Talk:Chips (food)

Article Checklist for "Chips (food)"

Workgroup category or categories	Food Science Workgroup, Health Sciences Workgroup [Categories OK]
Article status	Developing article: beyond a stub, but incomplete
Underlinked article?	No
Basic cleanup done?	Yes
Checklist last edited by	John Stephenson 05:26, 14 June 2007 (CDT)

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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)