The Humble Chip – A thing of great joy and anger in equal doses. #Blog

Stephen Wundke
24th September 2018

I’m not here to tell you how to make the perfect chip because everyone has their own ideas and theories. What I am here to discuss is firstly the love affair that Britain has with chips and secondly the disappointment that we, the great unwashed, feel when pubs, restaurants and bars palm us off with some inferior piece of potato or pretend potato, failing to acknowledge that this vegetable deserves the same grace and care as your expensive proteins.

Triple cooked heaven

You see the chip can make or break a meal for me. Not because I especially love them (many others do) but because I genuinely think the potato is the most over rated vegetable in the pack. Having said that there are genuinely over 130 different recipes for potatoes so I know I am in the minority here. No, its not the love of the chip but what it says about a venue that is most important to me because in essence the chip is a pretty simple thing, or at least it should be. Somehow the job of both creating and cooking this is regularly given to the lowliest worker in the kitchen. Rarely, if ever, is that person judged on what they produce before it leaves the kitchen and that ladies and gentlemen is what really bugs me. Being taken for granted as a customer and served an inferior product because no one cares enough to make it right.

If the menu says it’s triple cooked then that’s what I want, don’t serve me a floppy insipid looking thing that’s mixed in with a few that got missed on the previous 3 deep fries. If it’s described as chunky then that’s fine but don’t give me half a potato because you couldn’t be bothered to give it some “chip shape”. Chunky means about twice the size of a normal chip, around the size of a decent jenga piece, not most of the potato. It can still be fairly uniform but again it’s meant to be a chip. I don’t want a huge mouthful of dry tasting potato, the idea of the chip is to create a flavour on the outside by frying that balances the flavour in the middle.

Jenga sized and gorgeous when done correctly

A chip in essence is golden brown, crisp for the first millimetre of two and then revealing a soft fluffy flesh and in this form it is a thing of great joy. Make the chip too big and the balance is all wrong. Make it fries and there is no potato, just crisp. Balance and care make a good chip.

You can add whatever you like, salt, definitely, vinegar if that takes your fancy, ketchup, gravy, curry or even truffle oil for the extravagant and my personal choice, melted parmesan. However, all of those flavours are irrelevant if the base chip is poor.

The skinny chip (or fries) has its place but not in a decent restaurant, the home made chip is fabulous when done well but incredibly time consuming, so we accept that pubs and restaurants buy in already chipped potatoes and many of them are very good. Maris Pipers and Chippies Choice as brands of potatoes rarely produce anything bad so after that its now down to the kitchen and the care.

Colour, texture and shape

For the record I have had most success with blanching my chips first, shaking them around a bit to rough up the edges, so they absorb the fat in the frying process, leaving them to dry in a tea towel, cook them for a short while at about 140-160 to cook the fleshy middle, taking them out and then firing the fryer up to 190 to finish them and get a good crispness and golden colour to the outside. Old fat never, ever works and time under a heat lamp waiting for the meal kills the crispness every time. So, don’t do it. Experiment a little, find out what works best for your equipment and your customers and then keep doing great chips.

My plea is whatever you do, please, please take the time to firstly do what it says on your menu, and secondly treat it with the same care and pride you do everything else because when you don’t it shows us you don’t really care. I have done over 100 reviews and I could name on the fingers of one hand the places, at all levels, that do good chips and I would have to take of my shoes and socks and those of my fellow diners to total the many, many bad ones. Why? It’s not tricky.

Blackstocks – the perfect chip?

So, come on guys, lets change something that is well within everyone’s grasp. Start producing the best chips we can and give the customers something special not just something to fill a plate. The Chip deserves so much more.  Oh and as you asked – the best chips anywhere – Blackstocks in Chester and they are free – just walk past around lunchtime and they kindly let you try them, do you know why they are free? Because they have such confidence in their chips that once tasted you can’t buy chips from anywhere else. They are the best, every time. Here’s to the humble chip and all those who respect it and love it for what it is.