissfully unaware that late July here means hot, humid weather and skies infested with swarms of mosquitoes determined to feast on our blood and make us look carbuncular.

Local climate and fauna aside, Late July sells snacks that are made with organic ingredients so their chips cost a bit more than conventional varieties. In an ingenious marketing gambit, they package their potato chips in these (cardinal?) red bags which really makes them stand out on supermarket shelf. Red, of course, is the same color as blood, the mosquito's food of choice. Coincidence? Red is also the color of passion and desire, qualities I bring when approaching a bag of salt and vinegar chips.

Late July must be run by a bunch of hippies or California ex-pats because these chips are "Sea Salt and Vinegar Vibes". Their other chips too are given groovy descriptors. The BBQ flavored chips are "Laid Back" while the sour cream and onion ones are "Serene". Far out, man!

Any salt experts out there? Does sea salt have any noticeable difference in taste to salt obtained from rocks? Do they leave in bits of jellyfish tentacles or sea turtle poop for a little something extra? Is sea salt cheaper? It just seems to me that sea salt is or, at least, usually is a marketing gimmick. As in, it comes from water, the basis of all life, thusly it's good and pure and natural as opposed to coming from a dark, satanic mill where children labor with bare feet instead of going to school and watching TikTok videos on iPads.

The Sea Salt and Vinegar Vibes chips had a nice roasty spud aroma to them. They were thin – as in your stereotypical potato chip thickness – with a wonderful delicate crispness to them. Late July went easy on that sea salt as I found there was just enough to enhance flavor but they never tasted salty. They also went easy on the vinegar as there was only a touch of tartness to be had.

There was also a kind of smoothness to them which I attribute to other seasoning agents: dried cane syrup, molasses, and tomato powder. My hypothesis is that these ingredients dulled the zippy tang of the vinegar. It's a similar situation that you find with many hot sauces that use extremely hot peppers i.e. – habanero and deadlier. The chili is added to a base of things like carrots, tomatoes, and fruits so that the extreme burn is made more palatable. It's like these chips were made by folks from Minnesota.

And that is my lone knock on these chips. They simply need a stronger vinegar vibe. Otherwise they perfectly cromulent. If you like a milder vinegar taste on your chips, these are the way to go.

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.