Online Potato Chips

TIP OF THE DAY

Online Potato Chips

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/15/technology/circuits/15shop.html?pagewanted=all&position=

How Do They Fry Thee? Count the Ways

By MICHELLE SLATALLA

Published: January 15, 2004

IF you're susceptible to snack food, do not take the online tour of the Original Goods Potato Chips factory in Pennsylvania.

I started salivating at www.goodschips.com one day last week before I even got to the part where the thin slices of potatoes hit the conveyer belt. And then the description of the fryer proved too much for me: "When the potatoes first hit the hot oil, steam rises."

Before I knew it, I found my index finger twitching above the "Buy" button. A credit card number was all that stood between me and a case - in other words, nine bags of greasy, crispy, crunchy bliss.

I took a deep breath.

"Back away from the computer," I instructed my index finger.

In January, I don't want to buy much of anything. This is the daylight-starved month of ominous credit card bills. It's the month when I try to avoid confronting how much I spent in December and instead skulk under a blanket on the couch, lulled into a nap by football on the television. It's the month of evasion.

For this, I need potato chips. Preferably solace would come from some apocryphal chips from my youth, able to evoke lost childhood in a single, salty bite. Preferably such chips would emerge from an idiosyncratic family-owned factory with a recipe jealously guarded for four generations. Lard would be involved.

But sadly, I was handicapped by not growing up in the cradle of chip civilization, otherwise known as Pennsylvania. So for many years, I knew nothing of the world beyond nationally distributed brands. Then, by pure luck, I married a man from Reading and discovered, upon crossing the state line, the Pennsylvania Dutch Chip Belt. It's a marvelous snack food universe that is also a stronghold of the Cheez Waffie (with its haunting chemical aroma) and rightfully lauded for its rare understanding of the pretzel.

So last week, I went online to try to recapture the magic of those roadside gas stations and convenience stores where I first tasted Herr's hand-cuts, Grandma Utz's hand-cookeds and Original Goods originals.

The news I bring back is good. Although the potato chip is a fragile and delicate flower that tastes best when it is fresh and whose distribution area often is limited to a day's driving distance from where it is made, many of the more than 100 manufacturers nationwide have started to sell online. Shipping should not compromise the chip, so long as precautions are taken.

"You mainly need to be careful that a bag doesn't get punctured, because then the chips could go stale," said Jeremy Selwyn, who operates a snack-food review site, Taquitos.net. "Most chip companies are pretty conscious of the dangers."

So at sites like www.herrs.com, utzsnacks.com and www.martinschips.com (which sells a particularly good Bar-B-Q Waffle chip), I could satisfy my Pennsylvania snack food cravings for well under $20.

The proud emissaries of other regions are also online. At www.kitchncookd.com, I found Curry's Kitch'n Cook'd thick skins (cooked in peanut oil in the Shenandoah Valley). At mike-sells.com, I could find a variety of flavors from original to green onion from Ohio's venerable Mike-sell's Potato Chip Company (You need to phone Mike-sells to place an order through the Chipper Shipper program.)

British chips - excuse me, crisps - can even be procured online. Walkers Max Deep Ridge paprika flavor (described glowingly at Mr. Selwyn's site as "by far the best paprika chips I've tried," are sold at britishcornershop.co.uk. (The site would be worth a visit just for its wide selection of flavors of Pringles, which it describes as "crisps in a tube.")

Every chip has its own twist. Some are cooked in lard, others in peanut oil, still others in soybean oil. Proportions of salt, thickness of slice, temperature of oil. Each variation plays a role in determining flavor.

But of all chips, which is the perfect chip? This is a question that many have tried to answer since 1853, when the potato chip was invented by a Saratoga chef named George Crum in response to a diner's complaint that his potatoes weren't crispy enough.

"To get even, Crum sliced potatoes thin, deep-fried them, put salt on them and said, 'Here, take these,' " said Ann Wilkes, spokeswoman for the Snack Food Association. "I don't think he had a specific recipe, just boiling hot oil and salt."

Some would say that boiling hot oil and salt was enough. But for other snack food lovers, the potato chip's relatively recent foray into new and unusual flavors has been heralded as a renaissance.

These days, you can buy chip flavors that range from salt-and-pepper (at poorebrothers.com) to dill pickle (at www.olddutchfoods.com) to ketchup (from www.misterbee.com).

"Although it's a very saturated market, chip sales started to go even higher than normal a couple of years ago when you started seeing a lot of new flavors," Ms. Wilkes said.

The perfect chip? It remains a highly personal quest. For my husband, it's an Original Goods Original, which he swears "tastes like butter." For many who grew up in New Jersey's golden age, when trucks delivered tins of crisp chips to their homes, Charles Chips remain the ideal (they're still available, in 16-ounce tins, from www.vermontcountrystore.com for $16.95, and two refill bags cost $7.80). For Mr. Selwyn, Tim's Cascade Style hot jalape��hips remain a haunting memory (they're available at www.birdseyefoods.com).

As for me, I am unable to resist Cape Cod Chips' sea salt and vinegar chips. Although they're widely available in stores nationwide, it's a comfort to know they're also available online at capecodchips.com.

Mr. Selwyn recommended that I expand my chip repertory by purchasing regional brands when traveling.

"On a trip, I go crazy and hit every convenience store and supermarket I see,'' he said. "After a week, I'll come back with 40 or 50 bags."

"I've learned a few things about transporting them on airplanes, Mr. Selwyn said. "When air pressure goes down, the bags balloon and there's a chance they'll burst. So I've learned to put them in a cardboard box and to fill the box no more than three quarters full. Then they have room to grow."

Alas, these are necessary steps for the truly chip-committed, because many chip brands are still not available online. Someday they may be, because as Mr. Selwyn said, "If all the chip companies sold online, that would lead to a better world."

Or at least a vastly improved January.