Potato Chips

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Potato Chips

Potato chips , often short chips , in Switzerland also french fries chips , in (Eastern) Austria earlier, now only occasionally, called raw slices , are a disc-shaped food. They consist of thin, deep-fried or baked potato slices. Potato chips are often used as a side dish or snack , they are among the most popular snacks and are offered by different manufacturers around the world in a wide variety of flavors.

For preparation, raw potatoes are cut into slices, soaked in salt water, dried and baked while swimming in vegetable oil. After draining, they are salted and mixed with other spices, depending on the taste. They can be eaten warm or cold. Due to the almost complete dehydration, they can be kept for a long time if they are airtight.

history

George Crum and his sister

In the BBC program “Inside the factory”, a historian reported that there was a cookbook recipe in England as early as 1817 that describes how to make crisps.

According to a popular kitchen legend, potato chips were invented on August 24, 1853 by George Crum , a chef at the Moon Lake Lodge Hotel in Saratoga Springs , USA , because a guest - it is said to have been the industrialist Cornelius Vanderbilt - repeatedly complained about fried potatoes that were too thick had complained. When they were finally so thin that they could no longer be eaten with a fork, the guest was delighted, to Crum's surprise, and his creation was finally included in the menu as Saratoga Chips . They soon became known all over New England . Another version, cited by the local museum as the more likely one, says that Crum's sister accidentally dropped a thinly sliced ​​potato slice in hot fat, and Crum was so delighted with the result that he offered the potato chips at the restaurant.

Industrial manufacture of potato chips began to develop in the 1920s when Herman Lay, a sales representative in the southern United States, invented a potato peeling machine. The potato chips were initially unseasoned, which limited their popularity.

In 1929, the Austrian Karl Kolarik offered so-called raw slices in the “ Schweizerhaus ” in Vienna, which from then on saw huge sales in Vienna. In the 1940s, the owner of a small family business in Dublin, Tayto , developed a technique for adding spices and flavorings. After a few experiments, Tayto produced the first seasoned potato chips, Cheese and Onion ( cheese and onion ) and Salt 'n' Vinegar ( salt and vinegar ). With the second variety, the salt was sold in a sealed package inside the chip package and could be added if necessary.

His invention became a sensation in the food industry. The heads of several leading potato chip companies in the USA came to Dublin to examine the new product at Tayto and to negotiate the rights to use the new technology. The sale of Tayto made the owner one of the richest men in Ireland.

The first potato chips for American soldiers were made in Germany. In 1951, the mechanical engineer Heinz Flessner from Neu-Isenburg received a license for production. First, he made the chips at home with his wife Ella. Then attempts were made to market the chips at kiosks, among other places. Industrial production was then started under the name “IBU” and later continued by the company Bahlsen and Lorenz Bahlsen Snack-World . Numerous manufacturers are now competing in the market.

Variations

Fluted potato chips

Fluted potato chips are usually cut a little thicker from the potato with a corrugated knife; this often makes them crisper.

In the 2010s, "kettle chips" became increasingly popular. Unlike normal potato chips, these are not fried in a continuous process, but in separate containers. The potatoes are usually cut into slices that are about three times thicker than conventional potato chips and processed with the skin on. Kettle chips are marketed by some companies as a natural and rustic variant of potato chips.

Composition and nutritional value

Apart from the only salted, original variant, which also consists only of potatoes, vegetable oil and salt in industrial production, potato chips usually contain not only spices such as paprika but also flavorings and flavor enhancers , mostly monosodium glutamate .

Potato chips made from unpeeled potatoes with green spots

100 grams of potato chips have an energy value of around 2200 kilojoules (530  kilocalories ). They contain around 50 grams of carbohydrates , 35 grams of fat and six grams of protein . During manufacture, the Maillard reaction produces relatively large amounts of acrylamide , which is suspected of being carcinogenic. Since 2002, the acrylamide content of potato chips in Germany has been reduced by around 50 percent. The potato peel and the green areas of the potato contain the natural poison solanine , which is heat-resistant and insoluble in fat and is therefore not destroyed during frying. With potato chips, you should therefore ensure that they do not contain any peel or green areas. Since chips contain a large amount of salt , the recommended daily amount of six grams is usually already reached after consuming a 250-gram pack of chips.

According to German food law, potato chips must have been made directly from potato slices. There are now some chip-like products that consist of potato powder and other ingredients and are pressed into a potato chip-like shape. However, they cannot be called "potato chips". The name stack chips is common for these products . The reason why the potato chips often look similar to a saddle surface is that their edge areas shrink slightly less due to the loss of water than their middle areas due to a higher solid content.

There are now different types of low-fat chips. Using a new manufacturing process with vacuum fryers , the chips are deep-fried at lower temperatures and then not drained off as was previously the case, but freed from the excess oil by centrifugal force . This reduces the fat content to 17 percent. In Europe , these chips are currently only available in Switzerland . Other reduced-fat chips contain around 22 percent fat. These chips are also available in Germany. With these, the calories are reduced by deep-frying in modified fat, which cannot be broken down by the intestine. These chips can have a laxative effect if consumed in excess.

Potato chips, in which the proportion of saturated fatty acids has been reduced, have now also been brought onto the market. In manufacture of sunflower oil used.

economy

In 2002, over 30 billion US dollars were sold worldwide with potato chips, in Germany just under 400 million euros. In 2004, 550,000 tons of potato chips were sold in Europe with a turnover of four billion euros. In 2018, potato chips generated sales of 790 million euros in Germany, per capita consumption was 1.5 kilograms.

Artisanal production

similar products

  • Crab chips (also known as krupuk or kroepoek) are made from tapioca flour and ground shrimp.
  • Tortilla chips are made from corn flour.

Web links

Wiktionary: potato chips  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Commons : Potato Chips  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. zdf.de: Inside the Factory: Chips from the conveyor belt ( Memento of the original from August 28, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.zdf.de
  2. ^ Alan Eaton Davidson : The Oxford Companion to Food . Ed .: Tom Jaine. 3. Edition. Oxford University Press , New York 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-104072-6 , keyword “chips and crisps” .
  3. kartoffelchips.net: Corrugated chips
  4. What is different with kettle chips? Retrieved October 21, 2019 .
  5. ^ BDSI publication .
  6. Günter Vollmer , Gunter Josst, Dieter Schenker, Wolfgang Sturm, Norbert Vreden, food guide: Contents, additives, residues: Part 2: Meat, fish, milk, fat, spices, beverages, food for diet, for babies, for athletes, volume 1, Science for Everyday Life, Verlag John Wiley & Sons, 2009, ISBN 3527625895 , p. 141.
  7. Dangerous peel - What makes the potato poisonous ( Memento of the original from January 13, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , stern TV, November 14, 2007. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.stern.de
  8. Michael Murkovic, Toxins in Plant Food , Graz University of Technology, Institute for Food Chemistry and Technology, p. 6.
  9. Potato Chips (Germany). In: Statista . March 2018, accessed May 7, 2019 .