French Fry Diary 489: The Onion Chips

There were some similar potato chips in the bag o' rare chips The Bride got me for Christmas from Anchor Food Finds. In this case, there were three bags of much the same theme - onions.

Deep River Sweet Maui Onion - this would be my second bag of Deep River chips from the bag o' rare chips. These were really not as good as the first bag. No great aroma, no great flavor. All in all, a disappointment.

Grippo's Sweet Bermuda Onion - this was by far the biggest bag of chips in the whole bag o' chips at three and a half ounces. It also had the tightest expiration date, so I probably should have opened it first. No worries, they were still good. However as a regular "Hoarders" viewer, I do feel the need to point out that expiration dates are NOT just a guideline.

Grippo's is a company that's been around for almost a century. They started off making cones for ice cream, moved on to pretzels, then chips, and now make a lot of stuff, including dips, seasonings, and even BBQ sauce. They have an intriguing variety of chip flavors including Hot Dill Pickle and Cheddar Cheese with Jalapeño.

The chips themselves are heavily seasoned, and not flatteringly so. The chips look like you might have to shake it off, there's so much. This is not a happy onion flavor but it's there, and lingers for a while. And saddest of all, it kinda masks the potato flavor of the chip as well. Another disappointment as I really was looking forward to trying these.

Mister Bee Sour Cream & Onion - Mister Bee is a regional family run company recently purchased by the West Virginia Potato Chip Company. Careful inspection of this blog will reveal a complete lack of reviews or even mentions of the popular potato chip flavor sour cream and onion. Easy answer: I don't like them.

That's why I wanted to hand this bag off to The Bride, not in an ungrateful way, but because she likes that flavor. However, The Bride not being around at the moment of writing this entry, I bit the bullet, er, um, chip.

There was a good(?) aroma of sour cream and onion when I opened the bag. The chips however had the same grainy and overseasoned texture as the other Mister Bee's chips I have encountered. Ick. Not a good flavor, and not a good chip either, in my opinion.

Sadly, this was not a good batch of chips this time.

French Fry Diary 463: Ole Salty's Regular Salt

Next up from the Bag o' Chips, that The Bride got me for Christmas this year, a selection of rare potato chips from Anchor's Food Finds, we have the scariest bag of the bunch - Ole Salty's Regular Salt.

This is a silver bag of chips with just a label, almost as if it was astronaut food. Not even an expiration date. Folks, it does not even say 'potato chips' on the bag. The ingredients however assure me whatever it is, it's made of potatoes, soybean oil, and salt.

Ole Salty's of Rockford Illinois is a mail order only company, and this scary plain silver bag had no expiration date. Ole Salty also sells popcorn, dips, among other things, and also chips of lesser and more salt added. The packaging appears the same for that stuff. I guess it's a thing. Foil does keep sunlight out, which is not so good for chips in long exposures.

Only one thing to do. Open the bag. Not the easiest job in the world. So difficult, they could sell these things at Trader Joe's. Once open, this extra large snack-size bag yielded, as noted, a 1.25 ounce serving of chips, filling roughly the bottom third of the bag.

These chips are rather small but very crunchy, perhaps kettle cooked. Their taste is a bit of a cross between Munchos and Lays regular chips, a little greasy. Perhaps the Extra Salt might be better, because these are a little bland. For something called Ole Salty's, these chips needed salt.

French Fry Diary 42: Sweet Patato Chips

My good friend Crystal and I share a love of things Asian and especially shopping in Asian food markets for new and interesting stuff. Recently (or not that recently, as you’ll see) she bought me something knowing of my love of all things potato – vacuum fried Sweet Patato Chips from Khoai Lang Say.

Now I’m not sure what exactly 'vacuum fried' actually means, but the little guy on the sealed foil bag sure looks happy, so how bad could they be? Well, I don’t know, and that’s the problem. As has been noted before here on French Fry Diary, I am a catastrophically picky eater, and sweet potatoes (spelled correctly or not) are not very high on the list – so I let them sit for a while.

Let’s not get into semantics and say how long 'a while' is, let’s just say I wasn’t worried as these things were in a sealed foil bag and apparently had no expiration date. Either I was wrong about their shelf life, or I was right about not liking them cuz I had quite a surprise when I opened the bag finally.

There were very much like what’s shown in the picture on the bag, giant orange potato sticks, similar to Andy Capp’s pseudo-Fries. I did not try one, because of the smell. The smell, the smell was, forgive me, but there’s just no other way to describe it – it smelled like ass. The chips/fries and bag were quickly disposed of.

Whether this was an object lesson in expiration dates or being a picky eater, I’m not sure, maybe both, but I really don’t see giving these things a second try any time soon. Sorry, Crystal, but thanks for thinking of me.