Potato chips

Potato chips or crisps are a snack food made from potatoes cut into very thin slices, deep fried or baked until crisp, and then served. Commercial varieties are packaged for sale, usually in bags. The simplest chips are simply cooked and salted, but a wide variety of seasonings (mostly made using MSG and herbs or spices) are used to produce various 'seasoned' chips. Potato chips are an important part of the snack food market in English-speaking countries.

Similar foods

Another type of potato chip, notably the Pringles brand, is made by extruding or pressing a dough made from ground potatoes into the familiar potato chip shape before frying. This makes chips that are very uniform in size and shape, which allows them to be stacked and packaged in rigid tubes. In America, the de jure term for Pringles is "crisps", but they are rarely referred to as such. Conversely Pringles may be termed "potato chips" in Europe, to distinguish them from traditional "crisps".

Related Topics:
Pringles - Extruding - De jure - Crisps

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Some companies have also marketed baked potato chips as an alternative with lower fat content. These became well-known in the media when an ingredient many contained, Olestra, was linked to abdominal discomfort and other, more embarrassingly, "anal leakage".

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The success of potato chips also gave birth to fried corn chips, with such brands as Fritos, CCs and Doritos dominating the market. "Swamp chips" are similarly made from a variety of root vegetables such as parsnips, rutabagas and carrots. Japanese-style variants include extruded chips-like products made from rice or cassava.

Related Topics:
Corn chip - Fritos - CCs - Doritos - Parsnip - Rutabaga - Carrot - Rice - Cassava

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