Potato Chip Crumbs

Potato Chip Crumbs. © Denzil Green / 2005.

Many recipes will call for potato chip crumbs (potato crisp crumbs), and many people consider it a very happy day indeed when they do.

Potato chip crumbs add seasoning, texture and mouthfeel to a recipe.

Potato chip crumbs are made by crushing potato chips into crumbs. This has to be done at home. As of 2019, cooksinfo is not aware of any pre-crushed product being sold, though one was released briefly for free in 2017 as part of a marketing campaign (see History section below.)

Potato chip crumbs are often used as a topping on savoury dishes. They provide interest in the form of crispiness and saltiness.

When a recipe calls for potato chip crumbs, the writer means plain flavoured ones, unless otherwise specified. Either regular smooth or ruffled chips can be used. Usually a small, individual-portion sized bag will do the trick for a topping.

Cooking Tips

To make potato chip crumbs, place potato chips between two pieces of waxed or parchment paper, or in a plastic or paper bag, and roll with a rolling pin or crush with a meat mallet.

Or, open the bag they are in a small bit to allow air to escape, and apply some kind of pressure to the bag, even with your hands, to crumble them.

Recipes will often indicate how finely or coarsely they want you to crush the chips.

Equivalents

100 g (4 oz) of whole potato chips = 2 cups coarsely crushed ^[1]Potato chips. Gourmet Sleuth. Los Gatos, California. Accessed August 2019 at https://www.gourmetsleuth.com/ingredients/detail/potato-chips

Substitutes

Crushed corn flakes OR buttered bread crumbs OR panko OR cracker crumbs. For coatings, try instant mash potato flakes . You may wish to consider also other veggie “chips”, such as kale chips, beet chips, etc, though in terms of fat and salt they may not necessarily be healthier if that is the goal.

When using alternatives that are less salty, you may need to adjust the seasoning in your recipe.

History

In 2017, the internet marketing company MailChimp had the Snyder’s Chip company in Hanover, Pennsylvania, make 200,000 small bags of already-crushed potato chips for them. They gave the bags away for free as part of a marketing campaign. The bags were labelled “Fail Chips” and reputedly contained tiny bits of crushed-up chips leftover from the manufacturing process. But they were actually purposefully crushed:

“Snyder’s takes perfectly good chips and smashes them up. ‘We had to customize the manufacturing process for these chips,’ said DiCristina. Snyder’s developed a tool for its manufacturing line that looks a little bit like a meat tenderizer. ‘This tool comes down and crushes them just right. You wouldn’t believe the amount of debate and rigor we put into getting just the right crush into the size of the broken chip, and how it’s supposed to look and feel.’ ^[2]Judkis, Maura. Are bags of pre-crushed potato chips the future of snacking, or the end times? Washington, D.C.: The Washington Post. 27 March 2017.