Talk:Chips (food)

Drooping?

"[Chips]... are very similar to French fries, the distinction being that fries are much thinner and may droop. A chip, by contrast, will always remain straight even when a little pressure is applied."

Surely the other way around? A cardboardy fry could be used to jab someone in the eye after being cooked; by contrast, a thicker chip tends to be softer and therefore more liable to drooping. Stand on a dropped fry and it might puncture your shoe - whereas a chip gets mashed into your sole. Anton Sweeney 18:24, 14 June 2007 (CDT)

As a fairly experienced cook, I think the key element here is how *long* the individual item has been cooked. A skinny little french fry can be overcooked until it's like a stick. And obviously if you take an Idaho potato and cut it into, say, 4 lengthwise pieces, each piece is gonna be so thick that it will *never* droop. But otherwise I think you're right in one sense: I think this "droop" business should be eliminated. It's clearly one of those things where it's sometimes this, sometimes that....

Particularly if french fries are cooked in two batches: sometimes the 95% cooked fries are put back into hot oil and allowed to overcook -- it can only be a couple of seconds too many but they mostly ruined.... Hayford Peirce 18:30, 14 June 2007 (CDT)

I have reluctantly removed the bit about droopy French fries. Clearly, some droop and others don't. John Stephenson 23:56, 14 June 2007 (CDT)

Nomenclature

Chips are indeed a bit heartier in the UK, and the 'pommefritz' you can buy from street vendors in Berlin are even better! But despite this, it seems to me that "chip" (UK) = "french fry" or "fries" (US) (just as Potato Chip in the US = Crisp in the UK). Russell Potter 18:47, 14 June 2007 (CDT)

that's to say,. I do not think a "chip" is a fundamentally different thing from fries or pommefritz. Russell Potter 09:03, 15 June 2007 (CDT)

I'm tempted to make a disambiguation page for chips; one that includes an entry for a television show starting the one and only Eric Estrada.--Robert W King 10:38, 8 August 2007 (CDT)

Do it!! John Stephenson 10:41, 8 August 2007 (CDT)

Chips photos

See Talk:French fries; I have uploaded some chips to French fries as well as this page so sceptics can compare the two. John Stephenson 02:54, 16 June 2007 (CDT)

A casual reader from Mars, etc, might conclude from your pic of the chippy that they have very few customers! It might be an idea to have a pic which shows the social context, as this is mentioned in the article. --Martin Baldwin-Edwards 08:20, 16 June 2007 (CDT)

Other missing aspects

I think there are several things missing from this article:

1. Okay, they are peeled, cut into strips, then deep-fried -- what else is involved in the preparation?
   • Is the starch washed off first? Are they rinsed?
   • Is there a delay between slicing, and frying?
   • In North America I believe some commercial French Fries are blanched, then cooled, prior to frying.
2. In particular, if there was a difference in preparation, other than the cross section, this would support making a distinction between Chips and Freedom^h^h^h^h^h^hrench Fries.
3. What is this Belgian connection the article hints at?
4. Rather than repeating the spin doctors claims of how chips can have less fat than other foods, or in addition to repeating those claims, how about actual stats?

Cheers! George Swan 08:30, 19 November 2007 (CST)