(Chip Week Feature Article)

There is a golden rule in cooking chips for customers. It is that chip enthusiasts are every bit as demanding as real-ale fans, and they react badly to anything less than a carefully-made item. And so, beside the offer of promotional posters and menus to publicans who can see a selling opportunity in National Chip Week, from 15-19 February, the National Potato Council is also issuing a major item of advice - go for quality.

For the caterer, a major aspect of this is in whether the home-made chip beats the preprepared chip. Firm opinions are held on this subject, and Allied Domecq Inns even reports that there are some pubs in the proud chip-making area of the north west who will not allow frozen chips into their kitchens."Not a frozen chip, not even a chilled one!" laughs Terry Daly of the Black Bull, at Atherton. "And we make chips, not fries - French fries are for McDonalds, and it's not fries that get people travelling miles to eat here."

There is a clear difference between home-made and pre-prepared chips, say publicans who are proud of their chips."We find our customers like fresh potatoes, which is why we get through five or six sacks a week," explains Terry Daly. "We use Wesson Green oil, which is very expensive compared to some, but it's only the best that gets you a reputation. We cut our own chips by hand, they are uniform in size, about three-eighths of an inch, and that's not by machine, it's practice.

"We cook them slow, then we take them out, put the oil on high, and then dip them in quickly to crisp them... if you take them out, that lets the oil heat up quicker, and when you dip them in, that helps cool the oil down, ready for the next lot.

"And the best investment I've ever made was to bring in a company called Pure Fry from Bolton, who come in very regularly and clean our filters and friers for us. I've found that this also extends the life of the oil - and if you're using the most expensive oil, that's a considerable saving."

At the Black Bull in Preesall, Poulton-le-Fylde, Jean Jones of the Black Bull is another who maintains that customers know their chips."You can always tell a fresh one from a frozen one!" she says. "The secret is to keep them fresh - fresh potatoes every day, and two fries, one low, and one hot. You can always tell the difference - that's why customers come here especially for them."

However, many publicans looking to make the most of Chip Week will look to the instant product, and there is quite astonishing growth in the microwavable sector. Young's, the maker of Chip Shop chips, reports the astonishing statistic that microwaved chips now accompany main meals on 78.3 per cent of servings, and that the microwaveable product has reached a market size of £35million, growing at ten per cent a year.The catering-trade sector of the chip market is dominated by McCain, with its 60 per cent market share. Two big steps in catering chips came from McCain - the invention of the oven chip in 1979, and then the Freeze-Chill product in 1987. This is a product which can be stored under either condition, with long shelf life for the caterer - the ultimate in quality and keep, says McCain, are its Fresh cuts, 11mm and 14mm chips, which have a shelf life in chill of up to three weeks, and the brand's chips and French fries are promoted as having such a consistency of quality and size that there is little point in caterers doing the work for themselves.

The Potato Council tends to step aside from the question of whether publicans should use fresh or frozen - the main thing, says the Council, is to promote the new credibility of the chip as a healthy food.

According to the Potato Council, the chip has the advantage over the French Fry. The thicker the chip the better, because the thinner fries absorbs more fat, and so thick straight- cut chips will be lower in calories. Measure for measure, a portion of chips is even lower in calories than a small bar of chocolate, a large glass of champagne, aLincolnshire sausage, or a portion of pizza.

Well-cooked chips also contain a lots of vitamin C, which has helped the new acceptance of the food by schools. At one time, under a general belief that chips were bad for the diet, they did not appear on school dinners at all - now the Morecambe Bay Health Authority has announced that they are acceptable enough to go on menus as part of 'chippy cheese buns', a combination which the authority says provides a balance of vitamin C, calcium, and fibre.

"This is why the way to go is to promote the healthy option," confirms Kathryn Trivett of the Potato Council. "The bigger the chip, the more vitamin, starch and carbohydrate. It's interesting to see that McDonald's now have their potato wedge, which is a healthier option." Although both chips and fries are perfectly acceptable for vegetarians and vegans, there is a clue from the Vegan Society which will please meat-eating customers as well. The vegans say that sunflower oil is the best medium for cooking chips, but that it should be changed regularly - not only does 'contaminated' oil change the taste, but each heating of an oil can change its molecular structure, with the result that a later serving may not produce the same taste as an earlier one.

