- They're thicker. You'll get more potato taste than your typical chip.
- They're more dangerous. Beware of jagged edges! I suggest eating these gems one at a time to avoid "raw palate".
- They are louder. These are the kind of chips that wake up your roommate and startle your dog. Exercise with caution.
The flavors I have in stock are Mesquite Bar-B-Que (a classic) and Sweet Hawaiian Onion (recent addition). I have been pacing myself with these delicious bastards, and while enjoying a few chips I noticed myself checking each individual chip before eating it. Then I realized, someone has to classify and categorize these babies!
Thus, Potato Chip Identification 101.
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| Two plates |
Basic Forms
All chips fall into one of two main categories: plates and folds.
Plate - These are perhaps the most common of chips. A plate is simply a chip where no surface is fused to another chip surface. Picturesque plates are flat and unbroken, but any chip that is neither folded nor fused can be correctly labeled a plate.
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| Two folds |
Fold - A fold differs from a plate in that it has a fusion point, an area of the chip's surface that is fused to another distant part of the chip. Note that fusion to a different, separate chip does not result in "fold" classification. Symmetrical folds are often referred to as "tacos" due to their taco shell resemblance, but that's just plain stupid.
Notable Variations
These chips are all either plates or folds, but some sub-variations are worth noting.
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| Underdeveloped saddle (left) and a beautiful saddle plate (right) |
Saddle - A saddle is a variation of the plate form which resembles a horse saddle. These are one of the rarest of all chip variations, partially because saddles are prone to breaking. If you are lucky enough to find a saddle intact, I suggest you locate the smoother of the two valleys and place that surface on your tongue. That's some serious surface area you're dealing with.
Inflated (not pictured) - These can be either plates or folds, though inflated plates are exceedingly more common. An inflated chip is easy to identify by its air-pockets; some have only one while others can be covered with these "boils". Fairly common and disappointingly lacking in crunch, you'll have to choose between swallowing it as fast as you can, putting it back into the bag and hoping you never see it again or simply discarding it.
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| Two saturated folds |
Saturated - I have mixed feelings about these chips. A saturated potato chip is any chip with a significantly heavier amount of flavoring. You can easily identify saturated chips by their coloring (darker for colored flavors, powdery-white for the colorless ones), but the flavor overload has its drawbacks. For me, saturated chips upset the delicate balance between potato taste and added flavoring. The result is a monstrosity of artificial flavor, something that only reminds me that what I'm eating is very unnatural. Some people actually enjoy these things, so I'll sometimes give these away after pretending they're the best ones.
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| Four lovely blossoms |
Blossomed - Speaking of the best ones, I definitely saved the best for last. A good blossom is hard to come by, but they're the perfect potato chip. I'll trade saddles or saturated folds for blossoms at any time. Blossoms are elaborately folded chips that resemble a bloomed flower. These variants are somewhat saturated, but not so much as to induce a flavor overload. Sometimes you'll even find blossoms that are composed of multiple fused chips, all folded over each other.
Don't let anyone know when you find one of these. They might ask to see it, but when you hold it up they're going to want to "see it up close". Just quietly marvel at its beauty and then eat the damn thing before someone else notices.
I hope you learned a thing or two. The next time you open a bag of chips, don't mindlessly shovel these down your throat like a savage. Admire the craftsmanship and then savor the flavor!
Oh, and if anyone knows whatever happened to finding green potato chips...do tell.
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