Making Potato Chips – Cooking with Oils

Every so often I like to think I can teach you a little bit more about the potato chip industry. I spoke with my chip-liaison and got a further inside scoop on the process of creating my favorite snack.

Every company will claim to vary from another to be healthier, but it all comes down to the similar cooking process. To make it easier on you, I’ll break it down into parts. In a previous post I explained the importance of the potato. Today we’ll talk about the oil frying primer for original potato chips.

Oil Frying

Frying is all about the oil. Different oils provide different amounts of fat to the finished product.

Generally the order of bad to good for you oils is approximately:

• Palm / coconut / tropical
• Lard
• Hydrogenated / shortening
• Peanut
• Soybean
• Safflower
• Cottonseed
• Corn
• Sunflower
• Canola

Taste differs by person, but generally the corn and sunflower have the lightest, cleanest taste. Peanut has a heavy but excellent flavor.

Some parts of the country still use lard for a greasy taste that one may be accustomed to. Only recently the biggest manufacturer stopped using hydrogenated for cost and storage reasons, with a similar waxy mouth as lard or tropical oils.

Appearance is important and the canola and sunflower have the lightest finished color. A blend of sunflower and canola provides good appearance and a pleasant taste. Canola by itself can produce a fishy taste, especially if not deodorized.

The potato chips are generally cooked between 360 and 400 degrees for approximately 5 minutes using a continuous cooker that pushes the potatoes through (can vary upon company).

Kettle chips generally use a batch process making 50 to several hundred pounds per batch. Kettles used to be a peanut oil product, but allergy fears and costs caused an oil change in most manufacturers.

Next up: Slicing Processes

(Special thanks to my source in the industry – I really appreciate all of your help and your simple explanations to the complicated process!)