There are more tastes for the publican to work on as attention-getters. In making the most of chip week, it is not surprising that the two big names in sauce-making have been quick to bring in research supporting their products as essential condiments beside chips. In England, 50 per cent of chip eaters still season them with salt and vinegar, ketchup by 39 per cent, while most people in Scotland, the most regular chip-eaters in Britain, use the distinctive traditional brown sauce only found in that country. Putting aside the minorities who use mayonnaise and even banana fritters or custard, Heinz recently brought in a psychologist to look at ketchup-eating - she concluded that those who plop their ketchup in a pile on top of their chips have nothing to be ashamed of, because it means they are direct, persistent and hard-working.

In response, HP has used research of its own to show that choice of seasoning says something about the eater. This is used to promote its brown sauce, on the grounds that 'as people get mature, they demand more of a challenge from their taste buds, and move on from simple childhood choices to more sophisticated flavours'.

One of the world's leading experts on the chip and French fry now reports that there is a new collection of gourmet ketchups for the dish, which we can expect to arrive from the States; these include Cranberry, Ginger, Roasted Red Pepper, and Roasted Garlic. That fry expert is M W Grossmann of New York, a former road crew member for Paul McCartney and, curiously, a former fry cook in McDonald's. It was in 1996 that he launched the Official French Fries Pages on the Internet, after "a bit more gin than I recall", and three hours' research on the subject in the New York library... his published work on fries is now so comprehensive that he even has 'moles' inside large suppliers, who give him manufacturing data under guarantees of anonymity!

As a result, he now operates the most comprehensive french-fry database anyone could want for, including a review of the bizarre condiments used in different parts of the world - the Bulgarians apparently put feta cheese on theirs, whereas the preferred condiment in Namibia is tersely described as 'anything to disguise the true flavour'!

The publican who promotes Chip Week as being based on a traditional British dish will, however, be making a mistake - we were relatively late in discovering it. The French Fry is in fact the authentic original product, and it arrived in the States in around 1700, a hundred years before selling in England. In the States, it even led to the invention of the crisp (which the Americans refer to as a 'chip') when an American Indian cook, George Crum, became so fed up at complaints that his French fries were too thick, so he mischievously made them so thin that nobody could pick them up with a fork; to his astonishment, they went down a storm, and another new snack was invented.Chips reached Britain around 1854, and Charles Dickens mentions them. Later still, the first fish & chip shop was a wooden hut in Mossley, near Oldham, and the dish became so popular that it was the only meal not to be rationed during the war. Today, the record number of portions in a day from a chip shop is 4,000.

Recently, and coincidentally beside National Chip Week, there has come a curious announcement from the owners of the most famous chip shop name, Harry Ramsden's. When the restaurant first opened in 1931, the owner decided that everything would be of the very best, including hallmarked cutlery monogrammed with his name; not surprisingly, vast amounts of the cutlery disappeared with customers, and now that the Ramsden chain wants to stage an authentic 1930s theme night, there is an appeal for the return of any items of original cutlery. Those who respond to the cutlery amnesty will not only be forgiven, but may be invited to take part in a 30s gala evening.

It was Harry Ramsden who unwittingly gave several generations of children their favourite glove puppet character. In his first restaurant, he hired his nephew Harry Corbett as pianist... having achieved this unlikely taste of showbiz, that nephew decided to strike out on his own as an entertainer, and invented the glove puppet Sooty. It must be coincidence that in a recent Potato Council survey of 'who would you share your chips with?', Sooty figured high in the responses! Some equipment manufacturers have also seen Chip Week as a chance to promote their services to publicans. Kenwood has observed that for commercial kitchens as much as home kitchens, the danger of chips is in the pan fire, and has devised the DF350, an enclosed electric chip frier with a 2lb capacity. For £69, says Kenwood, this makes chip fires a thing of the past.

For cutting potatoes, Robot Coupe has come up with a series of manually-operated chippers, and high-speed electronic machines with give the cater a choice of width for the finished chip, or the option to cut into the newly-popular potato wedges.

-- Ian B.
Ian@skywriter.demon.co.uk

What can we say? This has been our favourite article so far, except that there's actually information in it that we didn't have at the time (but do now).

Ian, unlike most "reporters", quoted directly. A bit too directly in one or two instances. But he went to the trouble to do the research, to talk with us, to write the artilce, and to secure for us the right to publish this on our site. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU, Ian. Excellent article. You have proven to us that some journalists can be bothered to do their research, even those (or, should we say, especially those) who do not work for the big names in "news", for whom a stupid story about how a cat saved someone's life warrants 3 minutes of air time while a mysterious jumbo jet crash in some foriegn land or an entire change in government and structure in some other land warrant, at best, 20 seconds. We are always amazed, despite being based in New York City.

Update (2007): We're no longer based in NYC.

Show me some more Media Articles

Take me back to the home page