Without prior intent what I have created in this Food Nirvana recipe is a full training session for home cooks on the making of potato chips, from raw potato to delicious salty chips. Some lessons learned here apply to frying in general. Just know that you will learn a lot simply from reading this recipe. Better, you will shout with joy if/when you make the potato chips. Even better, you will save a whole lot of money by not buying commercial potato chips, for the better brands now typically cost almost $6 per pound (and a lot more for "specialty" chips, like Kettle Cooked) ... so at best, the better quality commercial chips cost a bit less per pound than a rib-eye steak!
Wholesale club prices (like Costco® or Sam's Club®) for 20 pounds of very large russet potatoes are as low as $6. That 20:1 price difference between raw potatoes and potato chips, even allowing for expected product and moisture loss due to peeling and frying, tells the whole greedy story. You can bet commercial producers of potato chips pay a whole lot less than 30 cents per pound when they buy russet potatoes by the truckload, yet they expect you to pay $6 per pound (and more) at the grocery store for their potato chips. I will update this recipe with quantitative data about product and moisture loss from raw potato to potato chips soon, along with frying oil consumed, such that you will know the materials component of the manufacturing cost for potato chips. I think you will be surprised with the results.
I have modified the potato chip recipe as found to include my preferred ways of processing, similar though certainly not identical to those of seriouseats.com, and I've provided my slight modifications for the form of the ingredients also. Do note that the folks at seriouseats.com will create recipes that will be relatively simple for people with very limited equipment to use. I do not take that approach. A key goal of Food Nirvana is to be competitive with commercial producers at home by whatever means are necessary yet practical. I want home cooks to acquire essential equipment and to use that equipment often to their advantage and joy. Thus, the divergence in methods between myself and seriouseats.com.
I do not like the provided idea of slicing the potatoes 1/8th inch thick, for potato slices that thick will produce a thick chip, perhaps too dark or not entirely crisp, and what I want is a very light colored thin crispy chip. Thus, I cut the potato slices thinner, roughly 1/16th inch thick, but otherwise I generally follow the recipe.
The recipe from seriouseats.com calls for the use of a mandoline to slice the potatoes. While that can work okay, and even better if the mandoline has adjustable thickness settings, the be all and end all for slicing the potatoes is simply an electric meat/vegetable slicer. It took some research into different types of vegetable slicers online before it finally dawned on me that I already owned the perfect device ... my commercial meat slicer, with infinite thickness variations available. And believe me, it is very fast as well as totally safe.
A mandoline is thus not at all what you want to use. Nor do you want electric salad shooters that create slices of non-uniform thickness (very bad). You can buy versatile electric meat/vegetable slicers that look similar to what you see in your local delicatessen, but smaller and of cost range $50 to $150. To get an idea, check out the offerings on Amazon®. The key parts of the slicers are the circular cutting blade with the adjustable depth traveling piece that holds what you want to cut and causes that to pass by the blade and be cut. That is the way for the home cook to get great results, easily, and also to have versatile equipment for different end uses. By the way, my first meat slicer came from Harbor Freight® and cost me the princely sum of $29.95. That was about 18 years ago and it served me well for 15 years before I gave it away, still working perfectly, to a friend. I had moved on to bigger and better things.
If a peeled potato is processed for slicing with a flat (wide) side down for cutting, cutting along the length instead of how we might typically slice a raw potato from end to end across the width, the resulting potato slices will look exactly like what you want to have your chips look like the commercial potato chips in shape after they are fried. These processing "secrets" are really pretty simple to figure out, and simple to accommodate as well if you have the right equipment.
Okay, I conducted a full experiment to determine optimum raw potato slice thickness. The answer is 1/16th of an inch. That thickness produced the most uniform color in the fried chips and exactly the right taste and crunch. The thicker raw slices resulted in somewhat mottled appearance and a bit too much darkness in the finished fried chips ... not the light taste of commercial potato chips. So it is now settled. Make your raw potato slices 1/16th of an inch thick. For later reference, the frying time for the 1/16th inch thick slices is approximately 3 minutes and 30 seconds, which will always depend on different factors described below.
I note that the seriouseats.com recipe has the lowest frying temperature (325ºF) of all the potato chip recipes that I found, a full 25ºF cooler than the closest higher frying temperature recipe. Kenji long ago debunked the belief that higher frying temperatures would result in less oil absorption by the food being fried. So I very much like this lower temperature approach as it provides the home cook far superior control over the rate of frying, such that chips can be removed when ready more easily without darkening. Of course, what the lower frying temperature also means is that using canola or peanut oil, both of which have very high smoke point temperatures, may be nice for taste but is not essential. Still, I did use canola oil for my slice thickness experiment, and I know I will use peanut oil also in the future. The idea is that whatever frying oil you have will probably be fine since the frying temperature is only 325ºF. Like me you can experiment and then decide what you prefer, the goal being not to over flavor the chips with the flavor of the oil.
Commercial producers of potato chips typically use the following oils, singly or in combination: sunflower, corn, cottonseed, canola. Of course, some makers of kettle fried chips use lard, and that is quite tasty if done properly, followed by generous salting. I've not seen a brand where peanut oil is used, undoubtedly because it will be the most expensive choice.
