Here's How Transparent Potato Chips Are Made
Who doesn't love potato chips? Crispy, salty, and full of starchy goodness, they go well with almost anything, can be used as a dining utensil with a large variety of dips, and are a wonderfully unhealthy snack all by themselves.
Today, strolling down the chip aisle at your local grocery is much like visiting a gourmet shop. There are so many different flavors, cuts, and cooking styles that it can be a little dizzying to make your pick. Indeed, chef George Crum's 19th-century invention has grown into an international craze far beyond anything he could have imagined (via MIT).
Despite their popularity, the basic potato chip is still just a chip regardless of any additional flavorings. Also, they're often far from visually attractive. But now, a daring new potato chip recipe is making the rounds that raises the lowly chip to the level of true art, pleasing both your taste buds and your eyes.
Are glass potato chips for real?
Glass potato chips are one of the hottest and most visually striking dishes to come out of gastronomy in quite a long time. As intrepid cooks and diners will attest, they taste exactly like regular potato chips but are much more challenging to make. However, many agree that clear potato chips are more than worth the effort.
To create your glass potato chips, you'll need several ingredients beyond the blanched potatoes and hot oil you would use in a more typical recipe. As per Instructables, you will need to assemble potatoes, water, cornstarch, olive oil, salt, and seasonings. You will also need an oven and a squeeze bottle.
The last item you are going to need is perhaps the most important of all: patience. Creating these glass potato chips is a two-day affair, so be prepared to invest some extra time to pull off this culinary feat.
How to make glass potato chips
According to Instructables, the process starts by coating the potatoes — Yukon Golds work well here — in olive oil and a sprinkling of salt before baking. You then take those baked potatoes and deviate from tradition to create a potato stock, simply using boiling water and a couple of hours. The stock is strained, covered, and refrigerated overnight.
The next day, with the stock warming up in a pan over medium heat, whisk in your cornstarch until it forms a gel. After you carefully transfer the mixture to a squeeze bottle, use the vessel to make chip-shaped blobs of gel on a sheet pan covered in parchment paper.
Still with us? We're almost there, brave food adventurer. You will now need to place the parchment paper in a low-heat oven to dehydrate the chips. Once they are dehydrated, you can finally fry your chips and enjoy the starchy fruit of your labor. According to Instructables, the Instagrammer who helped popularize this recipe got it from instructions reportedly developed by a Vancouver chef (via Vancouver Sun).