Homemade Potato Chips

I recently gave in and purchased myself a mandoline. The first thing I cut with it was fries, but the most important thing was, of course, potato chips.

I went into it basically blind, figuring that I could wing it and everything would turn out fine. While I was at it, I figured I'd try a couple different techniques to see if I could find the one that worked best.

Sliced

I sliced a potato up on the mandoline at pretty close to its thinnest setting. 

Techniques

Cooked using technique #2

I tried three different techniques, in approximately 2 oz batches.

1. Cooked briefly at 300, then immediately finished at 350.

2. Cooked briefly at 300, chilled in the refrigerator for one hour, and finished at 350.

3. Cooked once at 350.

My hope was that the chips that were cooked after being chilled would have more of a chance to crisp up while cooking, and I expected this to be the best of the bunch. In fact, the best batch was actually the third technique. The chilled batch was the worst of the three. What's going on?

The answer comes to us courtesy of The Food Lab. In short, it's because of starch. The difference maker in my experiments turned out to be the length of time the potatoes sat in cold water, so while the techniques I used made no difference, the order in which I made the batches did. (The last and best batch was the one that sat in a water bath for the longest, and presumably had slightly more of its starch rinsed off.)

The Food Lab Technique

The obvious next thing to do was to follow the Food Lab recipe and see about the results. I gave a batch a quick ride in a pot of boiling vinegar spiked water, then cooked in 350 degree oil.

As promised, we got a crispy chip that was not at all burned. The one thing missing, as far as I was concerned, was flavor. These had all of the characteristics of a good potato chip, but something was missing.

On a whim, I dunked them back into the still hot oil briefly. Now we're talking. We've still got the good stuff, but now we have that potato chip flavor as well. The only problem, as you can see in the picture, is that we're starting to hit that no good overcooked stage again.

Putting It All Together

Our technique has revealed itself. No surprise, it's almost exactly the same as a typical french fry technique. In retrospect, this should have been obvious. Here we see a batch of chips cooked first at 300...

And finally finished at 350. These were the ones. A little golden brown, but not burned. Thin, crispy, and delicious. 

Conclusion

Now that he's developed a taste for potato chips,
I'm not sure he'll be willing to eat anything else. 

The experiment was a success. While my modified technique worked out well, I suspect that I could have gotten similar results with a single cook at a different temperature. (The Food Lab recipe recommends 325, but I was committed to the 300/350 experiment by the time I got to that point.) I'll definitely be giving this a try again soon, and I hope you do too.