The use of Kosher salt (or sea salt) is fine provided it is not coarse. What I do is process various types of salt in a Magic Bullet® high speed miniature blender and thereby convert the salt to a powdered form, which is highly desirable and used sparingly on the fried potato chips. I use salt of that form when making fried nuts also, for the taste and texture are much nicer than with larger salt crystals. Note this is similar in approach to using the product known as popcorn salt, for once again, a finer salt dust is much more enjoyable on crunchy/crispy snacks than salt in larger crystal form. The reason? A given weight of salt will provide more salty taste sensation on your tongue when the surface area of the salt has been increased by powdering it.
Ingredients:
2 very large russet potatoes, peeled and then sliced on a wide side along the length to about 1/16th of an inch thick using an electric meat/vegetable slicer, followed by rinsing the slices multiple times under cold running water to rinse away starch, and then storing the slices in/under cold water for 30 minutes or up to a day longer until you are ready to use them.
3 tablespoons of distilled white vinegar
1 or 2 quarts of canola or peanut (or other) frying oil depending on your cooking vessel
Kosher salt or sea salt - powdered using a Magic Bullet® or a mortar and pestle
Optional: Some other flavoring mixture instead of powdered salt, like barbecue flavoring
Directions:
Drain the potato slices. Combine the vinegar and 1 1/2 quarts of water in a large saucepan. Bring that to a boil over high heat. Add the potato slices to the boiling water in two separate batches, gradually, to maintain a high simmering/low boiling temperature, and cook each batch at a low boil for five minutes. For each batch, keep the heat high and the saucepan covered with a lid until the water returns to a boil, then lower the heat to low, partially remove the lid, and start the five minute countdown. I use a simple kitchen timer to do that.
Use a wire mesh spider or a slotted spoon to remove the potato slices from the simmering/low boiling water gently as each batch is done and let the slices drain water briefly back into the simmering water, then spread the warm/wet slices from each batch one layer thick on paper towels or dish towels (I think dish towels are the way to go). You can hasten the drying process by applying dry paper towels to the top side of the potato slices to absorb moisture and then removing those paper towels. Also, flipping the slices over periodically exposes moistness than you can remove easily by blotting with paper towels. Allow the slices to air dry for five to ten minutes or longer. Note that they do not have to be really dry because the frying will quickly eliminate residual moisture. The goal of this step is simply to remove wetness.
If you want to try something really different you might use an electric hair dryer to hasten drying the potato slices. I have not yet tried that offbeat drying method with food (though I have in non-food projects with stains and paints), but it appeals to me as I am basically impatient to complete boring tasks.
What is important in the procedural context is for the home cook to learn how to think "outside the box." For example, suppose you were making potato chips in larger quantities. Might it help your speed of processing if you had a high velocity fan blowing dry air over the moist potato slices? Can you imagine a large commercial processing plant having a large volume of heated air blowing over thousands of moist potato slices prior to frying? Let's get really smart in our commercial plant ... Why not process moist potato slices on a screen conveyor with hot dry air blowing from the underside? That will make the chips elevate as they dry and readily expose both sides to the hot dry air, minimizing the drying time. Easy, wasn't it?
If you've ever watched the conveyor process where Krispy Kreme® donuts are made you can use your memory and your imagination to figure out how you would take conveyored semi-dried potato slices into a continuous frying and then draining and salting and cooling and packaging process, via baskets and conveyors.
Heat one quart of frying oil in a large wok or two quarts of frying oil in a Dutch oven, to 350ºF. Use a candy or frying thermometer to assure the correct temperature, adjusting the heat as necessary to maintain 350ºF, prior to the next frying step. Note that putting the potato slices into the oil will reduce the temperature, temporarily, by as much as 40ºF, so you want to keep the heat high enough return the oil temperature back to roughly 325ºF. Just remember to lower the heat at that point so you don't exceed 325ºF as the potato slices fry.
Add 6 of the potato slices if you are using a wok, or 12 of the potato slices if you are using a Dutch oven, and fry them, stirring and flipping once a minute with a wire mesh spider or a slotted spoon until individual potato slices release no more bubbles (or very few), about 3 to 4 minutes (this time will vary a lot based on potato slice thickness, actual oil temperature, weight of the potato slices vs. oil weight, chip distribution in the oil, etc.).
For various reasons related to chip crowding and variable oil temperature within the cooking vessel the chips will reach the desired degree of doneness at different times, so remove them individually with tongs or with the spider or a slotted spoon, individually or in small groups as they are done. In short, don't wait for all the chips to stop releasing bubbles or the ones done earliest will be over-fried and darker than desired. The frying chips will not look done when in actuality you want to remove them quickly ... and as soon as they drain on the paper towels you will be surprised to see they are completely fried to a perfect color.
Transfer the removed chip(s) to paper towels on a flat surface, to drain and absorb excess frying oil. (You do not want oily chips after doing all of this work, do you? In actually making the chips I was surprised and pleased that they drained so well that they were perfectly crisp with no noticeable oily residue whatever). Note, however, that the oil you use will impart flavor to the chips, so try different oils to achieve the taste you like best.
If you aren't planning to use special flavoring, sprinkle (dust) the chips with the powdered salt, and toss them in a large bowl to coat them with the salt (or dust the chips with powdered salt in a zipper-lock bag and then seal it and shake the bag gently to distribute the salt evenly). I much prefer the zipper-lock plastic bag method. If you are using optional special flavoring, like barbecue, use that flavoring mixture instead of the powdered salt.
Transfer the seasoned chips to a serving bowl or plate and repeat the frying, draining and salting/seasoning steps for the remaining batches of potato slices. Serve immediately or allow the chips to cool completely and then store them sealed in a zipper-lock bag to maintain freshness.